When Marco Polo released
their recording of Cowen’s Third Symphony
I’m sure many of us had hopes for a
cycle of the surviving symphonies –
the first two of the six appear to be
lost. Nothing though was forthcoming
and it’s taken the ever-enterprising
and brilliantly committed ClassicO to
get to grips with the Sixth in their
British
Symphonic Collection, of which this
is volume fifteen. They’ve coupled it
with Coleridge-Taylor’s youthful Symphony
in A minor and both constitute world
premiere recordings.
Both works were almost
contemporaneous, the Coleridge-Taylor
having been written in 1896 and Cowen’s
Symphony the following year. The influences
are I suppose the standard Continental
ones – Dvořák
on Coleridge-Taylor and Mendelssohn
on the considerably older Cowen.
In the case of the
older man one finds a tremendous sense
of warmth of utterance and lightness
of orchestration. Cowen ‘s deft use
of winds is a characteristic feature
of his writing. He’s also not averse
to a strong role for the horn, both
features of the opening movement. It’s
not surprising then that the cor anglais
leads in the Allegro scherzando
where there’s just a shimmer of the
Iberian in Cowen’s rhythms alongside
that precise and gossamer orchestration.
The broad string tone of the slow movement
even manages to irritate annotator Lewis
Foreman who finds the composer’s "good
manners and self control" rather
limiting. Still, the horn and clarinet
writing is impressive enough, and the
climax, when it arrives, is powerful
rather than merely exhausting. I find
the modality of the writing even glancingly
suggests O Come, O Come, Emmanuel
in its burnished austerity. The
ceremonial march of a finale has its
share of elegiac lyricism, some of it
somewhat Elgarian. There are in fact
certain thematic patterns and rhythmic
similarities; at one point I was even
reminded of the Symphonies. But overall
lies Cowen’s benevolence and sympathetic
generosity – the cantilevering winds
and reassuringly warm horn writing,
the well distributed sectional writing.
Certainly The Idyllic is an aptly
chosen title.
Coleridge-Taylor’s
early Symphony is cut from a different
cloth. Again it’s in four movements,
the finale of which never satisfied
the composer’s teacher, Stanford. To
such an extent in fact that three versions
of the finale exist; the one in the
manuscript at the Royal College of Music
is the one performed here. At one college
run through Hans Richter was present
and in the orchestra playing it sat
Holst playing the trombone and Vaughan
Williams the triangle.
The
Dvořákian elements are stamped
from the first but Coleridge-Taylor
had even at this youthful stage cultivated
his own brand of genial tension; the
climax in the opening movement for example
is exceptionally well worked. The rather
sonorously titled slow movement – it’s
a Lament; Larghetto affetusoso –
turns out to be considerably less portentous
than one might expect. Rather it’s full
of warm string wash, flute riding above,
and through
the developing intensity there’s a role
for solo violin. His characteristic
gift for melodic beauty is always present.
Perhaps the most distinctively Dvořákian
movement is the Scherzo though this
does have a rather charming pentatonic
folk lilt that anchors it as
much to native soil as to Bohemian.
It’s all fresh air lyricism in the finale
until the more reflective material into
which the elegant music winds; the percussion
and a final brass chord ends it without
undue fanfare.
Another splendid venture
from Classico, then, restoring at a
stroke, two contemporaneous and for
so long unheard symphonies. Neither
has had an airing for a century or so.
Both have charm and merit, the younger
man’s symphony especially. Cowen’s essentially
reminiscent work also has something
to tell us about his undersung place
in the English symphonic tradition.
And maybe there are trace elements of
Elgarian writing as well.
Fortunately the performances
are nourishingly affectionate and subtle
and no mere run through. Bostock directs
with the acuity we have come to expect
from him, pacing with care and giving
due weight to winds and to the horns
especially. Classico’s engineering team
has done a splendid job not least with
regard to sectional balance. Laudable
and expert, volume fifteen in the series
is a triumph of programming and imagination.
Jonathan Woolf
The
British Symphonic Collection
Aarhus Symphony Orchestra/Douglas Bostock 
