The
theme here is the ‘Great War’, works
by five English based composers that
they were inspired to write in honour
of those fallen. Dutton state that these
are all world premiere recordings. The
Spirit of England has been recorded
many times before but evidently not
in this version.
The
Spirit of England by Elgar uses
settings of war-inspired poems by Laurence
Binyon. The score was dedicated: To
the memory of our glorious men, with
a special thought for the Worcesters.
Cast in three movements, named The
Fourth of August; To Women and
For the Fallen, the complete
score was given its first performance
in August 1917 at Birmingham under Appleby
Matthews with the New Zealand soprano
Rosina Buckman. Another performance,
this time conducted by the composer,
was given at the Royal Albert Hall,
London in November 1917 with soprano
Agnes Nicholls and tenor Gervase Elwes.
Sometimes described as Elgar’s Requiem,
The Spirit of England remains
one of his most underrated scores, which
is undeserved as this unfashionable
work contains some superb music.
Perhaps
its best known recording is from the
London Symphony Orchestra and Choir
under Richard Hickox on EMI Classics
5 75794-2. It is included in a 13 disc
box set of the Elgar ‘choral music’
alongside Gerontius; Apostles;
The Kingdom; Music Makers
and also the Enigma Variations
played by the RLPO under Sir Charles
Groves.
Australian-born
composer Frederick Kelly arrived in
England to study at Eton and Oxford
and became a celebrated rower, representing
England. A composition pupil of Sir
Donald Tovey at Balliol College, Oxford,
Kelly was a promising concert pianist.
His Elegy ‘In Memoriam
Rupert Brooke’ for harp and
strings is the best known of the small
body of works he wrote before his untimely
death during active service on the Somme
in the winter of 1916. The short tone
poem was written in homage to the poet
Rupert Brooke. Kelly had, it seems,
been present on the French hospital
ship on which Brooke died in 1915 and
at the funeral at Skyros in Greece.
The whole harrowing experience of the
war clearly affected him deeply.
The
War Elegy from 1920 is
a rare orchestral work by Ivor Gurney
who was wounded and also gassed on the
Western Front, spending much of his
later life in mental institutions. I
have no hesitation in classing the highly
talented Gurney as one of the finest
ever song composers. The War Elegy
was given a Patron’s Fund performance
in 1921 at the Royal College of Music
in London, conducted by the young Adrian
Boult with the then-new Queen’s Hall
Orchestra.
The
score to the War Elegy disappeared
from the scene, having been stored at
the Royal College of Music, until revived
in a run-through by Richard Carder with
the Canford Summer School of Music in
1988. A formal performance followed
in 2003 by the Gloucestershire Symphony
Orchestra under Mark Finch at Cheltenham.
Evidently Gurney’s manuscript was in
a disorganised state and required considerable
editing by Mark Finch for the 2003 performance.
For this recording a new performing
edition has been made by Ian Venables
and Philip Lancaster.
When writing for orchestra and chorus
Sir Hubert Parry has few peers as his
renowned works: Blest Pair of Sirens;
Jerusalem and I Was Glad clearly
demonstrate. In the same tradition,
his 1916 score The Chivalry of
the Sea, a naval ode for five
part chorus and orchestra, using a Robert
Bridges text, proves to be an impressive
composition. Although feted in his day
Parry’s music has gained a reputation
for being stuffy and academic, quickly
becoming unfashionable. Thankfully this
viewpoint is being reappraised with
several recordings of his scores now
available. A full-blooded work The
Chivalry of the Sea was written
for the concert given in December 1916
to commemorate those lives lost at the
Battle of Jutland in a performance of
works that also included Vaughan Williams’s
A Sea Symphony and Stanford’s
Songs of the Fleet.
A new name to me, Lilian Elkington was
a composition and piano pupil of Sir
Granville Bantock at Birmingham. The
1921 tone poem Out of the Mist
was composed to commemorate
the arrival of the warship carrying
the body of the Unknown Soldier at a
heavily misty Dover in 1920. A performance
of Out of the Mist was given
in 1921 in Birmingham at a student concert,
with further performances in Harrogate
and Bournemouth. It seems that Elkington
got married and gave up composing. When
her daughter gave a radio interview
for BBC’s Women’s Hour in 1988
she was not aware that her mother had
been a composer. The score and parts
to Out of the Mist were discarded
and subsequently discovered in a Worthing
bookshop. The score was eventually performed
at Eton by the Windsor Sinfonia under
Robert Tucker in 1988.
The
BBC Symphony Orchestra under that stalwart
advocate of British music David Lloyd-Jones
are at their most vital and compelling
with these Great War inspired scores.
Soprano Susan Gritton and tenor Andrew
Kennedy are in fine voice being both
expressive and keenly sensitive to the
frequently affecting texts. In For
The Fallen from Elgar’s The
Spirit of England I enjoyed the
brisk marching section at 4:38-6:29
and the glorious singing at the climax
(10:05-11:58) which is a highlight of
the score. Kelly’s yearning and melancholic
Elegy for Strings ‘In Memoriam
Rupert Brooke’ proves to be a poignant
work that contains short episodes for
solo violin. Also prominent are shimmering
strings that are said to represent the
rustle of olive trees over Brooke’s
grave. Gurney’s splendid and highly
moving War Elegy includes recurring,
trudging march episodes and magnificent
orchestral climaxes at 6:56-7:55 and
9:07-9:59.One would have to possess
a heart of stone not to be moved by
the bleak and poignant ending of the
War Elegy. Parry’s gift for choral
writing is fully demonstrated by his
glorious The Chivalry of the Sea
and the constantly changing moods
of the score are conveyed with impressive
assurance by the BBC orchestra and chorus.
A real find is Lilian Elkington’s score
Out of the Mist. It reminded
me at times of Rachmaninov’s symphonic
poem the Isle of the Dead. Intense
and deeply affecting, Out of the
Mist is a work that deserves to
be heard more often.
Recorded
at Watford Town Hall the Dutton disc
has a decent sound quality being well
balanced and reasonably clear. The programme
notes from John Norris and Lewis Foreman
are as authoritative as we have come
to expect from this label.
This
disc of Great War inspired scores makes
a worthy addition to the catalogue and
contains some superb music.
Michael Cookson
Information
received
Posted by David
Brown on July 4, 2007
It was deeply gratifying to read Michael
Cookson's review of the new Dutton "Spirit
of England" disc that includes
Lilian Elkington's "Out of the
Mist", and particularly to read
his view that this work "deserves
to be heard more often". It was
I who rescued the manuscript materials
of the work many years ago in that Worthing
bookshop, and nothing would please me
more now than to see it grace concert
programmes in the wake of this recording.
It is scored for a standard orchestra
of two flutes + piccolo, oboe + cor
anglais, two clarinets, two bassoons
+ contrabassoon, four horns, two trumpets,
three trombones, tuba, timpani, bass
drum, cymbals, harp, strings. If anyone
has contacts with an orchestra that
would be interested in performing it,
please contact me privately.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Susan Gritton (soprano)
