In my recent review
of the Solti Rheingold on
the Decca Originals label, I wondered
if the recording really was as good
as I remembered it from its LP incarnation
– had time lent it a false enchantment?
In the event, I need not have worried
– it’s every bit as good as I remembered
and the only version to which I can
listen without serious reservation.
Holbrooke’s The
Birds of Rhiannon and the Rootham
symphony present the opposite phenomenon.
Soon after Lyrita issued the LP of these
works a colleague, who made a speciality
of collecting recordings of jazz and
British and American 20th
century music, loaned me his copy. The
music made so little impact on me that
I have thought of the Holbrooke ever
since in terms of ‘nice title, shame
about the music.’ I’m afraid I put Patrick
Hadley’s The Trees so High on
another Lyrita LP in the same category.
The return of this
recording has already been welcomed
by RB – see review
– and JF – see review.
I’m not going to repeat what they have
already said so well. In fact, it was
their recommendations that made me return
to the Holbrooke and Rootham works,
which I had written off thirty years
ago.
Maybe it’s the new
work which begins the recording, Bantock’s
Overture to a Greek Tragedy which
puts me in the right mood now to respond
to the other pieces; it’s a different
work from the jolly Pierrot of the
Minute, the only Bantock piece with
which most people are familiar, but
none the worse for its seriousness.
I don’t want to make the piece sound
like an academic exercise: it’s serious
but attractive music – you don’t have
to know anything about the Sophocles
play to which the title attaches it
– and the performance and recording
are all that could be wished.
After the comparative
unity of the Bantock, The Birds of
Rhiannon still sounds rhapsodic,
but I respond to it much more favourably
now. It isn’t that I have come to like
rhapsodic music more than I did then
– I’ve always had a soft spot, for example,
for Balakirev’s First Symphony, ever
since I bought the Beecham LP of that
work with a record token given to me
for my 21st birthday. (A
long time ago, I fear.) Perhaps it’s
just Beecham’s advocacy of the music:
my wife always complains that it doesn’t
‘go anywhere’, but that’s not the point
– even if it doesn’t, Beecham somehow
makes the non-journey highly attractive
and it’s high time that EMI restored
this wonderful recording to the catalogue.
Nor is it the Celtic
mythology from the Mabinogion
that puts me off – in fact, that’s what
I missed the first time round. Now,
perhaps because I have more leisure
to listen than when I was a very busy
deputy head of a large school, I can
hear that the mythology is inherent
in the music in much the same way that
it is in Bax’s Tintagel. It’s
less immediate than it is in the Bax,
and I can’t pretend even now that the
music is in the same league as Tintagel,
but it is well brought out in this performance
and the recording, like that of the
Bantock, wears its years very lightly.
Nor can I pretend that
the Rootham symphony is in quite the
same league as those of Vaughan Williams
or Bax’s middle symphonies, numbers
3-5, but it now seems much more worthwhile
than it did thirty years ago and I am
sure that the performance and recording
are, once again, instrumental in persuading
me.
Hadley’s The Trees
so High has also been reissued by
Lyrita (SRCD.238 – see RB’s review).
Perhaps the time is overdue for me to
reassess that work, too, in the light
of RB’s enthusiasm. I ought to listen
to his advice more often – only when
he urged me to listen to the Lyrita
recordings of Bax’s first two symphonies
did I find the performances that I’d
been looking for.
The only thing that
makes me hesitate is that, with too
many duplications already in an over-full
CD collection, it comes with Finzi’s
Intimations of Immortality –
a beautiful work, but I already have
two versions of it. Maybe the Chandos
2-for-1CD set is the answer to redressing
the balance here (CHAN241-22, a Recording
of the Month, coupled with other Hadley
works and music by Philip Sainton –
see review.)
Perhaps I’d better
try James MacMillan’s more recent work,
also entitled The Birds of Rhiannon
on Chandos, too, some time – a golden
opportunity to get to know better a
composer with whom I have yet to come
fully to terms. (CHAN9997 with the Magnificat
– a Musicweb Recording of the Month:
see CT’s review).
This is one of many
Lyrita recordings which are also available
from eMusic as good quality downloads.
Oddly, the bit-rate varies from track
to track but nothing is less than 224kbps
and the opening and closing tracks are
at the highest possible mp3 rate of
320kbps. I certainly found nothing to
complain of in terms of sound quality.
You do miss the notes, of course, but
the two Musicweb reviews to which I
have referred above will repair much
of that loss. With the zeal of a recent
convert I recommend that you give this
music the chance that I denied it thirty
years ago.
Brian Wilson
* Philharmonia Orchestra/Nicholas Braithwaite;
London Philharmonic Orchestra/Vernon Handley
LYRITA
SRCD.269 [62.30]
