Robin
Milford profile by Martin Anderson
All we have heard
to date suggests that Milford was
a miniaturist
touched by a gentle
muse. Try the Hyperion
collection. When we hear his symphony,
violin concerto and oratorio A
Prophet in the Land we may well
learn differently.
Broadly speaking
these songs and piano solos signal
an affinity with Finzi and Warlock,
Holst and Balfour Gardiner. Indeed
the three movement My Lady's Pleasure
is redolent of Gardiner’s solo
piano music; Holst as well; remember
Keith Swallow's recordings on the
old Abbey LP LPB736? In the case of
the Gavotte, there are
echoes of the music of Milford’s friend,
Finzi. There's a little Scottish twist
in the Jig but otherwise this
is English yeoman countryside music
– sensitive yet bluff.
Making further links
with Finzi, we hear two of the Four
Hardy
Songs. Phillida Bannister has
a strong voice and cut-glass enunciation
of words. The latter is welcome but
the powerhouse of her ringing alto
is not ideally suited to The Colour
which was once recorded with even
more success by Ian
Partridge. Tolerance lacks
the poignancy it might have had but
this is attributable to the setting
rather than the performance. There
is a bluffness about it which seems
at odds with the words. The Blake
Cradle Song opens with a wonderful
restful rocking figure for the piano
– played with attentive and thoughtful
advocacy throughout by Raphael Terroni.
There is a marvellously sustained
note from Bannister on the last word
of Tolerance, 'weep'. Donne's
Daybreak is a steadily placid
setting made very special by the final
serenely decorative touch from the
piano.
The six movement
Reputation Square for solo
piano is a sequence of hornpipes carrying
the pleasing patina of Purcellian
antiquity but also with a dusting
of Garth and the other lost figures
of the 18th century revived and re-edited
by Finzi. The twentieth century hardly
obtrudes at all.
Phillida Bannister
returns for three of Milford's Four
Bridges Songs. There is the lissom
line of So Sweet Love Seemed
a song also included on the Hyperion
sequence, "Finzi
and Friends". Elegy and
Love on My Heart with its rivulet
chunter is well up there with the
best of the 20th century romantic
lyricists. There's no trace here of
preciously dainty antiquity. Staying
in the same territory we hear two
of the Four Seasonable Songs.
Summer is bound to recall Warlock's
setting of the words Pleasure It
Is but remains rewarding for its
intrinsic delights.
Prelude, Air and
Finale flies free of the bounds
that leave the Reputation Square
suite rather shackled to mannered
eighteenth century models. Even if
the Prelude occasional chatters
like Holst's Toccata on Newburn
Lads it is a much freer piece
of piano writing - tonal and folk-influenced
but bright-eyed - almost Howells but
more direct-speaking. The Air is
delicate without being dainty and
seems to speak of finely nuanced emotions
played out amid a country evening.
The finale is a darker and more melancholic
conceit which suggests a symphonic
depth not yet encountered in these
short pieces and songs.
The nine Swan
Songs are, with the other song
cycle In Tenebris, late
works. The Swan Songs were
written after the death of Milford's
little son in a road accident and
after Milford's nervous breakdown.
His own suicide was not far distant.
The darker realms of these songs seems
to be a development of the finale
of the Prelude, Air and Finale.
They have the plangency and sombre
beauty of Finzi’s Hardy settings.
The Glance (a setting of Herbert)
lightens the mood transiently with
a nicely calculated rocking figure
typical of ostinatos established by
Milford for earlier songs.
Jennifer's Jingle
starts with a 'Green ways' figure
typical of Patrick Hadley but soon
returns to a typical chiming Milfordian
folk-dance figure. The recital ends
with a setting of the archetypal Here
Lies a Most Beautiful Lady which
I first encountered in Gurney's setting.
The notes are by
Peter Hunter who is the leading authority
on Milford. I hope that he is working
on a book to complement or even replace
the Ian Copley study produced a couple
of decades ago by the late lamented
Thames Publishing. Toccata put not
a foot wrong in their presentation
which is legible, encyclopaedic in
content and thoughtful including the
full texts of the songs. These qualities
speak of values sometimes thought
long lost. The notes are as usual
translated into German and French.
Let me repeat my
plea for the orchestral works to be
recorded including the Symphony, the
Violin Concerto and The Darkling
Thrush for violin and small orchestra.
Meantime this is
a most handsomely performed, recorded
and presented collection representing
the lyric pastel-shaded English pastoralism
with which Milford's scores are imbued.
His was a gentle muse yet one strongly
rooted in the countryside and in words,
their age-old history, meaning and
nuance.
Rob Barnett
Phillida Bannister (alto); Raphael Terroni
(piano) 
