MusicWeb International One of the most grown-up review sites around 2024
60,000 reviews
... and still writing ...

Search MusicWeb Here Acte Prealable Polish CDs
 

Presto Music CD retailer
 
Founder: Len Mullenger                                    Editor in Chief:John Quinn             


Some items
to consider

new MWI
Current reviews

old MWI
pre-2023 reviews

paid for
advertisements

Acte Prealable Polish recordings

Forgotten Recordings
Forgotten Recordings
All Forgotten Records Reviews

TROUBADISC
Troubadisc Weinberg- TROCD01450

All Troubadisc reviews


FOGHORN Classics

Alexandra-Quartet
Brahms String Quartets

All Foghorn Reviews


All HDTT reviews


Songs to Harp from
the Old and New World


all Nimbus reviews



all tudor reviews


Follow us on Twitter


Editorial Board
MusicWeb International
Founding Editor
   
Rob Barnett
Editor in Chief
John Quinn
Contributing Editor
Ralph Moore
Webmaster
   David Barker
Postmaster
Jonathan Woolf
MusicWeb Founder
   Len Mullenger


 
REVIEW


Advertising on
Musicweb


Donate and keep us afloat

 

New Releases

Naxos Classical
All Naxos reviews

Chandos recordings
All Chandos reviews

Hyperion recordings
All Hyperion reviews

Foghorn recordings
All Foghorn reviews

Troubadisc recordings
All Troubadisc reviews



all Bridge reviews


all cpo reviews

Divine Art recordings
Click to see New Releases
Get 10% off using code musicweb10
All Divine Art reviews


All Eloquence reviews

Lyrita recordings
All Lyrita Reviews

 

Wyastone New Releases
Obtain 10% discount

Subscribe to our free weekly review listing

 

 

alternatively
CD: AmazonUK AmazonUS

William ALWYN (1905-1985)
Overture in the Form of a Serenade (1946) [5:55]
Micaela Haslam (soprano); The London Chorus
Ralph VAUGHAN WILLIAMS (1872-1958)
Heroic Elegy & Triumphal Epilogue (1901 rev. 1902) [20:03]
Roderick Elms (organ)
York BOWEN (1884-1961)
Orchestral Poem Eventide op.69 (1922) [13:10]
Roderick Elms (organ)
William ALWYN (1905-1985)
Prelude (1925) [2:11]
Blackdown – a Tone Poem from the Surrey Hills (1926) [5:00]
Peter Pan Suite (1923) [5:24]
Ad Infinitum – a Satire for Orchestra (1929) [7:02]
Sir Hubert PARRY (1848-1918)
Hypatia – incidental music (1892) [13:04]
The London Chorus/Ronald Corp
BBC Concert Orchestra/John Wilson
rec. The Colosseum, Town Hall, Watford, 12-14 July 2009
DUTTON EPOCH CDLX 7237 [72:52]

Experience Classicsonline

Some people do not take kindly to these very mixed collections. I rather like them even if I do lean more towards single composer albums. It’s probably non-PC to commend such miscellanies for the reason that they may in this case attract the avid Bowen enthusiast they might well lead to that person ‘discovering’ Alwyn. Anyway here goes ….

Alwyn’s 1940s Overture in the Form of a Serenade is a gallimaufry of influences and effects – all attractive if in a disorientating blend. The work has a Petrushkan energy, a touch of RVW folksiness and the light and carefree attitude of Bliss in Rhapsody and Madam Noy. This is rarely redolent of what we may regard as the mature Alwyn from the symphonies although once or twice the brass whoops betray that identity. We then turn to a work from another, more famous, composer’s pre-history: the Heroic Elegy & Triumphal Epilogue by Vaughan Williams. Given the references to heroism and triumph the mood of the music is more seraphic than I had expected. Compare it with slightly later works, similarly entitled, by the young and confident Havergal Brian. His For Valour (1902-06) and In Memoriam (1910) were recorded by the Hull Youth Symphony Orchestra and Geoffrey Heald-Smith in 1979-81 and can still be heard on Cameo Classics CC9014CD-2. The NSO Ireland conducted by Adrian Leaper also recorded In Memoriam on Marco Polo 8.223481. New recordings of those Brian works are due from Toccata Classics in due course. The two Brian pieces - also written with the Boer War as backdrop - have a more craggy aspect where RVW, though he has some darkly tragic outbursts as at 1:38 in the longer Triumphal Epilogue, is in general more tensely restrained. Again characteristic RVW is short on the ground but there are some foreshadowings of the pastoral voice that was to come. Drum-rolls and fanfares are present so that at least is in keeping. Who knows – next we may get to hear the tone poem The Solent – I very much hope so. The two RVW works are separately tracked. York Bowen’s renaissance continues apace with the premiere of his First Symphony at Em Marshall’s English Music Festival in May 2010. The orchestral and chamber Bowen has been done handsomely by Dutton. With the tone poem Eventide this is carried further forward. It’s a lovely rounded and contented sunset score in an idiom that blends Delius and Bax – in that sense a typical product of the Royal Academy. The final pages wreathed in solos from the orchestra’s principals are utterly magical. The piece was last heard in a speckle of concert and radio performances in the 1920s. It is inspired by Keats’ first sonnet. We return to Alwyn next for four works from the 1920s. There’s a grimly determined microscopic Prelude for orchestra which in fact contains far more presentiments of the future mature Alwyn than the 1946 overture that launches the disc. Its gaunt and turbulent mien several times reminded me of his Fifth Symphony Hydriotaphia which lay fifty years in the future. Dutton really do offer new perspectives on works we are familiar with and constantly cause the readjustment of our judgmental compasses. Blackdown – a Tone Poem from the Surrey Hills will appeal to all lovers of British pastoralism. It was performed at the same Guildford concert as Bowen’s Eventide. It’s a musical portrait as potently atmospheric as Maurice Johnstone’s superb Tarn Howes and RVW’s Lake in the Woods. The music was inspired by the view from the top of Blackdown, the hill near Haslemere. It’s wonderful stuff and quite unlike the majority of the Alwyn we know from post-1945. The Peter Pan Suite is in four movements: (i) Peter Pan (light as down – Fauré-impressionistic and contented); (ii) Tinker Bell (tinklingly restful – Ariel without the mischief); (iii) The Lost Boys in Never-Never Land (more ambivalent in mood – sorrowing even) and (iv) Captain Hook (a mercurial piece – with fragments of a familiar hornpipe). Ad Infinitum is the longest piece in this Alwyn sequence. It is quite different from the rest. Beginning rampant it remains furious or at least irritable with activity. It was inspired by Josef Capek’s play The Life of the Insects. The lyrically restless theme has a touch of Elgar about it but its vigour owes more to Barber’s nostalgic suite Souvenirs – or it might have had it not have pre-dated the Barber. It ends in alternating caramel and bitters. Parry was from a previous generation and from the ‘other’ London college to the one attended by Alwyn and Bowen. The three movements from his incidental music for a stage adaptation of Charles Kingsley’s novel Hypatia are variously Elgarian-contented (i) Andante (Hypatia and Philammon - Act 3: Entr’acte; sumptuously complacent and ever-threatening to turn into a waltz (ii) Allegretto (Ruth and Orestes) Entr’acte before Act 2 and proudly rounded in its march mode but with a very much lighter touch emerging in the Trio section (iii) Moderato alla marcia (Orestes’ March) Act 4, Scene 2.

The whole collection is successful though I confess I was not that impressed with the for me rather emptily Germanic Parry. There are no complaints and indeed glowing praise for the performance and recording. The notes are by Andrew Knowles and Lewis Foreman. They hit all the right bases.

Rob Barnett

see also review by Ian Lace

 


EXPLORE MUSICWEB INTERNATIONAL

Making a Donation to MusicWeb

Writing CD reviews for MWI

About MWI
Who we are, where we have come from and how we do it.

Site Map

How to find a review

How to find articles on MusicWeb
Listed in date order

Review Indexes
   By Label
      Select a label and all reviews are listed in Catalogue order
   By Masterwork
            Links from composer names (eg Sibelius) are to resource pages with links to the review indexes for the individual works as well as other resources.

Themed Review pages

Jazz reviews

 

Discographies
   Composer
      Composer surveys
   National
      Unique to MusicWeb -
a comprehensive listing of all LP and CD recordings of given works
.
Prepared by Michael Herman

The Collector’s Guide to Gramophone Company Record Labels 1898 - 1925
Howard Friedman

Book Reviews

Complete Books
We have a number of out of print complete books on-line

Interviews
With Composers, Conductors, Singers, Instumentalists and others
Includes those on the Seen and Heard site

Nostalgia

Nostalgia CD reviews

Records Of The Year
Each reviewer is given the opportunity to select the best of the releases

Monthly Best Buys
Recordings of the Month and Bargains of the Month

Comment
Arthur Butterworth Writes

An occasional column

Phil Scowcroft's Garlands
British Light Music articles

Classical blogs
A listing of Classical Music Blogs external to MusicWeb International

Reviewers Logs
What they have been listening to for pleasure

Announcements

 

Community
Bulletin Board

Give your opinions or seek answers

Reviewers
Past and present

Helpers invited!

Resources
How Did I Miss That?

Currently suspended but there are a lot there with sound clips


Composer Resources

British Composers

British Light Music Composers

Other composers

Film Music (Archive)
Film Music on the Web (Closed in December 2006)

Programme Notes
For concert organizers

External sites
British Music Society
The BBC Proms
Orchestra Sites
Recording Companies & Retailers
Online Music
Agents & Marketing
Publishers
Other links
Newsgroups
Web News sites etc

PotPourri
A pot-pourri of articles

MW Listening Room
MW Office

Advice to Windows Vista users  
Questionnaire    
Site History  
What they say about us
What we say about us!
Where to get help on the Internet
CD orders By Special Request
Graphics archive
Currency Converter
Dictionary
Magazines
Newsfeed  
Web Ring
Translation Service

Rules for potential reviewers :-)
Do Not Go Here!
April Fools






Untitled Document


Reviews from previous months
Join the mailing list and receive a hyperlinked weekly update on the discs reviewed. details
We welcome feedback on our reviews. Please use the Bulletin Board
Please paste in the first line of your comments the URL of the review to which you refer.