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             

REVIEW


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


Buy through MusicWeb
for £12 postage paid World-wide.

Musicweb Purchase button
Sound clips and Downloads

 

Philip SAWYERS (b.1951)
The Gale of Life (2006) [10:32]
Symphonic Music for Strings and Brass (1972) [18:24]
Symphony No.1 (2004) [34:27]
Grand Rapids Symphony/David Lockington
rec. DeVos Performance Hall, Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA, 11-12 January 2002 (Symphonic Music); 19-20 November 2004 (Symphony); 9 September 2008 (Gale of Life)
NIMBUS ALLIANCE NI 6129 [63:38]

Experience Classicsonline


 
Philip Sawyers, a new name to me, was born in 1951. He spent most of his adult life in the violin section of the Royal Opera House Orchestra, somehow managing to find time to add works to his catalogue of compositions. Some of those works, as may be seen from this disc, are on a large scale.
 
My colleague Nick Barnard has already reviewed this disc, and, like him, I will take the works in chronological order of composition. Sawyers composed his Symphonic Music for Strings and Brass whilst still a student at the Guildhall School in London, and a remarkable achievement it is for one so young. The composer has written the engaging booklet notes accompanying this release, and therein he candidly cites Hindemith and Mahler as influences, the former composer’s Op. 50 Concert Music for Strings and Brass in particular. (I think he might also have been familiar with Hindemith’s Op. 49, the Concert Music for Brass, Piano and Harp.) The young composer’s debt to the German master is evident in almost every bar, as is the debt to both Mahler and, I think, Shostakovich, in some of the string writing. In spite of this the music is distinctive and is clearly the work of a highly gifted young musician. The orchestral writing is equally accomplished, despite one or two passages where Hindemith might have achieved rather more transparency without sacrificing the weight. The work is very well played by the Grand Rapids Symphony under British conductor David Lockington. A certain rawness in one or two passages of brass playing, plus a few moments where – listening without the score – I wasn’t totally convinced that the strings were in complete agreement, are the only signs that this is not one of the world’s top-flight orchestras. The recording is full and immediate, allowing every note to be heard, but there is a fair amount of coughing as well as other noises associated with live recording, more than we have become used to. Applause is retained at the end of the work, and goes on for too long, in my view.
 
There are fewer extraneous noises in the recording of the symphony, but one particularly grievous example rather sabotages the final note of the very affecting slow movement. Louder passages too, the brilliant scherzo in particular, are accompanied by many a thump from, I imagine, the conductor’s feet. None of that can take away from the brilliance of the performance, however. The work was commissioned by and written for the Grand Rapids Symphony, and it fits them like a glove. Of the four movements, the second is the longest by far. The composer writes that he “had in mind to write one of those spacious Adagios as are found in the symphonies of Bruckner and Mahler”, and if this suggests derivative writing, I’m happy to confirm that in the intervening years between the Concert Music and the symphony the composer has come a long way to finding his own voice. There are still suggestions of others in there, and the composer is refreshingly candid about them in his insert note. He cites Wagner alongside those mentioned above, and even Haydn in respect of the form of the slow movement, though I can’t see this myself. And is there a nod, perhaps in homage, towards Charles Ives’ The Unanswered Question at one point in this same movement? Otherwise, the musical language is reminiscent of that very English school of symphonic composers post Elgar. (I’ve been listening recently to the Lyrita disc of two symphonies by Robert Still, and this symphony by Sawyers puts me in mind of them.) Hindemith, on the other hand, seems to have bowed out. The work is undoubtedly a highly effective concert piece, but after several hearings I’m still searching for something in the way of really distinctive thematic material. The scherzo is quite brilliantly effective, but manages to be so, in my view, without a single memorable theme. The slow movement again, undoubtedly the heart of the work, features a long, and beautifully played, oboe solo, but the melody itself is strangely lacking in distinction. The composer tells a lovely story about how colleagues in another orchestra helped him experiment with a high trill on four horns. This features at the climax of the slow movement, and a dramatic gesture it is, so it’s a pity that it’s rather lost in the overall texture. I think the finale is the least successful movement: the close is undeniably effective, but the build up to it is garrulous and the movement as a whole is not, I think, a satisfactory culmination of all that has gone before.
 
The disc opens with the most recent work, The Gale of Life. This is a concert overture, the composer, by his own admission, drawing inspiration from “those great masters of the past, in particular … Berlioz”. The title is taken from Housman’s On Wenlock Edge, but the atmosphere of Sawyers’ piece is a world away from Vaughan Williams’ setting of the poem. It is colourful, dramatic and exuberant, but there’s a touch of desperation about it too, and I’m not clear in my own mind about where it is situated emotionally. There are some marvellous orchestral effects, especially in the woodwind and brass accompanying figures, but again distinctive musical – or more precisely thematic – ideas are in short supply. A rewarding occupation is spotting the quotation, a pastime which the composer’s notes suggest he would fully condone. Is that the Symphonie Fantastique a minute or so before the end, for example?
 
I agree with Nick Barnard’s view of all this as “music of instant appeal … performed with zealous passion”. Notwithstanding the doubts expressed above, I will certainly be returning to the Concert Music and the symphony, each of which is an example of modern music as gratifying to listen to as it clearly is to perform.
 

William Hedley

see also review by Nick Barnard

The Nimbus Catalogue
 

 

 

 

 


 


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

 

 


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




Return to Review Index

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.