The London-born and Wiltshire-resident composer Michael Stimpson has an
unusual and in many ways inspiring biography. He initially studied Zoology
and Botany whilst developing a high level of skill as a guitarist. In his
mid-twenties he suffered a catastrophic illness which left him registered
blind and unable to play the guitar to his erstwhile standard. Eventually,
between 1993 and 1997, he undertook postgraduate studies in composition at
the University of Southampton; so, presumably, only in his late forties did
he come to embrace composition as his primary occupation.
Alongside facts such as these,
Stimpson's
website tells us that his stimulus to compose comes 'often from
contemporary events, favourite authors, and poets'. This, rather than any
very obvious personal affinity with Wales, presumably explains the subject
matter of the works on this disc.
Dylan, composed as long ago as
2003 and premiered in that year in Swansea by Jeremy Huw Williams and Sioned
Williams, is described as a 'biographical song cycle' on the life and works
of a 'favourite poet' of many, Dylan Thomas (1914-53). The flooding
('Drowning') of the North Wales village Capel Celyn in 1965, in order to
provide a reservoir for Liverpool, hardly qualifies as a 'contemporary
event', but clearly still has a profound personal resonance for the
distinguished harpist Sioned Williams, whose grandfather led the local
campaign against the reservoir, and who commissioned Stimpson to write the
work in celebration of her own sixtieth birthday. She proceeded to give its
premiere, in London in 2014. Two works, then, composed a decade apart, and
indeed recorded some eight years apart. Quite why the recording of Roderick
Williams's performance of
Dylan at the 2006 Llandudno Festival has
remained unissued until now is not immediately apparent.
The song cycle is by some way the longer work. Is it, though, really a
'song cycle'? One must clarify at the outset that
Dylan also
includes a good deal of spoken prose. It consists of eight sections, each
representing (or at least echoing) a distinct phase in Dylan Thomas's life
and career, and each featuring words exclusively by him: 'Beginnings' (his
childhood); 'Genesis' (his schooldays and early writings); 'New Horizons'
(his move from Swansea to London); 'Caitlin' (his wedding and married life);
'Bottled God' (his losing battle with alcoholism); 'War' (his attitudes to
the Second World War and move to Sussex to escape the Blitz); 'Laugharne'
(
Under Milk Wood's 'Llareggub', whither the family moved in 1952);
and 'The Thin Night Darkens' (his tragic decline and early death). Most of
these sections consist of a passage of spoken prose followed by a sung poem;
the exception is the pivotal fifth section, 'Bottled God', which actually
includes no song at all, but rather two passages of prose thematising
Thomas's alcoholism, the second of which is accompanied by a decidedly
inebriated harp.
Most of these juxtapositions work well. For example the darkness of the
second song, with its references to such things as 'shrapnel rammed in the
marching heart, hole in the stitched wound and clotted wind' is all the more
shocking when it has been preceded by Thomas's whimsical account of his
schooldays, during which 'he helped to damage the headmaster's rhubarb, was
thirty-third in trigonometry, and, as might be expected, edited the School
Magazine'. The fourth section is all the more effective for coupling
Thomas's uncomplicated, happy account of his wedding with the poetic
delineation of the married man's infinitely more complex response to
Caitlin's 'contraries'.
Musically, Stimpson's idiom is essentially conservative. There is nothing
here to deter those who normally consider themselves averse to contemporary
music. Rather, his settings come across as a logical extension of the
twentieth-century English art song tradition; and one is from time to time
reminded, if only by the sound of the harp, of a much earlier tradition,
namely the Elizabethan lute song. Stimpson's basically tonal response to
Thomas's words has the advantage, however, that the discords he occasionally
introduces have a particularly powerful effect. This is the case, for
example, in the harp's drunken accompaniment to the passages on the poet's
alcoholism, or in its heart-rending commentary on the dying poet's question,
'why are you putting the sheet over my face?' I would say that, overall,
Stimpson is stronger on atmosphere than on individually memorable ideas;
but, then again, I thought the same of John Metcalf's 2014 operatic
adaptation of
Under Milk Wood (
review). Dylan Thomas was, after all, a writer of such
seemingly effortless virtuosity and profundity that it is surely very
difficult for any composer to impose his or her personal stamp on his words
without in some way diminishing their power.
Roderick Williams's performance of all this is, quite simply, superb. His
voice is throughout warm, beautiful, evenly produced over a wide range; and
he evinces a laudable attention to, indeed relish of, the nuances of
Thomas's texts. I applaud his spoken contributions almost as much as his
singing. His speaking voice is most attractive, and he demonstrates a high
degree of both dramatic power and comic timing. The fact that he is plainly
not Welsh is hardly a problem, given that Dylan Thomas's own inimitable
accent was essentially 'R.P.' or, as he himself put it, 'cut glass' and
'rather fancy'. The Llandudno audience is for the most part admirably
silent, and the occasional shows of amusement - such as, for example, the
male cackle in response to the phrase 'a piece of cold lamb with vomit
sauce' - are both understandable and endearing.
Even after the emotional roller-coaster that is
Dylan, Sioned
Williams's performance of
The Drowning of Capel Celyn emerges as
more than just a filler. I suppose a solo harp has its limitations when
depicting a protracted public scandal such as that which attended the
high-handed decision to 'drown' a long established and viable Welsh village.
Yet Stimpson plays to the instrument's strengths very shrewdly. After all,
the harp is very good at establishing moods, such as 'the feeling of the
first shafts of light over a waking village' (first movement), or the energy
and fixity of purpose of those who opposed the flooding (second movement);
and it is also good at water, as we see here in the third movement's gradual
transition from the trickle of a stream to the flooding of a substantial
area (third and fourth movements). Last but not least, the harp transpires
to be an eminently suitable medium to convey the combination of anguish and
nostalgia which the 1965 decision must have left in its wake (fifth
movement). Altogether this is a very effective piece, to which Sioned
Williams does full justice.
In sum, this is a most desirable and - if one dare say such a thing of a
composer in his sixties - promising issue. The booklet tells us that
Stimpson's 'incidental music to the opera
Jesse Owens and (the
four-stage work inspired by Darwin)
Age of Wonders' has been
'recorded by the Philharmonia Orchestra for future release'. I hope I get to
hear it.
Nigel Harris
Previous review:
Paul Corfield Godfrey
