Geoffrey HANSON (b.1939)
Odyssey
Five Nocturnes for tenor and chamber orchestra (2009) [16:32]
Concerto for Clarinet and Strings (1988) [18:18]
Orpheus for chorus and piano (1984) [6:41]
Jubilate Deo (Psalm 100) for chorus and organ (1983) [3:26]
Odyssey: Concerto for Cello and Strings (2012) [18:59]
Now Welcom Somer for chorus (1978) [6:56]
Som Howie (clarinet); Sebastian Comberti (cello); Pablo Strong (tenor); Helena Thomson (soprano); Sandra Smith (piano); Jonathan Dods (organ); London Ripieno Society/Geoffrey Hanson; London Mozart Players/Geoffrey Simon
rec. All Saints Church, East Finchley, 23-25 Oct 2016
CALA CACD77026 [74:00]
London-based, English-born composer Geoffrey Hanson is a leading
figure in the London Ripieno Society. He founded the Society more than fifty
years ago. In addition to championing Baroque works, he has included music
by Tippett, Rawsthorne, Britten, Tučapský, Burgon and Berkeley in his
concerts. This is his first orchestral disc, courtesy of Cala and his sponsor
contributors - listed towards the end of the booklet. There are three works
for choir, two succinct concertos and a song-cycle for tenor and orchestra.
The music was written during a 35-year period from 1978. The words are set
out in the excellent booklet which also includes a helpfully detailed Composer's
Note.
The Five Nocturnes is a marvel of frankly expressed clarity. Hanson
uses the chamber orchestra in exemplary fashion - the melodic material is
in a grand tradition and will appeal to those who enjoy the orchestra song-cycles
by Carey Blyton and Geoffrey Bush. The declamatory style suggests Britten
but there is a stronger expressive core and the wit has a more yielding blade:
try the superb penultimate song, An Appeal to Cats in the Business of
Love. Both the excellent tenor Pablo Strong and the orchestra bring out
a battery of gawkily fine and eldritch detail: "Ye cats that …
spit love at each other … I appeal to your scratches and your tattered
fur …"
The 1988 Clarinet Concerto is in one movement. This music is not experimental
- at least not in any thorny sense. Once again the writing is the epitome
of clearly laid-out sound and ideas. It has a Rawsthorne-like after-taste
and proceeds in a kaleidoscope of sec moods, bustling, uncertain,
changeable, jackanapes-witty, purposeful and revelling in display. Orpheus,
to words by Osbert Sitwell, is a vocal virtuoso piece with a probing piano
line that again reminded me of Geoffrey Bush. The little Jubilate Deo
is flecked with a surprising darkness - an apt reflection of the God-fearing
theme that underpins Psalm 100.
The second concerto here is from a quarter century after the clarinet work.
Odyssey - also in one movement - is a more open and emotional, indeed
romantic, work with a greater succulent density of sound. It is presented
with soulful singing urgency by Sebastian Comberti and his partners. It has
that colour-subdued yet irrepressibly singing quality that I also hear in
the music of American composer Arnold Rosner. It is well worth programming
Odyssey the next time you are thinking of choosing Bloch's
Schelomo.
Finally Now Welcom Somer is an a cappella work of five songs:
Now Welcom Somer (Chaucer), Winter is Cold-Hearted (Christina
Rossetti), Bed in Summer (R L Stevenson), Beside the Idle Summer
Sea (W E Henley) and On the Idle Hill of Summer (A E Housman).
Typically inventive and pleasing to the ear, the language is not that far
removed from the RVW's Three Shakespeare Songs. Helena Thomson
steps forward from the choir for a magical solo in Bed in Summer.
Then two poised references to the idleness of summer. Beside the Idle
Summer Sea (W E Henley) is strangely static and desolate - very affecting
and seeming to speak of irretrievable loss. Finally in On the Idle Hill
of Summer (A E Housman) Hanson takes another path from most of the settings
of this poem; not for him a swinging march with elements of fatalism but instead
a sustained shiver and chill. It takes a brave and sterling composer to end
on such a note. Hanson does not disappoint.
You can find a list of Hanson's works here.
Now I want to hear the concertos for piano, for oboe and for violin not to
mention the large-scale Sinfonia Amoris.
A wide-ranging cross-section of the music by Geoffrey Hanson: varied, cool,
emotionally engaged and concentrated.
Rob Barnett
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