Steve Elcock (b. 1957)
Orchestral Music – Volume 3
Symphony No. 7, Op. 33 (2020) [27:41]
Manic Dancing, Op. 25 (2015) [15:59]
Symphony No. 6, Op. 30, “Tyrants Destroyed” (2017) [32:12]
Marina Kosterina (piano)
Siberian Symphony Orchestra/Dmitry Vasiliev
rec. 2021, Philharmonic Hall, Omsk, Siberia
Reviewed as 16-bit download from press preview
TOCCATA CLASSICS TOCC0616 [76]
Steve Elcock is a British-born, French-based composer whose day-to-day work has been in the sphere of business as a language consultant. Largely self-taught, he composed for decades while remaining in isolation from the institutions of music in both Britain and France. A single professional performance broadcast by the BBC in 2009 gave him contacts in the musical world. These led to his sending scores and computer-generated performances to Martin Anderson of Toccata Classics in 2013. Anderson’s enthusiastic response has so far resulted in three discs of Elcock’s orchestral music and one disc of his chamber music recorded for Toccata Classics. Richard Hanlon has reviewed the chamber music disc for MusicWeb (review) and Jonathan Woolf and Rob Barnett have each reviewed the first volume of his orchestral music (review ~ review). Though the second has so far escaped notice, here is the third volume of Elcock’s orchestral music.
Elcock has produced a series of symphonies, nine so far. This disc features his sixth and seventh, alongside a de facto piano concerto. The seventh opens the disc. It is in one large movement lasting nearly thirty minutes. Toccata Classics has helpfully split this up into seven tracks corresponding to structural milestones. Elcock intended this symphony to be a “more modest” entry into his symphonic sequence. It may be conceptually smaller but does not lack for energy or drama. The symphony begins with a mysterious flurry of brief motifs. These cohere into a sustained string threnody that rises, in the work’s climax, to an extended passage of agitation and violence, music “at the boiling point,” in the apt words of the liner notes. Elcock contrasts this in the symphony’s second half with music written to fit words he heard in a dream: “And I loved her all the days of my life.” His gentle “dream-song” melody is quite affecting. Nevertheless, it reflects for the composer the loss and regret of unrequited love, an archetype Elcock confesses has haunted him since his youth. The “dream-song” becomes more and more evanescent as the symphony moves to its conclusion, evaporating until only the opening gesture remains. Even this fades away into thin air in the final bars.
Manic Dancing is a piano concerto in all but name. Also in one movement, it divides into three sections. The first, Allegro commodo, is manic indeed in its never-ending stream of notes; first swirling, then running and leaping in various patterns. These endlessly gurgle along with displaced silences or changes of direction layered overtop of them. The thematic material is brief and, to my ears, not terribly memorable. The Largo middle section is quite still in comparison, although there are ticking and clicking percussion patterns behind slow-moving chordal piano lines. The music gears up towards the “manic” energy of the first movement intermittently but dissipates each time. A central passage has woodwinds exchanging a four-note fragment of lyrical melody while the piano quietly disports around them. Unexpectedly, Elcock conjures up a climax of considerable power, vividly and viscerally captured by the engineering, which leads directly into the Tempo primo final section. This is at first relaxed in mood, though still full of flighty passages for the soloist. There is a hint of the Gallic charm of Jean Francaix, though with greater agitation than that French master of the nonchalant. A bustling harpsichord puts in an unexpected appearance. This refers to a visual gag written in the score: in an ideal performance, a bewigged harpsichordist in the background plays this passage while the solo pianist only mimes. A middle section slows down to appreciate fragments of lyrical melody with more Gallic charm before woodwind trills bring the “manic” music back once more, culminating in the brass taking up the repetitive hammering rhythmic theme.
The Sixth Symphony concludes the disc. Though in two movements, Toccata Classics has split each movement into two tracks for ease of musical navigation, for a total of four. The symphony begins as a sort of Baroque sarabande or slow dance in triple meter for three solo cellos. Elcock then develops a canon between the cellos and violas, later adding the clarinets. The next track brings the second subject, another long string threnody like that of the Seventh Symphony. Bassoons and clarinets intone a chorale-like version of this before the opening sarabande returns, clothed in a new, harsher orchestration. The threnody follows, the whole thing moving slowly higher in range and thinner in orchestration. A violent outburst suddenly intrudes, with brass and percussion that sets up the second movement.
The second movement begins with three solo double-basses building up a mass of short, two-note gestures. Tension mounts as more instruments enter until the music reaches the first of several climaxes, ebbing and flowing in great waves of sound. A contrasting section uses imitative fugal techniques coupled with moments of uneasy peace. Elcock subjects this “inchoate” music, as the liner notes describe it, to a final “escalation” over a repeated accompaniment figure. Blows on a steel plate cap the thunderous climax, sounding something like the “tocsin” alarm bell at the conclusion of Shostakovich’s Eleventh Symphony. Indeed, hints of Shostakovich’s style peek through in musical gestures and scoring during this “escalation” and climax. Though Elcock’s Sixth Symphony includes the subtitle, “Tyrants Destroyed,” the composer provides no extra-musical clues to its meaning - his standard practice in instrumental works with evocative words attached.
Elcock writes in a blog post for Toccata Classics, available here, that he found his voice as a composer after encountering the music of Swedish composer Allan Pettersson (1911-1980). This is a valuable clue to his style, as well as his penchant for writing big one-movement works that reveal the composer wrestling with himself as much as the audience wrestles with the subsequent work. There is something also of the relentlessness of Robert Simpson (1921-1997), although Elcock is more approachable than Pettersson and more emotionally warm and communicative than Simpson.
If you have already been collecting these releases then this disc is self-recommending. If you are new to Elcock, set aside the appropriate amount of time to unpack these compositionally dense and emotionally wide-ranging works before diving in. The Siberian Orchestra under Dmitry Vasiliev play with all the commitment one could want and soloist Marina Kosterina perseveres through the technical challenges of Manic Dancing. If the work feels flatfooted compared to the effortlessly airborne syncopations and singing melodies of its explicit model, Bohuslav Martinů (1890-1959), it is no fault of hers. The recording is good, delivering both the spectral sarabande and climactic waves and peaks of the symphonies with immediate impact. The liner notes and documentation are encyclopedic, as is usual with Toccata Classics.
Christopher Little
