Julian Bream (lute, guitar)
A Tribute - Volume 2: Live Performances and Broadcasts 1956-1965
Peter Pears (tenor), Carmen Prietto (soprano)
Carmirelli Quartet
Scottish National Orchestra/Alexander Gibson
rec. 1956-1965, 11th, 16th 17th, 18th Aldeburgh Festivals, 18th Edinburgh International Festival (Rodrigo) and BBC Studio recitals
DOREMI DHR-8151-2 [79:46 + 78:46]
This Doremi twofer has sourced Julian Bream’s performances from BBC studio recitals, various Aldeburgh Festivals and from two Edinburgh Festivals. Given that this means the inclusion of Peter Pears, Bream’s own Consort of Viols, the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, and others, it clearly adds up to a fair representation of his concert giving life; solo, with voice, with consort, with orchestra. The sound quality is generally good though one will hear some tape hiss from time to time. The dates range from 1956 to 1965.
The first BBC Studio recital of 1957 (or ’58) on the first disc is an all-lute one in which he plays, with pliant tonal beauty, four pieces. There’s a little bit of print-through here but you can listen through it given that he plays single pieces by Holborne, Batchelar, Cutting and Dowland – core Elizabethan repertoire for him. From Aldeburgh in 1963 one hears three Dowland song with Pears of which Thou Mighty God, That Rightest Every Wrong is a long, complex setting and the most ambitiously chosen of the three. Whether you have the stomach for Pears’ voice here is a personal matter and a question of long standing.
At the same festival he plays three delightful Dowland lute solos and I’d especially commend Lady Clifton’s Spirit for its clarity of articulation and buoyancy of rhythm – to say nothing of his beautiful tonal qualities. There’s no location noted for this, though the three songs with Pears came from the local Parish Church. For the four Lachrymae Pavans the location moves to the Country Club, Thorpeness where his consort have the room to expand in the acoustic. The following year Bream returned to the festival bringing interesting repertoire in the shape of Reusner’s Suite in G minor which, whilst brief, is full of sonic interest.
The same year he recorded, on guitar, Robert de Visśe’s Suite in D minor with considerable authority and continued with a work dedicated to and much associated with him, Britten’s Nocturnal. You’ll find a later broadcast of the piece in the third volume of this series but this is a very early example of Bream’s unmatched way with it.
The January 1956 BBC broadcast that starts CD 2 features Bream accompanying on the guitar the sprightly soprano Carmen Prietto in largely Spanish repertoire. She is excellent in the vibrant folklore of Nin’s arrangement of Granadina and dispatches the well-known Aria from Villa-Lobos’ Bachianas Brasileiras No
5 with similar authority. Granados’ charmingly light-hearted Tonadillas fare just as well. For lovers of fine string playing, the Carmirelli Quartet, led by Pina Carmirelli, join Bream for the arrangement for lute (though here Bream plays guitar) and three strings of Haydn’s String Quartet No 2 in E major, Hob.III:8. They play all five movements but when Bream later recorded it commercially, he did so in a four-movement form with the Cremona Quartet.
I always like Bream’s various recordings of Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez but I can’t honestly say I have ever loved them. They don’t make my heart swell or my pulse race – probably just as well. The best interpreted movement of this August 1964 Edinburgh Festival performance with Alexander Gibson conducting is probably the finale. This is followed by the world premiere performance, given with Pears at the Aldeburgh Festival’s Jubilee Hall, of Lennox Berkeley’s Songs of the Half-Light, Op 65. This cycle is still not nearly as well-known as it should be – and Bream never recorded it commercially - and it contains an intriguing gem of word setting in the form of the fourth of the five settings, The Moth. The feel is generally low-key throughout the settings but the de la Mare songs are well worth hearing. What isn’t quite so ingratiating is Pears, who is on his best Little Miss Muffet form (with apologies to Dudley Moore).
The last piece comes from the same concert, and it’s Stephen Dodgson’s
Partita No 1 for solo guitar. This was dedicated to John Williams, who commissioned and premiered it in July 1963. Bream himself never commercially recorded anything by Dodgson, regrettably. Like almost everything by this composer, the results are delightful; warm, engaging, idiomatic, unfussy, unpretentious and very communicative.
Whilst Doremi’s booklets are often parsimonious, those for guitar repertoire are almost invariably the opposite and that’s down to Jack Silver’s excellent liner notes. The broadcasts and live performances may flit around programmatically and across the years but the repertoire benefits from it and it’s a sensible approach. There’s much of historic interest in these two CDs.
Jonathan Woolf
Contents
Josquin DESPREZ (c.1450-1521)
Et in terra pax [3:13]
Anthony HOLBORNE (c.1545-1602)
Pavan [3:02]
Daniel BATCHELAR (1572-1619)
Almaine [2:24]
Francis CUTTING (c.1550–1595/6)
Walshingham variations [2:30]
John DOWLAND (1562/63-1626)
Fantasia [4:00]
Three Sacred Songs: If That a Sinner’s Sighs [2:28], In This Trembling Shadow Cast
[2:30], Thou Mighty God, That Rightest Every Wrong [7:11]
Three Lute Solos: Mrs White’s Nothing [1:28], Adieu [2:34], Lady Clifton’s Spirit [1:37]
Lachrimae Pavans: No 1 [2:36], No 2 [2:23], No 4 [2:26], No 17 [2:31]
Isaias (Esajas) REUSNER (1636-1679)
Suite in G minor [8:13]
Robert de VISŚE (c.1655–1732/33)
Suite in D minor [11:28]
Benjamin BRITTEN (1913-1976)
Nocturnal after John Dowland, Op 70 (1963) [16:20]
TRADITIONAL
Granadina arr. Joaquin Nin [2:11]
Con amores, la mi madre arr. Fernando Obradors [2:08]
Heitor VILLA-LOBOS (1887-1959)
Bachianas Brasileiras No 5: Aria (Cantilena) (1938) [6:06]
Enrique GRANADOS (1867-1916)
Tonadillas (12) en estilo antiguo (1911-13): No 3 El majo discrete [1:54], No 5
El majo timido [2:37], No 7 El tra-la-la y el punteado [1:30], No 9
La maja dolorosa [2:37]
Franz Joseph HAYDN (1732-1809)
String Quartet No 2 in E major, Hob.III:8 (lute, violin, viola and cello) (1763-65) [16:31]
Joaquín RODRIGO (1901-1999)
Concierto de Aranjuez (1939) [20:33]
Lennox BERKELEY (1903-1989)
Songs of the Half-Light, Op 65 (1964) [13:58]
Stephen DODGSON (1924-2013)
Partita No 1 (1963) [9:37]
