Records (2)
Praise of songs
John Bridcut
Though he would hardly have welcomed it, the poems in A. E. Housman's A Shropshire Lad proved to be the catalyst for the revival of English song at the turn of this century. Housman found little musical satisfaction outside the music-hall, yet he was remarkably disposed to allow composers to set his work. Once he was made to listen to Gervase Elwes' recording of Vaughan Williams' On Wen loch Edge, but found the experience physically distressing. But I fancy that even he might have been won round by Anthony Rolfe Johnson's new recording of superior settings by John Ireland and George Butterworth (Polydor 2460 258 £2.49). The Land of Lost Content finds Ireland in melancholy mood, and richly chromatic, whereas Butterworth's six songs (beginning with 'Loveliest of Trees') are simpler and more sparely written. A critic wrote after their first performance: "Drawing-room singers beware! Do not touch them, they are far too outspoken, too elemental for
• the taste of your audiences. . . They bring us face to face with Nature, and they need a singer with a soul."
Johnson is just that: he is a pupil of Peter Pears, which explains his exemplary diction, and care over vowel-projection, which is always direct and lively. Add to this a flair for phrasing, an evident feeling for the words, and you have the makings of a real songster, as well as a disc of great distinction. Songs by Ivor Gurney and Peter Warlock complete each side — in 'The Sick Heart' a gremlin jumbles the notes at one point. The pianist is David Willison.
Daniel Barenboim and Georg Solti have now taken Elgar to their bosom, and Barenboim has just recorded what are termed 'Elgar Minia tures' (CBS 76423 £2.99). This becomes rather graphic when the conductor's name is about three times as prominent as the composer's, but CBS make amends with Knut Franke's affec
tionate tribute to Elgar on the sleeve, in French and German. Jerrold Northrop Moore writes the English note. Pieces like the diminutive, yet substantial Romance for bassoon and orchestra are rarely heard because of the modern taste for big, meaty works in orchestral concerts. Sospiri is most impressive, written just before the outbreak of the Great War, though its grief-laden outpourings can have found little sympathy in the rollicking chauvinism of that time. It is a beautiful piece with an intensity of utterance which can only be compared with Mahler. The English Chamber Orchestra are brilliant performers too in its companion pieces, Rosemary and Carissima. But Barenboim gives the lighter items (true miniatures) like Salut d'Amour and the Chansons too heavy-handed and pulsating a rhythm! they want treatment to match the frail delicacy of their construction. The Serenade for Strings is handled well, and parts of the last movement even resemble Schoenberg's early Verklaerte Nacht.
Another remarkably gifted orchestrator was Ravel. With his new disc of the full ballet of Daphnis et Chloe (76425 £2.99), Pierre Boulez is near completion of his CBS cycle of orchestral Ravel. The New York Philharmonic provides a sumptuous sonority, yet Boulez never quite reaches the peaks of excitement he scaled with', the BBC Symphony Orchestra in Japan. The first performance in 1912 was marred by conflicting interpretations: Diaghilev (who commissioned it) wanted a classical setting of Longus' bucolic poem, the designer preferred a modern look, while Ravel donned eighteenthcentury spectacles. But these difficulties need not arise today, and dancers have had to cope with rhythms far more complex, so why is it not part of the stage repertory? Ravel once said that Daphnis "reproduced faithfully the Greece of my dreams", and the glory of ancient Greece is that nobody knows how its music sounded, so composers have free rein. It is a work of vivid allusion and characterisation, and unfailing dynamic interest, and even Boulez was sufficiently overcome to allow himself to be photographed on some park bench, trendy, smiling and Previnesque. The choir is used purely orchestrally: Ravel wrote chorally scarecly anywhere else, and it shows. But that is no excuse for the Camerata Singers to sing their final ecstatic `Ah's flat.
Another ballet of the period, The Firebird, has been released in Stravinsky's original (1910) version (Boulez, NYPO: CBS 76418 £2.99) — again a worthy replacement for the ubiquitous half-hour bastards the Royal Ballet so keenly concocts. Stravinsky found the Paris rehearsals for the premiere rather deflating, and described how Diaghilev had live horses on stage at the start, until one left "a malodorous calling card". But these pitfalls can be avoided, and the work was clearly underrated by Debussy when he commented: "Well, you've got to start with something". Boulez starts rather dully, but things liven up, and touches of Rimsky-Korsakov, Ravel and Mussorgsky (at the end) become apparent.
Maurizio Pollini plays the twenty-four piano preludes by Chopin on a DG label (2530 550 £3.25). Some early numbers apart, the bulk of the set was written in 1838-1839. It is therefore astonishing to realise that one of the most revolutionary of the lot, the second (which looks towards atonality and smacks of Liszt and Scriabin) was among the earliest — written only two years after Beethoven's death, in 1829. Pollini throughout achieves great variety in pace and mood, but his accuracy can also be varied, as in the ninth, where his rhythmic imprecision results in a lamer piece than Chopin intended. His rubato is occasionally prodigal, but he has a fleetness of finger, and gives the piano a boundless, shimmering feel. A record worth having, though somewhat dear for a mere thirty-six minutes. Lastly, Richard Rodney Bennett, at the piano, improvises upon fifteen tunes from the world of jazz (Polydor 2460 256 £2.49) — as personally as Pollini plays Chopin. He takes songs of George Gershwin, Cole Porter, Jerome Kern, Harold Arlen and Richard Rodgers (both well-known and obscure) and dresses them up with flair and fertile imagination to fashion a thoroughly delightful assortment.
Previous page
