Classical Explorations — September 2024

Karl Jenkins
Stravaganza: ii. Dreams and Drones
In July, the BBC broadcast a programme entitled Karl Jenkins: The Composer behind the Moustache. Initially when I saw the title, I was rather apathetic. Why would Karl Jenkins need such a programme? I’m glad I decided to watch it, I learned much more about his music that I had not previously known. The world element to his music was a particular interest to me. If you haven’t seen it, it’s available for the next couple of months on BBC iPlayer. I was really drawn to a new work which was featured in the programme – that of a saxophone concerto for the brilliant young saxophonist Jess Gillam. This second movement I’m featuring of the four is brilliantly composed and performed. The soft whispered chords in the strings captured by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra are sensitively and beautifully placed. And to the entrance of the soloist – Jess Gilliam has a golden tone which pours from her instrument effortlessly. The combination of Jenkins’ popularity, Gillam’s enviable musicianship and the RPO’s sensitive accompaniment bring together something that feels familiar, comforting and universal.

Frederic Mompou
...Pour appeler la joie (VI from Charmes)
Mompou was a Catalan composer of lyric songs and piano miniatures whose music is characterised by Impressionist elegance, simple and direct melody, and the haunting, deep emotions of folk music. Having studied in Paris, his style was influenced by the likes of Satie and Debussy. Mompou’s music is intimately expressive, generally avoiding grand gestures. Charmes is a suite of musical spells such as  ‘to alleviate suffering’ … ‘to penetrate the soul’ … ‘to inspire love’ … ‘to effect a cure’ … ‘to evoke an image of the past’.  Pour appeler la joie literally means ‘to call joy’. The music has a skittish dance quality to it, perhaps like Degas’ delicate ballerinas. Arcadi Volodos brings a lightness to the piece.

Victor Bendix
Symphony No. 1 in C Major, Op. 16, "Fjeldstigning" (Mountain Climbing)
Victor Bendix was highly respected Danish composer, pianist and conductor. A pupil of Gade and Hartmann, his music is rooted in the Danish Romantic tradition but with influences from abroad, his harmony became more complex and daring. Bendix’s symphony cycle become increasingly mature and highly detailed. The first is featured here and is rather Lisztian in tone. Headily romantic but beautifully illustrative and detailed. I particularly like the harmonic progressions giving the cadence points plenty of weight. These are contrasted with some delightful and playful wind and sting conversations.

Edward Cowie
Lake Eacham Blue
Edward Cowie, born in Birmingham in 1943, is a British composer and visual artist who came to prominence in 1975 with Leviathan, premiered by the BBC Symphony Orchestra. Cowie's works often draw inspiration from natural phenomena, scientific theories, and visual arts. Cowie's multidisciplinary approach has resulted in numerous compositions, paintings, and lectures, strengthening his reputation as an innovative and versatile artist. Menurida is the Latin family name of the Australian Lyrebird and is the inspiration of a flute and piano duo, performed here by flautist Laura Chislett and the composer. Lake Eacham Blue is inspired by the artwork of his wife. The opening flute solo is a bare open sound which is rather like a conch call to the music which follows. Piano chords break this silence with rhythmic fragments and later adding harmony. The flute is a beautiful monologue, starting as a conch call, later becoming more detailed like birdsong. The piano underpins this with ornamental figures at the ends of the flute phrases to respond to the statements. This is an intense and evocative is soft with an impassioned undercurrent. It’s a really thought-provoking, peaceful and atmospheric piece.

Takashi Yoshimatsu
Ode to Birds and Rainbow – ii. Canticle
Yoshimatsu is a contemporary Japanese composer writing in a neo-romantic style, blending influences from jazz, rock, and Japanese classical music. His prolific career includes six symphonies, numerous concertos, and various chamber works. Yoshimatsu seems to blend those traditional Japanese sounds with modern classical music, encapsulated in this pretty movement, entitled Canticle.

Ralph Vaughan Williams
Coastal Command Suite: The Hebrides
The rugged landscape of the Hebrides is depicted exquisitely in Mendelssohn’s Hebrides Overture but it is perhaps less known that it was also depicted by Vaughan Williams – one of the leading English composers of his generation. The 1942 film Coastal Command is a part-documentary, part-dramatization about flying boats in the Battle of the Atlantic. It followed Vaughan Williams's score for the 1941 propaganda film 49th Parallel; throughout the war he was active in various forms of civilian war work. This seven-movement suite was arranged by Muir Mathieson from Vaughan Williams's original score for the film.

William Mathias
Serenade - Allegretto
William Mathias was a prominent Welsh composer of his day, writing for the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer in 1981. His music is hugely underrated despite nearly 200 published works across various genres. The harmonic invention is earthy with beautifully lyric phrases as showcased here in this wonderful movement from his Serenade for small orchestra.

Anders Hillborg
Violin Concerto No 2
Anders Hillborg is a Swedish contemporary composer with a large catalogue of works. Hillborg himself has stated that an important source of inspiration of his music comes from the composer Brian Ferneyhough who visited the conservatoire (Kungliga Musikhögskolan) in Stockholm in the late 70s. Hillborg’s Violin Concerto No 2 is a real stand out piece. It’s certainly not a tricky listen with modal spaciousness and string tuttis that wouldn’t be a million miles from the music of Vaughan Williams. Sure, it is dark music but it is none the less pastoral in nature. The driving rhythms are exciting and superbly executed by the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra. Parallel glissandos from the soloist add quite a unique, frightening sound. This adrenaline-fuelled music could easily work as a film score.

Richard Rodney Bennett
Concerto for Piano and Orchestra – iii. Lento
Sir Richard Rodney Bennett was a versatile English composer and pianist known for his eclectic musical style. He composed prolifically across various genres, including concert works, operas, and film scores. His innovative approach to 12-tone and serial composition earned him acclaim in the classical world, while his film scores for movies like Murder on the Orient Express garnered Academy Award nominations. Bennett was also an accomplished jazz musician, performing as a pianist and vocalist. For his contributions to the arts, he was knighted in 1998. The Concerto for Piano and Orchestra is a significant work in Bennett’s orchestral repertoire. Commissioned for pianist Stephen Bishop, the concerto was composed in 1968. It’s a great piece that showcases a clever fusion of classical, jazz and film music. The long winding phrases keep the listener hanging on to every note, wondering how the phrase will conclude.

Francis Poulenc
Litanies à la Vierge Noire
Since the beginning of the year, I have featured several Poulenc works, and I make no secret that he is up there as being one of my top five favourite composers. Of course, it’s easy to see why I might like his frivolous music of the 1920s but, like all good composers, there is a kaleidoscopic treasure trove to delve into and hopefully I might offer a different voice to the glittering Parisian we all know and love. In 1936, Poulenc’s friend and composer Pierre-Octave Ferroud died in a tragic car accident. Poulenc was devastated and began a pilgrimage to the Chapelle Notre-Dame, to see one of France’s most stunning religious icons: the Black Virgin of Rocamadour. In amongst his own crisis and mourning, Poulenc had a resurgence of faith, drawing him back towards his Catholic upbringing. Litanies à la Vierge Noire is for three-part female chorus and organ and was to become the first of a steady stream of religious choral works, which continued throughout the rest of his life.  The piece consists of a series of prayers to Mary; the deeply personal nature of the piece is immediately apparent with its humble and angst-ridden pleas. It’s a heartbreaking and beautiful piece that is at once simple yet dramatic.

Michael Praetorius
Es ist ein Ros entsprungen (Lo, How a Rose E’er Blooming)
Dare I mention the word Christmas in September? Well from a music release perspective, it’s the time of year when Christmas music is dropped onto our radars. My only saving grace here is this piece is technically a Marian hymn so I’ll sort of do it by the back door. This new release by the utterly amazing Vox Luminis might also give a bit more weight to my forgiveness!  The blend and sound of this piece is sublime in Michael Praetorius’ interpretation of the prophecies of Isaiah as told in the Old Testament. The text fortells the incarnation of Christ, the Tree of Jesse, and a traditional symbol of the lineage of Jesus. Exquisite!

Nino Rota
Guerra e Pace - Ritorna a Mosca (Return to Moscow)
The Italian composer, pianist and conductor Nino Rota might be known to many of us as the composer of The Godfather, but how much do we know of him? He was said to have composed his first oratorio at 11 and after studies, enjoyed a prolific career over four decades, during which he scored more than 150 films, most famously collaborating with directors Federico Fellini and Francis Ford Coppola. Rota's Guerra e Pace (War and Peace) was written in 1956 for the screen adaptation of the novel. The film score showcases his ability to blend classical with cinematic flair, evoking images of 19th-century Russia, complementing the film's historical setting. Rota has a gift for writing music so descriptive. In Return to Moscow, the deeply felt string lines are underpinned by a beautiful continuo organ. Themes are taken up in the most tender way in the wind sections.

Silvestre Revueltas
La Noche de los Mayas – Noche de Yucatán
Silvestre Revueltas was a Mexican composer, violinist, and conductor known for his colourfully orchestrated music with distinctive rhythmic vitality. Born in Santiago, he began studying violin at age eight and later studied in Mexico City, Texas, and Chicago before becoming assistant conductor of the Mexico Symphony Orchestra in 1929. He composed numerous works, including orchestral pieces, chamber music, and film scores, often drawing inspiration from Mexican culture without directly quoting folk songs. La Noche de los Mayas was written for a film in 1939 of the same name. Later in 1959, he edited the film score into a four-movement work. Revueltas was politically active, supporting the Republican cause in the Spanish Civil War. He died at age 40 from pneumonia, complicated by alcoholism.

Gustav Holst
Hammersmith
Best known for his orchestral suite The Planets, Gustav Holst was an influential composer and an outstanding teacher holding posts at St. Paul’s Girls’ School and Morley College. His climb to fame had a detrimental effect on his mental health and he was forced to take a step back, particularly from conducting numerous performances of The Planets. He became increasingly anxious and suffered from what we might now term a breakdown. He continued to compose with the generosity of Vaughan Williams who privately funded his convalescence whilst in Thaxted, Essex.

Holst’s corpus of works is hugely electric in stimulus, reflecting everything from English, Japanese and Hindu literature to name just three. Never wanting to be a ‘one trick pony’, Holst’s artistic centre continued to shift and evolve. At the heart of his modus operandi was to write contrasting sounds – which Hammersmith showcases in such as masterful way. Here the juxtaposition of the calm, steady flow of the River Thames verses the pulsing rhythms and textures depicting the streets of Hammersmith. The absolute genius of Holst is brough centre stage in Hammersmith because he finds the sweet spot between two opposing musical ideas whilst simultaneously fusing them to work as one. It’s a musical paradox which works in only a way that Holst could manage.

I’d like to make special mention here of Timothy Reynish MBE who has extensively researched and recorded the wind orchestra repertoire. This recording of the Royal Northern College of Music exemplifies his work over many decades and celebrates the wind orchestra.

If you want to find out more about Holst’s wind music, you may be interested in a book I published in 2015 with materials I had gathered to curate an exhibition at Morley College in 2012: https://www.shealolin.co.uk/holst

Ottorino Respighi
Sei pezzi per pianoforte (Six pieces for piano) – vi. Intermezzo
Ottorino Respighi was an Italian composer who introduced Russian orchestral colour and some of the violence of Richard Strauss’s harmonic techniques into Italian music. He studied at the Liceo of Bologna and later with Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov in St. Petersburg, where he was first violist in the Opera Orchestra. From his foreign masters Respighi acquired a command of orchestral colour and an interest in orchestral composition. Until recently I had not known Respighi had written for piano so I was somewhat taken aback when I heard this outstandingly beautiful Intermezzo. Clearly set in the French salon style of writing, the turn of phrase and emotional appeal are really at the fore. It is a perfect way to finish my list of Classical Explorations for September!