Cheltenham Symphonies

[albion]

Thanks, Gareth. There are also single-sheet folded paper programmes from 1947, 1951 and 1952 including the following first performances -

1947 (3/7) - Richard Hall: Theme and Variations
1947 (3/7) - Alan Rawsthorne: Oboe Concerto
1947 (4/7) - Ian Whyte: Symphony No.1

1951 (3/7) - Arnold van Wyk: Symphony No.1
1951 (4/7) - Maurice Jacobson: Symphonic Suite for Strings
1951 (5/7) - John Gardner: Symphony No.1
1951 (6/7) - Malcolm Arnold: Symphony No.1
1951 (8/7) - Humphrey Searle: Poem for Twenty-two Strings
1951 (8/7) - Philip Sainton: Serenade Fantastique for Oboe and Strings

1952 (15/7) - William Wordsworth: Sinfonia in A minor
1952 (17/7) - Anthony Collins: The Hogarth Suite
1952 (20/7) - Gerald Finzi: Suite, Love's Labours Lost
1952 (20/7) - Geoffrey Bush: Overture, The Spanish Rivals



Unfortunately I'm a completist, so the gaps will need to be filled.

[Dundonnell]

Arnold van Wyk??

[albion]

Arnold van Wyk??

Wyk, Arnold van (1916–1983)

South African composer. He began to learn the piano at the age of 12 and, after working in an insurance office at Cape Town, entered Stellenbosch University in 1936. In 1937 he was commissioned to write music for the centenary of the Voortrekkers and in 1938 he went to live in London, having gained the Performing Right Society's scholarship. He studied composition with Theodore Holland and piano with Harold Craxton at the Royal Academy of Music, joined the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) for a short time, and later devoted himself to composition.

Works

Orchestral - two symphonies (1944, 1952); Suite for small orchestra on African tunes, Southern Cross (1943); Saudade for violin and orchestra.

Chamber - string quartets; five elegies for string quartet (1941).

Other - three improvisations on a Dutch folksong for piano duet.

See also - http://www.unsungcomposers.com/forum/index.php/topic,1252.0.html

[Dundonnell]

I could have sworn that I did a search for Van Wyk on here

Things are pretty hectic just now with so much 'new music' having to be listened to and catalogued Oh, well, never mind, much obliged for the info'.
Too expensive for me on Amazon though

[albion]

To add to the lists given earlier in the thread of first public performances at Cheltenham, here are those for the years 1965 and 1967-1972:

1965   Arthur Bliss - Hymn to Apollo (revised version)
1965   Wilfred Josephs - Symphony No.2, Op.42
1965   Alan Bush - Variations, Nocturne and Finale for Piano and Orchestra, Op.60
1965   Don Banks - Divisions for Orchestra
1965   Gordon Crosse - Sinfonia Concertante, Op.13
1965   Benjamin Frankel - String Quartet No.5, Op.43
1965   David Carhart - Fantasy in Three Movements, for piano
1965   William Mathias - Piano Trio
1967   Benjamin Frankel - Concerto for Viola and Orchestra, Op.45
1967   Robert Simpson - Concerto for Piano and Orchestra
1967   Harrison Birtwistle - Three Lessons in a Frame for piano and five instruments
1967   Peter Maxwell Davies - Hymnos for clarinet and piano
1967   Priaulx Rainier - Aequora Lunae
1968   Gordon Crosse - Concerto for Chamber Orchestra, Op.8
1968   Reginald Smith Brindle - Amalgam, for percussion ensemble
1968   Elizabeth Maconchy - Three Cloudscapes for Orchestra
1968   Anthony Gilbert - Missa Brevis, Op.4
1968   Cornelius Cardew - The Great Digest (fragment) for chorus and organ
1968   Denis ApIvor - String Abstract ('67)
1968   Alun Hoddinott - Divertimenti for Eight Instruments, Op.58
1968   Edmund Rubbra - Violin Sonata No.3, Op.133
1969   Alun Hoddinott - Sinfonietta No.2
1969   Tristram Cary - Continuum [electronic]
1969   Gordon Jacob - Suite for Bassoon and String Quartet
1969   Alan Bush - Time Remembered, Op.67
1969   Lennox Berkeley - Symphony No.3
1969   John Metcalf - Chorales and Variants for two orchestral ensembles
1970   Peter Dickinson - Transformations for orchestra
1970   George Brown - Prisms [electronic]
1970   Howard Davidson - Omega Centauri [electronic]
1970   Patric Standford - Metamorphosis for Organ
1970   Patrick Gowers - Toccata for Organ
1970   William Alwyn - Sinfonietta for Strings
1970   Jeffrey Bishop - Spells and Incantations
1970   Richard Stoker - Nocturnal, Op.37 for horn, violin and piano
1970   Humphrey Searle - Zodiac Variations
1970   Michael Tippett - The Shires Suite for Orchestra and Chorus
1970   John Tavener - Coplas for voices and tape
1970   Robin Holloway - Souvenirs de Schumann for orchestra
1970   Howard Riley - Textures for String Quartet
1971   David Jenkins - The Devil's Dream [electronic]
1971   Tristram Carey - Trios, for synthesiser and turntables
1971   Martin Dalby - Concerto Martin Pescatore for strings
1971   Reginald Smith Brindle - Apocalypse, for orchestra
1971   Peter Racine Fricker - Nocturne, for Chamber Orchestra, Op.63
1971   Don Banks - Three Short Songs
1971   Peter Lawson - Valentia Extramaterial, for percussion
1971   Trevor Hold - Four Songs, for baritone and ensmble
1971   Nicholas Maw - La Vita Nuova, for String Orchestra
1972   John Weeks - 6 Facets, for organ
1972   James Stevens - Etheria, for organ
1972   Peter Sculthorpe - Ketjak, for six male voices with feedback
1972   Malcolm Williamson - The Icy Mirror, for chorus and orchestra
1972   Charles Camilleri - Piano Trio
1972   Chris Hazell - Holy Moses!
1972   Gordon Crosse - Ariadne, concertante for oboe and twelve players, Op.31
1972   Wilma Paterson - Five Poems of Charles d'Orleans
1972   David Lumsdaine - Caliban Impromptu, for violin, cello and electronics
1972   Elizabeth Maconchy - String Quartet No.10
1972   Tristram Cary - Peccata Mundi, cantata for mixed choir, instruments and tape

[eschiss1]

I think also Frankel string quartet 5, July 15 1965 (commission and 1st performance). See http://www.musicweb-international.com/frankel/works.htm. (And I spy one of my favorite Rubbra works in that list ...)

[albion]

Yes, I have missed a couple of chamber pieces off the lists (concentrating for the most part on larger-scale compositions) ...



..., including the Frankel - since amended. This work is not specified in the programme as being commissioned directly by the Festival: although many pieces received their first performances each year at Cheltenham, only a proportion were actual Festival Commissions.

[albion]

I've just discovered a couple of newspaper clippings tucked into the 1956 programme. The first, headed Young England is by the waspish Peter Heyworth (who later described Malcolm Arnold's 5th Symphony in 1961 as "[throwing] the last shreds of discretion to the winds"):

discussing Francis Burt's Iambics - The important thing about the piece is its consummate craftsmanship. In his pointed and imaginative use of orchestral colour, for instance, Burt shows an extraordinary professionalism, so that every stroke achieved its end with a precision that contrasted sharply with the woolly, congested texture of Rubbra's Sixth Symphony. (Peter Heyworth, The Observer, 22nd July 1956)



A further unidentified cutting reviews Iain Hamilton's Symphonic Variations - Two years ago [sic, actually 1953] his Second Symphony was heartily booed at Cheltenham. This year his "Symphonic Variations" was almost warmly received. As our music critic left the hall, he heard one elderly gentleman say to another, "The trouble with this muck is that if you hear enough of it you get to like it."

[Mark Thomas]

The trouble with this muck is that if you hear enough of it you get to like it.

As a native of the fair spa town of Cheltenham myself, I had to smile at this. It pretty much describes my own musical education...

[albion]

The trouble with this muck is that if you hear enough of it you get to like it.

As a native of the fair spa town of Cheltenham myself, I had to smile at this. It pretty much describes my own musical education...

I must admit that my listening is still centred very much on British composers, but until recently (i.e. before Lyrita's revival, Dutton's enterprise and the advent of broadcast-sharing) there was little opportunity to get to know any of these 'Cheltenham' composers in any depth: I have been very glad to have the opportunity to acquaint myself with Stanley Bate, Richard Arnell, William Wordsworth, Daniel Jones, John Veale and John Gardner, all of whom I now regard as significant 'voices'. I've also found Fricker far more engaging than I expected, and would now welcome further recordings of his major works!



For me, the heyday of the Festival was clearly the early-to-mid 1950s and if I could have attended only one meeting I would (perhaps) have chosen 1953 in order to hear first performances of John Joubert's Overture, Geoffrey Bush's Overture The Rehearsal, Richard Arnell's Symphony No.3, Iain Hamilton's Symphony No.2 and William Wordsworth's Symphony No.3 ...



... although, then again, The Sleeping Children in 1951 was clearly something to behold ...

[Dundonnell]

Well, courtesy of this forum we can all get to hear Iain Hamilton's Second Symphony and make up our own minds. And the Symphonic Variations will soon be joining it

I agree about 1953. That would have been a Festival to have attended

You mentioned Fricker. I admire Fricker's music but there is no use pretending that Fricker sounds like Stanley Bate or Richard Arnell or even Daniel Jones....because he doesn't. His music is chromatic, contrapuntal, at the outer edges of tonality. It is austere, dark, Bartokian. There are few, if any, passages in a Fricker composition where you will get rich, warm, romantic melody a la Richard Arnell. But you could say much the same of Malcolm Arnold's 7th and 8th Symphonies.

Whether Fricker's time will come again or not, I have absolutely no idea. The type of music he and Iain Hamilton were writing from the 1950s onwards now falls almost completely between two stools: the revival of interest in the more romantic/neo-romantic/nationalist music composed in Britain in the second half of the 19th century onwards and the avant-garde music of more recent decades. As such it seems to appeal to very few

[albion]

Well, courtesy of this forum we can all get to hear Iain Hamilton's Second Symphony and make up our own minds.

Spurred on by the notion that Hamilton's Symphony No.2 was (apparently) booed at Cheltenham in 1953, I played it again late last night and found nothing too forbidding - I'm looking forward to hearing the Symphonic Variations which won higher praise at the 1956 Festival.

there is no use pretending that Fricker sounds like Stanley Bate or Richard Arnell or even Daniel Jones [...] The type of music he and Iain Hamilton were writing from the 1950s onwards now falls almost completely between two stools: the revival of interest in the more romantic/neo-romantic/nationalist music composed in Britain in the second half of the 19th century onwards and the avant-garde music of more recent decades. As such it seems to appeal to very few

Certainly - I don't think that anybody should go to Fricker's music expecting the easy lyricism and first-listening attractions of many of his British contemporaries (I didn't intend to imply that they should). But if you are a fan of twentieth-century British music, Fricker is a composer that (as I've only recently discovered) you can't and shouldn't ignore - it may not be an idiom that commands affection, but it certainly commands respect and repays close attention. Dundonnell makes a good point about Hamilton and Fricker being caught between a rock and a hard place in terms of general audience appeal - all I can say is that this listener has found himself pleasantly surprised by both composers and has not yet reached for the 'off' button.

[eschiss1]

Oh. Rereading, the Frankel 5th quartet was a "BBC commission for the Cheltenham Festival", not a Cheltenham Festival commission- my mistake. Erf. Re-read then re-read twice, Eric. (Likewise the Clarinet Quintet.)

[Dundonnell]

Well if you have time for Fricker then you will undoubtedly be looking forward to the deluge of Fricker's music soon to descend onto this forum :

Two symphonies, two concertos, four concertante works for soloist/s and orchestra, three orchestral pieces, one song-cycle and two choral works(including "The Vision of Judgment")

It just goes to show how much Fricker was played on BBC radio in the 1970s and points up the astonishing contrast with today when so many have barely even heard of his existence

[albion]

Well if you have time for Fricker then you will undoubtedly be looking forward to the deluge of Fricker's music soon to descend onto this forum :

Bring it on!