McEwen viola concerto on Hyperion

[Alan Howe]

Think of that magnificent opening, Mark: where does it all go? After a few minutes, the whole momentum has dissipated. It is, of course, an early-ish work. Not a patch on his Solway Symphony which has much greater coherence and purpose.

[semloh]

I haven't heard the concerto, but I was checking to see if his Viola Sonata also had a magnificent opening and quickly dissipated. It doesn't, and it's utterly beautiful and always engaging, but then I suppose that like the Symphony it's a much later work. 

[Alan Howe]

I think David Hurwitz - on this occasion - gets the Viola Concerto about right:

John McEwen's Viola Concerto, which dates from the early years of the 20th century, falls very much into the Parry/Stanford English conservative romantic school. It's quite substantial, lasting longer than half an hour, and like so many late-romantic concertos it has a completely dysfunctional first movement in which several attractive ideas, including a main theme in a quasi-Habanera rhythm, follow one another with scant regard for why anything happens before (or after) anything else. If we ignore this problem the music is thoroughly enjoyable, and McEwen has no issues in dealing with the formally simpler slow movement and finale, which are touching and lots of fun, respectively. Once again, it would be difficult to imagine more persuasive advocacy than the music receives here from both soloist and conductor.
https://www.classicstoday.com/review/vaughan-williams-and-mcewen-works-for-viola-orchestra/?search=1

McEwen's mature music is quite different. One can hear the influence of Wagner, Sibelius, the Russian nationalists, Scriabin and others. Particularly magnificent - and in a quite different league to the Viola Concerto - are the Three Border Ballads, especially Grey Galloway (1908 - the last of the three to be written). Try the superlative recording on Chandos: https://www.amazon.co.uk/McEwen-Border-Ballads-Sir-John/dp/B000000ATT/ref=sr_1_3?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1533803678&sr=1-3&keywords=McEwen
Perhaps McEwen has claims to national greatness after all...

[Hector]

Ah! Its always disappointing when others don't share your enthusiasm! I will add this then give up. Being disappointed the McEwen Viola Concerto isn't impressionistic or overtly 'Scottish' is like heading into the baker's and complaining they don't sell sausages. The music has it's own qualities.  I also think it is difficult to follow the dramatic narrative of movements that start in one character and key and end in another character and key, like the first movement of the viola concerto. The drama of the opening is not dissipated it is transformed, from pugnacious energy to wistful poetry. It reminds me a little of the first movement of Parry's E minor symphony which has a similar dramatic narrative.

And the Habanera rhythm? Could that not in fact be a Scotch snap?

[Alan Howe]

Being disappointed the McEwen Viola Concerto isn't impressionistic or overtly 'Scottish' is like heading into the baker's and complaining they don't sell sausages.

I think it's more like heading into the baker's and complaining that their rolls are half baked...

It's not that I think the Viola Concerto's a bad piece - it isn't - and I rather like it. I just think that McEwen composed better pieces a little later, when he'd found his true voice. Do try them if you don't know them...

[matesic]

I just surprised myself with his Hymn on the Morning of Christ's Nativity - not at all Christmassy until the final chorus (in fact I was rather glad not to be able to make out much of the text) but absolutely thrilling in places. Just the faintest touch of Gerontius, more than a touch of Verdi's Requiem and I even thought I heard a pre-echo of Belshazzar's Feast, written in 1906! All three of Alasdair Mitchell's Chandos CDs can be heard on youtube, as well as NML.

[Mark Thomas]

I do agree with Alan about the merits of the Three Border Ballads, which really are very fine, but I haven't come across McEwen's Hymn on the Morning of Christ's Nativity either, which I really must try, too. I have just been enjoying, rather to my surprise, Dyson's Choral Symphony (the recent Naxos release), so perhaps I'm ready for it now.

[eschiss1]

I will try to have more of a listen than before to the recorded string quartets (from both before and after the viola concerto; they seem to cover his whole career, unsurprisingly). No response from the Chilingirians yet, but I suspect that even if they answer such questions over Twitter ever at all, I chose a bad time...