Bliss & Rubbra PCs on Hyperion

[FBerwald]

Has anyone heard the Bax piece "Maytime in Sussex" also in this CD - sounds romantic enough! I'm unfamiliar with this composer - is he generally a romantic composer or does he stray outside as both the other composers do?

[eschiss1]

he sometimes (eg Salzburg sonata, basically a sort of Mozart pastiche- but rare for him- though it shares melodic material with his violin concerto) strays outside, but generally is as he called himself an unabashed Romantic. (Unmistably a 20th century one, though. Imagine programming one of his 7 symphonies in 1860...)

[Christopher]

We do this quite literally thankless job as best we can

You all definitely have my thanks Mark.

[Alan Howe]

Many thanks, Christopher.

[jasthill]

It is interesting this this Hyperion CD exactly duplicates the contents of CD 15 from the Warner (EMI) set The Great Recordings / Malcolm Sargent [18-CD Set].  Those recordings are circa 1950's.  I'll let Hyperion conspiracy coincidence theories lay where they rest, but must agree that the Bliss and Rubbra stretch the romantic balloon too tautly for this forum, the Bax not so much.

[Mark Thomas]

Thanks, all.

[Alan Howe]

...and my thanks too. Hope the migraine has cleared, Alan.

Very kind. Unfortunately my current 'cluster' count is four in five days.

[Sharkkb8]

Since this was just released today, Hyperion has posted a short (just under 3 minutes) sound-bite video on Youtube.  And more extensive bites on Hyperion's own page - MP3 and FLAC downloads now available.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AROJbE4nLgI

https://www.hyperion-records.co.uk/dc.asp?dc=D_CDA68297

[Sharkkb8]

...and on Hyperion's page, Lucy Cradduck touches on the "romantic or not" issue several times, which flared a little earlier in this thread.  (Mods: for an article of this length, would you prefer us to just post a link and let the reader make the choice go there, or is it OK to post a long-ish article in its entirety?)

https://www.hyperion-records.co.uk/dc.asp?dc=D_CDA68297

"In 1938 Arthur Bliss (1891–1975), along with Ralph Vaughan Williams and Arnold Bax, was commissioned by the British Council to compose for the 1939 New York World's Fair. His contribution was to be a piano concerto for performance by the renowned British pianist Solomon.
The World's Fair aimed to counter the Great Depression, and boost American morale and commerce, envisioning a utopian machine-age future through its theme of 'Building the World of Tomorrow'. But with Europe hovering on the brink of war, the British sought through their participation to foster Anglo-American cooperation at a time when political solidarity might soon be desperately needed. Keen to update Britain's image abroad whilst nurturing Americans' love of British history and tradition, they interpreted the futuristic theme of the Fair as one of continuity, rooting tomorrow's world firmly in the past.

Bliss enjoyed writing for special occasions or performers, and already had strong emotional bonds with the United States, his father and his wife being American. The combination of the celebratory backdrop of the World's Fair, the need to blend progress with tradition in his music, and the opportunity to write for Solomon's pianistic virtuosity determined Bliss to woo his audience with 'a concerto in the grand manner and what is loosely called "romantic"', adding in his programme note, 'surely the Americans are at heart the most romantic in the world'. The resulting Piano Concerto in B flat major was dedicated 'To the People of the United States of America' and first performed by Solomon and the New York Philharmonic-Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Sir Adrian Boult, in Carnegie Hall on 10 June 1939.

Elements combining American optimism, 'romanticism' and British realism appear throughout the work. Its virtuosic character is evident from the outset. A brief upward orchestral surge launches the soloist into a daunting series of rapid double octaves that had even a pianist of Solomon's calibre pacing up and down with dread before the first performance. A vigorous, forthright theme strides upwards, falls and gives way to a restlessly busy, short-phrased idea, countered by a more expansively legato continuation. An emphatic repeated-note figure, introduced fanfare-like by trumpets and trombones, brings a sense of unease, perhaps recalling the rattle of machine guns and pointing to a darker side of technological progress that Bliss had experienced first-hand in the World War I trenches. Its hammering rhythmic propulsion drives the build-up of energy towards the climactic return of the first theme. Contrast is provided by gently lyrical interludes, bringing a moment of complete repose before the piano's powerful cadenza and a brief but energetic coda.

The central adagietto contains melodies of great beauty and tenderness, yet the serenity is often ruffled by troubled grumblings in the bass and menacing harmonies, until even a soothing figure is reworked into an intrusive, militaristic interjection from the brass and timpani, sounding another warning of storm clouds brewing in Europe. Finally, after moving in luminous regions of the upper register of the keyboard, the piano interrupts the consolatory string phrase with a bitterly dissonant chord. Only then can the strings bring a final magical resolution.

An ominous note returns with the brass chords that open the finale. The mysterious andante maestoso phrases picked out by the bass strings are gradually moulded by the piano into a melody, only to be abruptly swept aside by the onset of the molto vivo rondo. This is a whirling tarantella, its restless triplet motion rarely still in another vivid evocation of the machine age. A moment of respite features two haunting oboe phrases set against the piano's reflective chords, and a return of the mysterious opening melody, before the molto vivo takes over again. A brief swirling piano cadenza leads back to the andante maestoso, now transformed into a majestic major-key melody played 'con ardore' and sonorously scored for horns and strings. The gradual addition of the full orchestra builds the sound to a magnificent and triumphant climax.

The premiere was a resounding success. Bliss wrote to Pamela Henn Collins at the British Council that 'everything has gone off well in fact very well. The American public is an easy one & I have hit it.' For a period, after America entered the war in the 1940s, the concerto fulfilled the British Council's original hopes when, with its unfeigned optimism, it came to be regarded as a potent musical symbol of Anglo-American solidarity.

Composed to a BBC commission in 1955, the Piano Concerto in G, Op 85, by Edmund Rubbra (1901–1986) is a very different work. Whereas Bliss's piano concerto celebrates human and technological progress, is extrovert, virtuosic and competitively pits the soloist against the orchestra, Rubbra's is pastoral, reflective and unshowy, demonstrating a more reciprocal relationship between the soloist and orchestra.

Like Bliss, Rubbra responded to external stimuli whilst writing his concerto, though his were of a more personal and private nature. Rubbra's concerto is dedicated to Ali Akbar Khan, the virtuoso Hindustani sarod player, whom he heard in London in May 1955 whilst in the early stages of composing the work. Rubbra was deeply impressed by the 'evanescent variations' of Khan's improvisation, the complete affinity between Khan and his fellow musicians, and his devotional attitude to music-making. He felt that Western musicians, with their more individualistic stance, could learn much from such qualities, which certainly influenced the music of the piano concerto.

Rubbra's love of nature is also evident in the work. From 1934 until the late 1950s he lived near the small Chiltern village of Speen, developing an interest in gardening and botany. The first movement of the concerto has the botanical title 'Corymbus', a corymb being a cluster of flat-headed flowers or fruits whose stalks, springing from different levels on the main stem, lengthen towards the edge of the cluster. In addition to the botanical meaning, Rubbra said that he first came across the word 'corymbus' in the title of a poem by Francis Thompson, 'A Corymbus for Autumn'. Thompson, like Rubbra, was a Roman Catholic convert, and the poem strikingly combines Classical mythological and Christian imagery in its description of autumnal nature.

Although the soloist is placed under the spotlight from the outset, the opening of the concerto, with its hesitantly rising arpeggio and three repeated notes, is unassuming in the extreme. In his sleeve note to a 1958 LP release of the concerto, Rubbra likened these bars to the 'slow, almost tentative approach to the main body of the music' that he had heard in Ali Akbar Khan's Indian improvisatory performances. On the other hand, the orchestral timbre of solo oboe and horns, cooperatively picking up and completing the end of the piano's phrase, is pastoral and typically English. The 'corymbus principle' of increasing stalk lengths is expressed musically, according to Rubbra, in the way that 'each idea, whether important or unimportant, is always added to on its re-appearance'. More obvious aurally are the changes of tempo as the movement progresses, creating an arch form as it moves from the initial slowly growing adagio through a more lively quasi-allegretto exposition, with two sprightly themes, the second sparkling with the silvery sound of the celesta, to a faster allegro development. At the centre of the arch a solemn, tranquil passage, in which a swaying figure from the piano provides the backdrop to a gently undulating oboe melody, recalls a verse from Thompson's poem that uses Catholic imagery to portray the sanctity of an autumn evening, likening the clouds to incense wafted from the earth as it is swung by an unseen thurifer, the 'mighty Spirit unknown'. The second allegretto section is, following the 'corymbus principle', longer than the first and builds to a powerful and exciting climax. The energy then quickly drains away for a return of the opening slow arpeggios and a brief, hauntingly wistful coda.

The beautiful slow movement is the emotional heart of the work. Its title 'Dialogue' invites comparison with the corresponding movement of Beethoven's fourth piano concerto. But whereas in Beethoven's movement the piano famously confronts the orchestra, gradually taming it in a manner that Liszt likened to Orpheus pacifying the wild beasts, Rubbra, emulating the Eastern model, views them as equals, engaged in a 'philosophical and at times an impassioned discourse'. From its questioning, tonally ambiguous opening, the piano's first entry again making use of three repeated notes, piano and orchestra work seamlessly together throughout the musical discussion, bringing the movement eventually to a radiantly serene conclusion.

The finale is a joyful rustic-dance rondo, perhaps inspired by passages from Thompson's poem depicting the richly fruitful autumn as a season of Bacchic feasting. The brief timpani introduction, combining the three-repeated-notes motif with the interval of a third, sets in motion a bounding piano theme that reappears periodically throughout the movement, interleaved with colourfully orchestrated episodes. The climax of the movement is marked by a broad and stately theme in triple time, after which the soloist unfolds an extraordinary retrospective cadenza. Without any of the usual virtuosic display, the piano ruminatively revisits themes and melodic fragments from all three movements. Bound together by the recurring motif of three repeated notes, the ease with which the different ideas are combined and melded together, finally distilling into a restatement of the simple arpeggio figure of the concerto's opening bars, reveals the whole work to be akin to a large-scale improvisation deriving from that simple seed. A gossamer-light coda brings this most understated of concertos to a close.

Rubbra and Bliss enjoyed a warm friendship throughout much of their lives. After the premiere of Rubbra's piano concerto on 21 March 1956, given at the Royal Festival Hall by Denis Matthews with the BBC Symphony Orchestra under Malcolm Sargent, Bliss wrote to congratulate Rubbra on a 'fine' work that he found both 'distinguished and beautiful'. Years later, shortly before his death, Bliss was delighted and touched to receive the dedication of Rubbra's tenth symphony as a mark of their long friendship.

For the last twenty-two years of his life Bliss served as Master of the Queen's Music. His predecessor in the post was Arnold Bax (1883–1953). A prolific composer during the 1910s–30s, Bax composed far less after fulfilling the 1939 World's Fair commission with his seventh symphony. He retired to Storrington in Sussex, where Morning Song, subtitled 'Maytime in Sussex', was composed in 1946 in readiness for the then Princess Elizabeth's twenty-first birthday the following year. Bax's lover, long-time companion and muse, the pianist Harriet Cohen, recorded the work in February 1947, its issue subsequently coinciding with the royal birthday. It is a lightweight and sunny piece, though not without reflective moments, celebrating both a young woman in the springtime of her life and the Maytime verdure of Bax's adopted county. Its ambling tempo and the opening undulating melodic line, with hints of birdsong in the woodwind, vividly conjure up images of a morning stroll through the rolling Sussex Downs."

[Alan Howe]

Whatever I might have thought about the suitability of this release for inclusion in Hyperion's RPC series, I thoroughly welcome it on its own terms. These are two very fine woks.