Sullivan (without Gilbert)

[BerlinExpat]

From the Sullivan Society homepage
The 2015 Sullivan Society conference will take place at the Royal Agricultural University. Cirencester on 11, 12 and 13 September 2015.
Among various talks Martin Yates will give an exposition on the score of The Light of the World. Can we hope that this unrecorded work in its full form will see the light of day?

Also announced:
The BBC Concert Orchestra and the BBC Singers, conducted by John Andrews, are  recording Sullivan's complete incidental music to The Tempest and Macbeth in February and March for issue on two separate CDs. This will be the first complete recording of the Macbeth music (although the concert suite is available on Naxos and the overture has been recorded several times), and the first complete recording since 1955 of The Tempest. The Macbeth recording will also include Sullivan's overture Marmion - the first recording of the complete version as the composer intended it.

[Mark Thomas]

This review of an earlier recording of The Light of the World does make one wonder if this monster might have overstretched Sullivan. The work certainly has more than it's fair share of longeurs. I have that older recording, and the review is a very fair summary of the work's merits and drawbacks, at least in this version where an organ replaces the orchestra.

That said, a complete Macbeth and new recording of The Tempest is undoubtedly good news.

[Jimfin]

I think there is a definite goal of producing a proper, first-class recording of The Light of the World. Going to take some years to see the light, as it were, though.

[Gareth Vaughan]

It's not a great piece IMHO. I prefer The Martyr of Antioch actually.

[Mark Thomas]

Now you're talking! That's a very fine example of Sullivan at his best.

[musiclover]

I've heard that Martin Yates ( the conductor not the Sullivan Society Chairman) is planning a recording of Light of the World. Someone I know is helping him with the orchestral score and material. I hope it goes somewhere and I hope he does the original version, not the one that Sullivan cut sometime after the premier. We should suggest great British soloists on here and see if any of our suggestions come to anything!

[Gareth Vaughan]

Yes, Mark, there are other pieces of Sullivan's that demand recording before the, to my ears, rather dull Light of Life

[Jimfin]

Well, nearly everything else has been recorded: the Martyr of Antioch is undoubtedly a finer work, but it has a professional recording already, as does the Golden Legend. The Festival Te Deum is certainly worth a recording, but the BBC broadcast is pretty satisfactory, whereas it's very hard to hear much of the Light of the World.

I also think that it is likely that the Light is likely to reveal itself as much more interesting when performed well and with a decent orchestra, just as Ivanhoe and The Beauty Stone did. Remember it was a very popular work in its day and Gounod declared it 'a masterpiece'. That may be an overstatement, and I suspect there will be dull moments, but Sullivan is rarely dull for long.

[Alan Howe]

Sullivan is rarely dull for long

Really? Ivanhoe bored me rigid...

[Gareth Vaughan]

the Martyr of Antioch is undoubtedly a finer work, but it has a professional recording already

Professional, apart from the chorus - which is very weak. There are other shortcomings to this live Buxton Festival performance too, such as the balance. It should not be mentioned in the same breath as the Hyperion disk of The Golden Legend - a thoroughly professional recording in every respect. No, we need a really good recording of The Martyr, and I hope we shall get one.

[regriba]

Perhaps it is too much to say that I was bored by "Ivanhoe", but I wasn't exactly bowled over either. What struck me most was how conventional it is - from a composer who was able to take just about any song form and put it to personal use in the Savoy operas. It seems to me that the reviewer of the link above is right: whenever he attempted the forms that were considered "high art" by the Victorians - oratorio, cantata, opera - Sullivan was often somehow "artistically shackled" by expectations and conventions. Whereas Gilbert's originality brought out the best in him. I sometimes think Gilbert's contribution is a bit underestimated. At least I was struck by his superiority when I read the extremely silly lyrics to Sidney Jones's "The Geisha".

[Alan Howe]

However, his Symphony in E (Irish) is a really fine and enjoyable piece.

[mbhaub]

Indeed it is, and it needs to get performed more often. Too bad it's not available on IMSLP.

[eschiss1]

The inner movements were published (arr. for piano by Wilfred Ellington Bendall; the slow movement arr. also for organ by G.C. Martin and someone else) by Novello in 1906, so I'm supposing it's not for copyright reasons that we @ IMSLP have no work-page for it. (Pierpont Morgan library has copies of these. St Pancras has a copy of the Andante espressivo reduction. Someone want to purchase a scan from them?...)

Hrm. Well, as with Wikipedia, if something's not there and it can legally be so, someone should feel free to add it if they have access-to...
(The whole thing's available from Kalmus and MPH now, but the latter's true of a number of (very) copyrighted works too.)