THE WILLIAM ALWYN SOCIETY

President: Mary Alwyn
Patron: Vilem Tausky CBE

Cover Painting: The Mustard Field by William Alwyn

CHANDOS CHAN8866

Oboe Concerto
Three Concerti Grossi

Nicholas Daniel (oboe)
The City of London Symphonia
conducted by Richard Hickox

Notes © by Mary Alwyn

Concerto for Oboe, String Orchestra and Harp (1944-45)

The four works recorded on this disc span nearly a quarter of a century of William Alwyn's compositions. Their individual backgrounds show not only his connections with distinguished musicians and orchestras, but reveal details of his artistic life perhaps not remembered today. Before earning his international reputation as a composer he was a virtuoso flautist, playing in theatre and cinema orchestras, and in 1927 becoming a member of the London symphony Orchestra - his first engagement being at the Three Choirs Festival. As a soloist he introduced to this country many important chamber works by composers such as Ravel, Roussel and Eugene Goossens, and he played concertos under the baton of Sir Henry wood.

During the second world war he continued to teach both flute and composition at the Royal Academy and to write film scores for the Ministry of Information and the Army Film Unit - universally famous films such as Desert Victory, The Way Ahead and The True Glory as well as many documentaries, officially "secret" and propaganda films. These so raised the wrath of the Nazis that he had the dubious distinction of being included on Hitler's "black-list"!

But these were only his day-time activities. At night he served as an Air Raid Warden in North London, and it was during these hazardous sleepless nights on patrol that he composed the Oboe Concerto. In this he found relief from war-scarred London by expressing his feelings of nostalgia for the peace and beauty of the English countryside. It was played at a Henry Wood Promenade Concert in 1949 by Evelyn Rothwell - the wife of Sir John Barbirolli, who was later to introduce Alwyn's symphonies to the British public. The concerto is in two movements, played without a break: the main material of the first being brought back to the end of the second.

Concerto Grosso No. 1

This was commissioned by the BBC and is dedicated to "My friends in the LSO". Alwyn said of this work:

It is a concerto for the orchestral players themselves. Each of the leaders of the sections of the orchestra has a solo part, but at the same time they are all called upon to play their part in the general texture of the music. The first of the three movements is a vigorous Moderato based on a trumpet fanfare, the second a quietly lilting , and the last a brilliant Allegro closing with a restatement of the original trumpet theme on full orchestra.

Concerto Grosso No.2

is written for strings only. Again Alwyn uses the technique of the group of players contrasted with the tutti - in this case the string quartet joining with the full string orchestra. It is in three movements and is dedicated to Muir Matheson who conducted so many of his film scores.

Concerto Grosso No. 3

was commissioned by the BBC for the Promenade Concert commemorating the 20th anniversary of Sir Henry Wood's death. Alwyn wrote of this work:

Throughout the years between the wars Sir Henry Wood was the focus of my musical world. I played in his orchestras and he performed my music - the first at a Prom in 1927. His taste was comprehensive and under his baton I learned the orchestral repertoire from Bach to Mahler and Brahms to Stravinsky. To have known Sir Henry was to have had an all-embracing education in the love and art of music. When he died, no musician have I more sincerely mourned. This Third Concerto Grosso, scored for woodwind , brass and strings, is a tribute to his memory. It is not a morbid "in memoriam", but is composed on broad vigorous lines. The independent group of soloists, characteristic of the classical concerti grossi and used antiphonally, is here replaced by the three sections of the orchestra - the brass dominates the first movement, the woodwind the second and the strings the last.

After the performance, which Alwyn conducted himself, he received a letter from Sir Henry Wood's widow saying Well I do know how pleased Henry would be. Please know how deeply I feel your homage to your old friend.

Reviews

CD REVIEW - October 1992 Symphony No.4;
Elizabethan Dances;
Festival March
LSO HICKOX
CHAN 8902

Concerto for Oboe, String Orchestra and Harp;
Three Concerti Grossi
DANIEL (oboe),
CLS/HICKOX
CHAN8866

Despite passing nods to Walton and Arnold in his more extrovert moments and a lyric nostalgia reminiscent of Finzi in the more subdued music, William Alwyn, who only died in 1985, is another fine English composer who found expressive renewal and development of the tonal idiom as natural as drawing breath. He accomplishes it in music that is memorably individual and stylistically distinctive. To hear what I mean, try the opening of the ravishing Oboe Concerto - the suspended rapture of oscillating string chords and mystic tracery supplied by the seductive oboe of Nicholas Daniel conjure a rare vision that makes an even more striking return at the close of the work. Such beautiful craftsmanship is immediately cherishable and I haven't been able to stop listening to the piece, so compulsive is its hypnotic spell.

The Concerti Grossi, for standard chamber orchestra (No. 1), strings (No.2) and woodwind, brass and strings (No.3), date from 1943, 1948 and 1964 respectively and are no less engaging. They deploy graceful bows to the Baroque age, but also exhibit tougher, darker forces at work that frequently rise to lyrically charged or vehement climaxes. Even if Hickox cannot quite match the heartfelt intimacy of the composer's own recording of the central adagioof the Second Concerto (Lyrita), there's no doubt that this is a minor masterpiece of its type.

Alwyn conceived his first four Symphonies as an epic cycle of works, each inter-related yet still independent. The Fourth, in three movements is on the grandest scale with an opening maestoso that proceeds to release a tremendous surge of energy which temporarily subsides only to be marshaled into an aggressive scherzo of descending scales that curiously marries the pealing bells from Rachmaninov's second symphony with the malice of Walton's First.

The last movement begins with some of the most impressive and moving music that the composer wrote, a tragic threnody that is finally transformed into triumph. Hickox and the LS0 project the underlying turbulence with powerful thrust and dedication in a performance of imposing stature and expressive range.

Neither the Elizabethan Dances (rumbustuous cavortings that are neither as outrageous nor good-natured as Malcolm Arnold's national dances) nor the Festival March (an uneasy mixture of Pomp and Circumstance and Crown Imperial inhabit the same exalted level as the other works. The melodic interest is not especially striking and stock gestures loom rather too largely, but don't let this deter you from investigating a composer who in his major statements speaks with a directness and confidence that proves immensely rewarding and instantly engaging.

The sound is ripe and full, very much in the well-established traditions of the house.

HI-FI News - August 1992

Symphony 4
Elizabethan Dances
Festival March
LSO Hickox
Chandos CHAN 8902
Oboe Concerto
Concerti Grossi 1-3
Nicholas Daniel (ob) CLS Hickox
Chandos CHAN 8866

A new William Alwyn Hickox series for Chandos: premiere recordings of the Oboe Concerto (in two linked movements Andante/Vivace), written at the end of the war, later premiered by Evelyn Rothwell, and Concerti Grossi 1(1943: chamber orchestra) and 3 (1964: winds, brass, strings), both BBC commissions.

Principally remembered for his film scores - Concerto Grossi 2 was dedicated to his colleague Muir Mathieson, a familiar film credit - Alwyn was also a virtuoso flautist and amateur painter: his canvases decorate the two booklet covers. (Notes by Mary Alwyn; some reproduced music sketches show the composer's neat hand.) Barbirolli was keenly interested in Alwyn's music, and he first conducted Symphony 4 in 1954. Alwyn planned this as culmination to a cycle of symphonies, influenced by the Lisztian thematic transformation idea, and developing a 12-note division of the scale. Couplings here were for the Festival of Britain, a ceremonial march inevitably 'Pomp & Circumstantial', unashamedly tuneful, and for the 1957 BBC Light Music Festival - Elizabethan Dances - purportedly reflecting the idiom of the time of both Queens.

The LSO programme (both were made in the full St. Jude's NW11 acoustic), spans a range of intentions; however, I cannot help thinking that the Festival March will strike some as unintentionally funny - nowadays such a score would signal satirical comment. In the set of Dances only the Moderato ['neo-Elizabethan with a hint of the Blues'] has any strong individuality- one should not seek writing of the quality of, say, Walton's for Henry V., indeed, I must confess myself mis-cast in the role of reviewer here. For, if 4m 13s into the symphony one is side-tracked by a similarity in the brass call to Bernstein's 'Maria, Maria', or in Concerto Grosso 3 one wonders 'why not just listen to Hindemith?', clearly some- thing is wrong. Yes, I enjoyed the buoyant finale to the Oboe Concerto, and Concerto Grosso 2 is a fine piece, but for the rest I thought Alwyn stubbornly resistible; I found no real compulsion to pursue his material. But it must be said the LSO play splendidly, and Hickox sounds absolutely committed to all this music.
Try before you buy.
Christopher Breunig

CLASSIC CD September 1992

Concerto for oboe. string orchestra and harp (1944-5).
Concerti grossi - No. 1 for chamber orchestra (1943):
No. 2 for string orchestra (1948);
No. 3 for woodwind, brass and strings (1964)
Nicholas Daniel (oboe);
City of London Sinfonia
Richard Hickox
CHAN 8866

Symphony No. 4 (1959):
Elizabethan Dances (1957);
Festival March (1950)
London Symphony Orchestra;
Richard HICKOX
CHAN 8902

Autumn Legend for cor anglais and string orchestra (1954)
Pastoral Fantasia for viola and string orchestra (1939).
Tragic Interlude for two horns, timpani and string orchestra (1936):
Lyra angelica: concerto for harp and string orchestra (1954)
Nicholas Daniel (cor anglais, Rachel Masters (harp) Stephen Tees (viola):
City of London Sinfonia
Richard Hickox
CHAN 9065

You have to admire Chandos's tenacity. For years not a single piece of Alwyn's orchestral music was recorded on CD, and yet now here comes another of these epic cycles., Which is good, up to a point. Like Sir Arnold Bax, who was given the Chandos treatment before him,William Alwyn (1905-1985) wrote a handful of truly inspired pieces as well as a great deal of other music, probably too much, in fact - including scores for more than 60 films. In common with Bax, you often feel that the sheer technical facility for cranking out notes rather got the better of him. Ideas for the Third Concerto grosso, for example, which is in fact one of the more effective works, were immediately sketched by Alwyn on the back of the envelope which carried the commissioning letter from the BBC. This cycle will help in the re-evaluation of music which has been unfashionable for years. as long as it doesn't submerge the really worthwhile pieces in its bid for comprehensiveness.

The first CD, with the Oboe Concerto and the three Concerti grossi, contains three premiere recordings, and in this case it is fairly clear why companies have not queued up to record them before. All of the music is light: that of the wartime Oboe Concerto pastoral and inoffensive, recalling pieces in similar vein by Vaughan Williams, Warlock, and Delius. Pages of the regulation compound-time tum-ti-tum abound. Of the Concerti grossi, the most memorable are the delicately scored second one, for strings, which has a pronounced neo-classical flavour, and the third, which has a beautiful and dramatic final Andante.

Another CD features the Lyra angelica - the harp and-string concerto which Alwyn counted as the most beautiful of all his works. This mature and elegant piece is in four movements and gets a winning performance from the soloist Rachel Masters. Of the other three items, two are recorded for the first time: the Pastoral Fantasia (say no more) and the much darker Tragic Interlude of 1936, which Alwyn prefaced with three lines from Richard Aldington's Death of a Hero. The remaining piece, Autumn Legend, is a shadowy and effective study for cor anglais and strings, neatly performed.

Which brings us to the long-neglected Fourth, Symphony . This is the final one of a group of symphonies which Alwyn began with his First in 1949, although he did in fact complete a Fifth in 1973. It is, I think, an absolute masterpiece, one which stands at the centre of Alwyn's output as does the First Symphony in William Walton's - and indeed the two are not dissimilar in terms of their musical language. The LSO plays superbly well for Hickox and it is very heartening to hear this music performed for all it is worth. If anything, Hickox's reading has more breadth and weight than the composer's own with the London Philharmonic, recently reissued on a Lyrita CD. The recorded sound of this and the other two discs is up to Chandos's usual high standards, and in the Fourth Symphony the sound quality is some distance in front of Lyrita's version of 1975 - although that was perfectly acceptable.

The Six Elizabethan Dances which follow are performed with great virtuosity and panache, but the other real gem is the Festival March, which Alwyn wrote for the opening of the Royal Festival Hall at the 1951 Festival of Britain. Greatly reminiscent of Elgar and Walton In their coronation regalia, it is one of those pieces which demands to be played very loudly and very often.

Charles Searson

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