You’ll recognise this
Helios incarnation from its original
appearance on Hyperion CDA66767 issued
back in the mid 1990s. Linley had always
aroused considerable enthusiasm amongst
those who believed him to be a Missing
Link in eighteenth century English music.
Hyperion’s dedicated championship demonstrated
that his cruelly early death was indeed
a damaging one to the musical fabric
of his country. Here was a composer
with dramatic flair, technical eloquence,
and sound judgement who wrote music
of taxing demands and lyrical rewards.
He was also, occasionally, inspired.
We meet the inspiration
immediately in the opening of his 1777
Music for The Tempest. In his notes
Peter Holman conjectures whether or
not Haydn heard Linley’s Arise! ye
spirits of the storm and whether
it inspired Haydn’s 1792 London concert
performance of The Storm. There’s
certainly something highly progressive
about the writing. It’s not merely its
theatrically powerful sense of anticipation,
the inexorable crescendo and the sheer
effect of it; it’s written for commensurately
big forces, handled with absolute command,
and it does raise questions as to how
Linley’s stage craft could only have
deepened and ripened had he not died
at twenty-two. Mozart, who had met Linley,
suggested as much to the singer Michael
Kelly, in 1784.
Fortunately Holman
and his forces are expertly drilled
and do this opening splendidly, the
rest no less so. There are real demands
for the soprano and some very steep
ones for the principal oboe. Paul Goodwin
naturally is an expert instrumentalist
and he and Julia Gooding make an excellent
pairing. This must have been one of
her first recordings and the brightness
of her projection is quite apparent.
Her voice now is better supported than
it was a decade ago and it is the case
that she is sometimes stretched high
in the tessitura by Linley’s very considerable
demands – there’s a pinched quality
to the highest notes. Incidentally Linley
arranged Arne’s Where the Bee Sucks
from a glee by William Jackson, which
Linley sets wittily for chorus.
The other works maybe
lack the visceral power of the Tempest
music but are no less enjoyable. The
overture to The Duenna is replete with
gallant sensibility, notable for the
winds’ role in the stately adagio. In
Yonder Grove dates from 1773 when
Linley was seventeen. The main inspiration
seems to be a modified Handelian one
– the Air If Thy Too-Cruel Bow Be
Bent has a distinctly Handelian
tread and is decidedly attractive. The
final Air is also fine though it is
somewhat over-long for its material.
Ye nymphs of Albion’s
beauty-blooming isle is a bit of
a mouthful to say – some of the texts
he set were wordy in the extreme - but
this cantata, concise and melodic, is
notable for the horn writing in the
slow air Wrapt close from harm, an
early English use of the instrument
as elysian-pastoral rather than a martial-hunting
horn. Handelian influence and considerable
demands also inform the last cantata,
Daughter of Heav’n, fair thou art.
The standout is the central aria
My arm shall lift the spear which
is noble and manly in a Handelian way
though once again it makes very assiduous
demands of the soprano high up and the
divisions are not at all easy.
The Parley of Instruments’s
choral forces are crisp and well focused
and the band enviably lithe. With performances
as attractive and committed as these
Linley certainly deserves this reissue
at a temptingly lower price bracket
than hitherto. There are full texts.
Jonathan Woolf
Julia Gooding (soprano) 
for
details
