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Benjamin BRITTEN (1913-1976)
Cello Symphony op. 68 (1963) [37:37] Frank BRIDGE (1879-1941) Oration – Concerto Elegiacofor cello and orchestra
(1930) [30:41]
Steven Isserlis (cello)
City London Sinfonia/Richard Hickox
rec. Studio 1, Abbey Road, London, 12, 14 March 1987. DDD EMI CLASSICS
BRITISH COMPOSERS 5059162 [68:18]
There
are plenty of links between Britten and Bridge. Britten was
one of Bridge’s pupils. They both held pacifist sympathies.
Britten was ‘blown away’ by Bridge’s suite The Sea and
by the towering masterpiece that is Enter Spring – both
heard by the young composer at the Norwich Festivals of the
1920s. The influence of Bridge and especially of The Sea can
be heard in Britten’s Peter Grimes. Britten wrote
his Frank Bridge Variations. Britten was instrumental
in the Bridge revival of the 1960s into the 1970s when Bridge’s
music had sunk past the plunge of plummet. Aldeburgh was
the scene of some fine Bridge revivals conducted by Britten – The
Sea and Enter Spring. Britten’s circle including
Steuart Bedford carried the Bridge baton forward into a world
more accommodating of Bridge’s styles and idioms. That their
two works for cello and orchestra are coupled on one CD now
enjoying its third issue is fitting although to date this
is the first and only such coupling. These recordings were
first issued by EMI Classics as CDC 7 49716 2 in the
late 1980s. They were then reissued as CDM7639092
in 1992 (also in the British Composers series) and they now
reappear again.
The Cello
Symphony was written for Rostropovich who made the
iconic Decca recording of it with the composer and the
ECO in the 1960s. It came two years after the War Requiem and
Cello Sonata and one year before the Cello Suite No. 1.
All these works were bound up with Rostropovich in one
way or another. Isserlis and Hickox in their emotive performance
are treated to a wide spread and warmly embracing recording.
There are many highlights including the desolating serenade
at end of first track; not to mention the Coplandesque
stride of the trumpet entwining the cello in tr. 5. From
time to time one also hears music harking back to Grimes and
to the Purcell Variations. As for the Bridge, which
I must say puts the Britten in the shade in terms of sheer
humane fibre and memorable quality, it is given a performance
of powerful conviction if lacking the sheer concentration
of the Lloyd Webber on Lyrita.
Previously
these two major pieces have been grouped with other things
- either shorter pieces by Bridge or similar concerto-scale
pieces by other composers including Walton. Wallfisch's Bridge
is on a fine Nimbus CD is with Holst’s Invocation and
with the Elgar concerto - a good juxtaposition since both
are suffused with the impact of the Great War. The unjustly
forgotten but superb Pearl recording by Alexander Baillie
and the Cologne radio orchestra conducted by John Carewe
had Enter Spring as an apt companion. It has been
deleted - more’s the pity. The Chandos Bridge series’ Orationis
played by Alban Gerhardt and is coupled with other Bridge.
Then again there’s the perfectly balanced, and I think, definitive
reading by Julian Lloyd Webber recently reissued on Lyrita.
The Lyrita is adroitly matched with Peter Wallfisch’s Phantasm which
stylistically speaking is in very much the same territory
as Oration.
Two
masterly British cello scores, well recorded and in fine
performances.
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