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Cyril ROOTHAM (1875-1938) The Stolen Child (Yeats) (1911) [6:49]
Miniature Suitefor piano and orchestra (1921) [10:34] City in the West (Jasper Rootham) (1932) [10:52] The Psalm of Adonis (1931) [8:31] For the Fallen (Laurence Binyon) (1915) [18:53]
Sinfonia
Chorus; BBC Northern Singers
Northern Sinfonia/Richard Hickox
rec. All Saints Quayside, Newcastle Upon Tyne, 2-4 October
1986. DDD EMI CLASSICS
BRITISH COMPOSERS 5059232 [56:01]
We
still know too little about Rootham to
place him. Certainly if we rely only on commercial recordings
we are hard put to it. There is this disc which has come
and gone and gone and come over the last two decades. First
issued in 1987 just four years after the launch of the CD
on CDC 7 49021 2 it made little impact though it was reissued
and then deleted again in 1992. It was pre-dated by the Lyrita
LP of the robust and athletic First Symphony rejoicing in
Blissy garb. Earlier this year it was reissued on CD. The
BBC has over the years supplemented the picture with two
visionary works – the supple and splendidly singable Ode
on the Morning of Christ’s Nativity and the Second Symphony – as
completed by Rootham’s Cambridge friend, Patrick Hadley.
Then in the 1980s there was a broadcast of the impressionistic
Septet by the Northern Sinfonia Wind Ensemble. Add to this
a privately made LP of two chamber works from the 1920s,
the Suite for flute and piano and the Violin Sonata – the
latter impressive in all its sturdy cantabile glory projected
by Barry Wilde with Rootham champion Alan Fearon (piano)
who also plays a key role in this recording. These are all
works worthy of recording projects with the Ode and the Sonata
standing tall in all but the most exalted company.
The
succinct and magical Yeats setting The Stolen Child recalls
Moeran’s Nocturne in its quiet and undulating gentle
ecstasy. The Miniature Suite is for solo piano and
strings. It is a gentle production with a kinship with the
Finzi Eclogue, the Parry string suites, RVW’s Dives
and Lazarus, Armstrong Gibbs, the lighter Dyson and even
some Grainger – try the smiling Molto vivace. Like
the Yeats setting, City in the West is quite masterly
in its instant capturing of atmosphere and the subtle balancing
of orchestra and choir. It clothes Bristol, that much-loved
city, in a Delian sunset glow, still warm and dramatically
ecstatic; a touch here also of what Vaughan Williams did
for Oxford in An Oxford Elegy. I owe a perceptive
insight to Percy Young’s 1987 note when relating the lambently-bathed
purely orchestral Psalm of Adonis to Kodaly – perhaps
his Summer Evening. Avian sounds mingle and enliven
this warm evocation which may also passingly recall Delius
and Finzi. That lissom rising woodwind-topped figure just
near the start is also used in The Stolen Child – something
of a Rootham ‘autograph’.
Finally
comes the three movement work For the Fallen – a setting
of Binyon. This links thematically with the other three ‘British
Composers’ CDs issued by EMI this Remembrance Day month – each
touching on war, memory and loss. For the Fallen has
the same qualities as the other works here. Add to these
a satisfying drum-underpinned tread rising to the majesty
achieved by RVW in Dona Nobis Pacem, by Bliss in Morning
Heroes and at the end by Howells in Hymnus Paradisi.
A year later Elgar set the same poem as part of his triptych
of Binyon settings, Spirit of England.
This
is a comparatively short-playing CD but the music here will
be found immediately rewarding despite the words not being
provided. That it has returned to the catalogue raises some
hopes that the record companies have not forgotten Rootham.
He does not deserve oblivion. His Ode on the Morning of
Christ’s Nativity (soprano, choir and orchestra, 45 mins)
is a major work by anyone’s reckoning. It is as much deserving
of revival on disc as Maurice Jacobson’s Hound of Heaven and
Nathaniel Dett’s The Ordering of Moses. More Rootham,
please.
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