With the exception of the wartime symphonies of Alfred Corum,
Stanley Wilson and Walter Gaze Cooper the generous production
of British world war two symphonies is gradually becoming accessible.
Such once obscure wonders as the symphonies of Arnell, Benjamin
and Clifford can now be heard in their full glory. At long last
Stanley Bate puts in an appearance with his finest work
I say finest as if I knew them all! I don’t but I am going by
ancient broadcast tapes cherished since the early 1980s. I am
also working on the assumption that they are fair representations
- always a provisional judgement - the Third appears to be his
most emotionally stricken and passionately compelling major piece.
The second and third piano concertos (1940, 1957) are entertaining
but do not aspire to these heights. I owe my knowledge of the
Third Piano Concerto to an archive performance with the composer
at the piano and the City of Oklahoma orchestra conducted by Guy
Fraser Harrison. It is a superbly entertaining work; not without
sentiment. The Fourth Symphony (1955) seems lower key and more
diffuse than its predecessor though still well worth hearing.
The life of Plymouth-born English composer Stanley Bate was a
deeply troubled yet prolifically productive one.
Michael
Barlow’s article on this site recounts the details. Like Britten
and Arnell, Bate sent the war years in the USA achieving performances
and broadcasts but storing up a freight of neglect and resentment
for their return. That neglect was in the case of Bate and Arnell
accentuated by the movement of establishment-favoured fashion
towards dissonance.
The passion-torn pages of the Third Symphony are a very grown-up
testament to the tragedy and violence of the Second World War.
It’s a work I have known since the mid 1980s from a tape of Adrian
Boult’s 12 July 1965 broadcast by the CBSO. It’s a shame that
this was not coupled with the contemporaneous Havergal Brian
Gothic
broadcast just issued by Testament on SBT2 1454. For Dutton
Epoch Martin Yates allows the turbulence of this work full power.
It’s a potent piece which is racked with conflict. Its brothers
in mood are the Walton First Symphony (stunning echoes at the
start of Bate’s third movement), the
Arthur
Benjamin Symphony, the
Symphony
by Hubert Clifford, RVW symphonies 4 and 6. When the brass
chorale rings out heroically in the first movement at 10:02 Bate
and Yates leave us in no doubt as to the enduring power of this
writing and of what we have been missing these years. In the second
movement there is some searingly stratospheric music for the violins
(4:13). It seems to carry the burden of tragedy. That burden is
lofted in gloriously etched rhythmic work from the brass at the
start of the finale. We have already had the Viola Concerto from
Dutton
Epoch wonderfully projected and shaped by Roger Chase. I do
hope that we will soon hear the Piano Concertos 2 and 3 and the
Fourth Symphony. As things stand Dutton and a number of other
companies make one think that anything is possible.
Arnell is at long last - and deservedly - well represented on
Dutton. On the present disc we have world premiere recordings
of
Black Mountain and the
Robert Flaherty –
Impression.
The first is a succinct murmuring mood miniature – chilly, tonal
and referring to the film-maker Robert Flaherty’s Vermont home
in all its imposing jagged-bleak wintry harshness. Then the
Flaherty
Impression sings out at much greater length, tender and caring,
poetic and yielding, but also riven with conflict at 6:00. It’s
quite a romantic piece – effectively a personal tone-poem blessed
with a Copland-style nobility. Arnell must have admired Flaherty
no end. The grand arc of this piece curves down into a not untroubled
quietude presided over by the valedictory harp.
Erik Chisholm’s impressive music is making a steady recovery revival
aided by the well informed and dedicated energy of his daughter.
Her work and that of other Chisholm champions is reflected in
the
Chisholm
website. The
Pictures from Dante (after Doré) date
from 1948. the piece is in two panels: (i)
Inferno and
(ii)
Paradisio. The
Inferno broods and hums with
the elemental murmuring force of a black storm barely held back
and eventually unleashed in all its spleen over the fragments
of the
Dies Irae. The sound-world recalls a sort of modernised
Francesca da Rimini crossed with the inky waters of Bax’s
Northern Ballad No. 2 and Rachmaninov’s
Isle of the
Dead. If only Bernard Herrmann had heard this score. He would
surely have recorded it and probably coupled it with Josef Holbrooke’s
The Pit and the Pendulum. The second and longer panel is
the
Paradisio. This is temperate music, with gleaming strings,
chant-inflected woodwind, blessed with peace yet still having
the spectral outline of the Dies Irae moving in bleached colours
in the background. The ominous presence fades and gradually the
music walks thorough realms of birdsong - shades of Messiaen,
Griffes and RVW’s
The Shepherds of the Delectable Mountains
- and beatific visions that rise in an arch of triumph.
Four glorious revivals, superbly performed, recorded and documented.
Unmissable.
Rob Barnett
Royal Scottish National Orchestra/Martin Yates 
