http://christopherwrightcomposer.co.uk/biography.html
The English composer Christopher Wright studied with Richard Arnell
at the Colchester Institute.
This Merlin disc surveys a selection of his works of chamber proportions.
As such it complements the orchestral disc just released by Dutton.
The CD insert offers a good compact profile of the composer. All
the usual context is provided for the music and the recording
project including the sung texts. The
Four Meditations are
touchingly sung by the soprano Lesley-Jane Rogers. These four
songs and the three comprising
A Vision of Heaven - which
lends its name to the disc - are in an idiom that I can best,
if rather inadequately, approximate to that of Rubbra in his mystical
and chastely devotional song-cycles. There are also echoes of
Holst in his twelve
Humbert Wolfe Songs and the
Four
Medieval Songs for soprano and violin. The piano part is adeptly
turned by Simon Lepper. Lepper responds with starry stillness
and one moment and impetuosity at the next. Some of it uncannily
recalls the piano line in the later Finzi-Hardy songs. The rhetoric
and drama of
Vision of Heaven reminded me of Alan Bush's
Voices of the Prophets. Its repetition of words recalls
Britten and there’s a touch Aaron Copland also. I say this only
to help the reader get his bearings; not in any way to impugn
the freshness of Wright’s invention. The most impressive song
is bound up in the most impressive words - Hardy's
Why Do I?
In its cold reflection it reminded me of the more desolate Hardy
settings by Gerald Finzi. Christopher Wright lays convincing claim
to being a very significant composer writing in a recognised idiom.
I wondered whether
A Vision of Heaven was originally intended
for voice and orchestra; it certainly has that feel. We know Danielle
Perrett from her ineffably beautiful
ASV CD
of the Rubbra harp music. She is in similarly atmospheric and
lyrical vein in
Four East Coast Sketches. The music catches
the arching grey skies and the sparsely peopled landscape. Performance
and music convey a certain loneliness. Wright has perhaps garnered
this and the quintessence of spirit of place through early morning
walks. The Sketches amount to a substantial four movement suite
playing for approaching seventeen minutes. In
Sunrise the
music stretches instrument and player with many effects as if
to evoke fauna in motion just before the first rays.
Cross
Currents interlaces singing lines in beatific and delicately
dancing interaction. The sequence of four tone poems ends with
The Coastal Path - a haltingly thoughtful essay written
as if in a dream of a walk rather than the walk itself. Perrett
is joined by Timothy Kipling for
Lyric Movement - music
of skeletally limned suggestion of song often waylaid by thoughts
that come unbidden.
Soliloquy takes us further into the
maze. The inscape psychological dimensions of this music are to
the fore. Wright in this case does not lean towards the pictorial
- place is referenced by its sense. Ths is what is captured rather
than anything literal of landscape or building except perhaps
in the first movement of the
Sketches and also in the classically
countryside delights of
Pastorale for violin and piano
- a lovely piece though not quite as innocent as it might first
seem.
Wright the reflective pastoral visionary.
Rob Barnett
Lesley-Jane Rogers (soprano); Helena Ruinard (violin); Danielle
Perrett (harp); Simon Lepper (piano); Tim Kipling (alto flute) 