Better Angels
Richard STRAUSS (1864-1949)
Oboe Concerto in D major (1945) [27:02]
Samuel BARBER (1910-81)
Canzonetta Op.48 posth. [7:22]
Summer Music Op.31 (1956) [12:32]
Leoš JANÁČEK (1854-1928)
Mládí (Youth) JW VII/10 (1924) [18:08]
Richard BLACKFORD (1954-)
The Better Angels of Our Nature [14:44]
Emily Pailthorpe (oboe)
Daniel Pailthorpe (flute); Richard Hosford (clarinet); Julie Price (bassoon; Nicholas Korth (horn); James Burke (bass clarinet)
BBC Symphony Orchestra/Martyn Brabbins
rec. Music Room, Champs Hill, West Sussex, UK, 10-11 November 2015 (Mládí, Summer Music); BBC Maida Vale Studios (London, UK), 12-13 January 2015 (Strauss, Barber, The Better Angels of Our Nature)
CHAMPS HILL RECORDS CHRCD116 [79:52]
Better Angels brings together the familiar with that
which deserves to be more familiar, alongside the new. Emily Pailthorpe’s
prize-winning performance of Vaughan Williams’ Oboe Concerto at the
1989 Fernand Gillet International Oboe Competition saw the then seventeen-year-old
oboist being dubbed ‘the Jacqueline du Pré of the oboe’. Pailthorpe’s
playing throughout this disc is characterised by a full, appealing sound which
modulates seamlessly between soft reticence and poised incisiveness. The phrasing
is effortlessly eloquent and accommodates both individuality and naturalness.
The best-known work on the disc is Richard Strauss’s gloriously sunny
Oboe Concerto, a work of the composer’s final years which sings with
a youthful freshness which belies its war-time origins. In 1945, among a group
of American soldiers who visited Strauss at his villa in Garmisch was one
John de Lancie, who had been principal oboe with the Pittsburgh Orchestra;
Lancie asked Strauss to compose a concerto and despite his initial reluctance,
Strauss did. producing this buoyant work which perhaps conveyed his hopes
for a peaceful future.
Strauss’s concerto was the work with which Pailthorpe made her concerto
debut in 2003 with the Philharmonia Orchestra, and the way in which she eases
into the first movement melody and sustains the unbroken outpouring of melody
throughout the Allegro Moderato suggests that the work is a comfortable
fit for her innate musical intelligence. She makes light work of the virtuosity.
Conductor Martyn Brabbins’ judicious tempo allows the strings to bubble
along exuberantly but also ensures that the orchestral textures are translucent
and that the elaborate gestures – which Pailthorpe exchanges so fluently
with the excellent BBCSO woodwind – are refined.
In the tutti passages the string tone is full, the rhythms springy;
the horns are agile and animated. But, such power and richness is counterbalanced
by the solo oboe’s tint of nostalgia – slight elongations and
rubatos, the occasional withdrawal to a wistful pianissimo, the lovely
intertwining of oboe and clarinet. There is an elegiac touch to the lyricism
which tempers the carefree mood. For all its charm and poise, the movement
is more reminiscent of early Strauss – the vibrant exchanges between
the BBCSO woodwind and the soloist recall the operatic busyness of Rosenkavalier
– than of Mozartian Classicism.
Mozart casts a firmer shadow over the Andante, however, where Brabbins
conjures thick, reedy textures as bassoons, clarinets and cor anglais converse.
Echoes of the first movement’s burbling brooks linger lightly in the
strings, but with the entry of the horns, Brabbins moves forward skilfully
and impassioned swells take us back to native Strauss territory. Signalled
by the oboe’s rhythmic flexibility and the strings’ rhetorical
outburst, the probing cadenza is increasingly virtuosic and intense, though
there is not a single note or ornament that is not lucid; the strings’
initial accompanying pizzicatos are meticulously placed.
The lively but graceful finale offers some fine flute playing and robust rhythmic
articulation from all. Brabbins strives constantly for freshness: the strings
are by turns crisp with lots of bite, then indulgently sensuous. Strauss’s
complex rhythmic arguments are effortlessly shaped, and the compound time
coda flies by with gentle ease. No matter how high the solo oboe line lies,
Pailthorpe’s tone exhibits never a hint of strain and such relaxed confidence
is equalled by the freedom of the string playing.
Two seldom heard works by Samuel Barber follow. The composer’s final
opus, the posthumously published Canzonetta for oboe and strings,
was written in 1978 and originally intended as the slow movement of an oboe
concerto commissioned by the New York Philharmonic. No other movements were
composed and the concerto was left unfinished at the time of Barber's
death in 1981. Brabbins is sympathetic to Barber’s trademark nostalgic
lyricism. Pailthorpe’s oboe soars and sighs plaintively but warmly through
the elongated melodies, always vocal in character. Ongoing movement and diversity
of colour in the strings prevents the poignancy from seeping into sentimentality,
and the weighty bass line is used to craft a sure structure. A tremolando
outburst prompts reflective oboe utterings and deeply expressive, rich-toned
dialogue between solo string voices, but the major-key return of the opening
material is consoling and the overall effect is tender rather than tragic.
After the superb ensemble-playing of the orchestral woodwind in Strauss’s
concerto, it’s a pleasure to hear the BBCSO principals join Pailthorpe
for Barber’s Summer Music, a single-movement work for wind
quintet which was commissioned in 1953 by the Chamber Music Society of Detroit
for the principals of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, who gave its premiere
in 1956.
The squeeze-box nasality of the introduction has a bluesy languidness from
which first the flute then the clarinet burst forth with playfulness, before
a ‘slow and indolent’ theme commences, its lazy rhythms and drooping
phrases reminiscent of Gershwin’s Summertime. Chattering animation,
even agitation at times, follows, peppered with effervescent upward swoops;
there is a Stravinskian dryness to the timbre at times, along with a sharp
edge to the rhythms. The motifs are held together by the clarinet’s
long-breathed sleepy oscillation which lures the other voices into more expansive
expressivity, led by the oboe’s exploratory roving, and finally to a
sunlit richness and an indulgent mood led by some lovely focused horn playing.
This is music that does not allow any one of its many moods to dominate and
which has plenty to say.
Mládí (Youth) is another late work. Written by Janáček
in 1924 when the composer was 70 years old, it adds a bass clarinet to the
five wind voices to form a four-movement sextet which is as spirited as Barber’s
quintet and builds on the latter’s playfulness. The six voices balance
each other perfectly with James Burke’s resonant bass rumbling complemented
by the bright warmth of the horn (Nicholas Korth), and the reediness of the
middle-voice textures serving to enhance the luminosity of the flute. The
clean recording reveals how deftly the players etch every motif of Janáček’s
mosaic of ostinatos.
After a perky Andante, folky wistfulness colours the Moderato
but humour is never far away. The high-spirited dancing of the flute brings
gleams of light to the Allegro while echoes of Strauss seems to pulse
through the horn’s affectionate melody and triumphant rising arpeggios
in a final Con moto which romps to a jubilant close.
The last item gives the disc its title. Richard Blackford’s The
Better Angels of Our Nature is a fifteen-minute work for oboes and strings
which was premiered at the 42nd International Double Reed Society
Conference at the University of Redlands in California, in 2013, by Pailthorpe
– to whom the work is dedicated – and the Redlands Symphony, conducted
by Gordon Hunt.
Blackford is well-known as a film and media composer, with over 200 film scores
to his name; but he is also critically acclaimed as a composer of classical
works, including four operas and diverse instrumental and chamber compositions.
Better Angels is a beguiling blend of melodic lyricism, textural
diversity, rhythmic propulsion and formal clarity. It comprises two movements,
heard continuously, which are separated by the oboe’s ‘bugle call’,
Taps, which is traditionally heard at funerals or played at sunset.
Blackford’s starting points was the plea for reconciliation made by
Abraham Lincoln during his first inaugural address on March 4th 1861:
We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may
have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords
of memory will swell when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better
angels of our nature.
There is an appealing gentleness about the introduction of Pailthorpe’s
bugle-leaps above static strings: the effect is sweet-toned but not saccharine.
The scoring is quite transparent; the lucidity of the open-spaced chords of
the BBCSO strings forms a striking background for Pailthorpe’s fragmented
fanfare motifs which have a surprisingly brassy quality at times. As the strings
widen the harmonic expanse, then rove through dark bass regions, Brabbins
conjures a full sound which can be troubling in its intensity but also consoling
in its richness.
A good balance is struck throughout between soloist and accompanying ensemble:
Pailthorpe may ‘lead’, but the strings’ contribution to
the musical narrative forms a powerful current which joins at times with the
soloist, either in imitative or unified expression.
As the bugle motifs become more melodic and the oboe rises to higher realms,
we can enjoy Pailthorpe’s lovely pure tone; elsewhere the more virtuosic
elaborations are incisive and sparkling. The Allegro molto ‘movement’
is dynamic and persuasive. As the oboe and upper strings scurry, propulsion
is ensured by fast, marching pizzicatos and the cellos’ and double basses’
abrasive chords. Blackford’s technical assurance is evident in the swinging
counterpoint between upper and lower strings, and between oboe and ensemble,
as the melody lures the listener onward. Motoring repetitive motifs create
a driving momentum reminiscent of Holst’s ‘Mars’ from The
Planets and build to the oboe’s virtuosic rise to an exuberantly
trilling climax.
After such violence, the ‘mystic chords of memory’ return, a shimmer
through which the distant oboe theme, reflective and insular, pierces. Brabbins
encourages a weight from the basses in the closing passages which suggests
majesty and spiritual depth. As the strings take up and expand the Better
Angel theme over a long pedal, the rich textures and evolving harmonies
offer a warm bed for the oboe’s probing injections; the slow, controlled
vibrato of Pailthorpe’s long-held notes is wonderfully penetrating.
In the concluding passages, stillness is allied with breadth and depth, in
a manner which seems not so far removed from the Vaughan Williams of the Fifth
Symphony. Neither melody nor harmony ‘close’ with ‘finality’,
yet there is a true sense of peace.
Claire Seymour
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