Paul DRAYTON (b.1944)
Tom Pellow’s March (2017) [2:17]
Nocturne (2019) [15:38]
Antique Suite (2014) [15:07]
George LLOYD (1913-1998)
Symphony No.10 ‘November Journeys’ (1981) [30:05]
Abbey Brass/Paul Drayton, Tony Hindley
rec. 2020, St Michael’s Church, Newquay, UK
FS RECORDS FSR201 [60:26]
The compositional axis on which this disc turns is Cornwall. Paul Drayton wasn’t born there but has lived in the county for a number of years whilst George Lloyd hailed from St Ives. The ensemble Abbey Brass contains members from the county, and it was their director, Paul Thomas, a flugelhorn player, who encouraged Drayton to write works for the ensemble. The Antique Suite, for brass dectet and percussion, came first in 2014 followed Three Pieces in Old Cornwall (to be found on FS191) and then Nocturne in 2019. Both these works and the little march with which the programme starts are heard in premiere recordings.
The march is the delightful Tom Pellow’s March, a graduation processional for students at Falmouth University. Pellow, from Penryn, was captured aged eleven in 1716 in one of the frequent Barbary pirate attacks on English coastal towns and villages and held in Morocco for 23 years. Brief, elegant and supremely tuneful it makes for an appetising opening. Nocturne is cast for brass quintet and in four movements offers a scenic tour of the county’s crepuscular delights; standing stones, twilit bats, deserted mines and a troll-like round dance. The first has a gaunt statuesque gravity, the second – scherzo like – has darting brass lines, often muted, characterful and winged with aerial delight; think of an updated Mendelssohn scherzo, for brass. Then there’s the columnar mine replete with a B section in which the ghostly evocation of the mine works – now long since stilled – can be heard. The finale, a danse macabre, is a lively end to a splendidly characterised set of pieces, ripely brought to life by the ensemble.
The Antique Suite, though made up of five baroque-sounding dance movements, isn’t in any way a pastiche. The Sarabande does pay homage to Handel, one suspects, but the puckish, droll Gavotte, which makes fine use of the percussion, is sufficiently spiced with up-to-date harmonies. The charmer of the set is the Minuet, a waltz-inclined movement with deft percussion support. Opinion will differ on the Gigue finale but to me Drayton is channelling his inner John Williams for this robust, genuinely brassy closer. The composer directs with great animation.
If Drayton represents the fruitful collaboration between a living composer and an ensemble on the look-out for new repertoire, George Lloyd was one of the most impressive British symphonists of his time. November Journeys is his Tenth Symphony and was composed in 1981. The first recording I’m aware of was that of London Collegiate Brass under James Stobart back in c.1987 who coupled it entertainingly with Wilfred Josephs’s excellent Concerto for Brass on Trax Classique. Shortly afterwards Lloyd himself recorded it on Albany with the forces of the BBC Philharmonic Brass – you’ll find it coupled with the Sixth Symphony and the overture to John Socman. Let me say first of all that conductor Tony Hindley has his own decided ideas about the work and is beholden to no one interpretatively. Broadly that means that the outer two movements are significantly broader than the tempi taken by Lloyd and Stobart but he feels the beautiful Calma, movement much more briskly than his rivals. Abbey Brass has a rich, rounded tonal quality and they sculpt more deeply and darkly than their recorded rivals, and they are excellent too in the work’s more insouciant moments. Though the work was inspired by Lloyd’s tour of cathedrals there’s nothing sepulchral and overtly religiose about the writing. Instead it has a sense of wonder and excitement and the suggestion of the hymnal in the Calma is accompanied by rich lyricism and well-judged spatial echo effects – vaulting beauties of sound. The finale is consonant with the performance as a whole and though finely played I rather wished for just a touch more of the asked-for ‘Energico’. Nevertheless, this is still a very fine performance and can be confidently added to the two discs noted above. Clearly the composer-conducted reading is a must-have but this is the first recording of the symphony since his, now over three decades ago.
The booklet livery is moonlit and bible black and the notes splendid. Sound quality is right up to the mark and everything about this release speaks of engaging vitality.
Jonathan Woolf
