Emma Johnson (b. 1966)
Songs of Celebration (2019)
Jonathan Dove (b. 1959)
The Pied Piper
Emma Johnson
Christmas Suite
Variations on ‘We Wish You a Merry Christmas’ (2020)
Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)
‘Jesu, Joy of Mans Desiring’, from Cantata BWV147 (arr. Emma Johnson)
Emma Johnson (clarinet & narrator)
Choir of Gloucester Cathedral/Adrian Partington
Recorder Consort
John Lenehan (piano)
rec. 2022, Gloucester Cathedral, UK
Texts included
NIMBUS ALLIANCE NI6431 [59]
At the age of 17 Emma Johnson won the BBC Young Musician of the Year competition; that was the launching pad for a hugely successful career as a solo clarinettist. Perhaps she’s rather less familiar as a composer but this new CD highlights some of her recent achievements in that field. Just as importantly, the chosen works reflect her evident delight in working with young people and offering them the chance to develop musically.
In the booklet, Emma Johnson tells us that the origin of Songs of Celebration was a suggestion in 2018 that she should write a Christmas song for high voices and clarinet. She duly wrote ‘I sing of a Maiden’ and, thus inspired, penned three companion pieces. She premiered the full set with the Choir of Gloucester Cathedral and Adrian Partington in December 2019. The songs, which are for SSA choir with clarinet, can be performed independently but work very well as a set. Ms Johnson says that in ‘I sing of a Maiden’ she endeavoured to impart a flavour of Coptic church music. The melody to which the words are sung is most attractive and the clarinet provides a combination of counter-melody and decoration. ‘He is Born the Divine Infant King’ is Johnson’s own translation of well-known French carol. In this piece the clarinet writing is especially decorative. ‘Precious Gift’ is rather more serious in tone by comparison with the two previous settings because Johnson sought to illustrate the pain in the life of the infant Jesus. The clarinet plays a prelude and a postlude while the choral writing, accompanied by the clarinet, contains many semitones, which accentuates the melancholy nature of the music. Finally, we hear ‘There is no Rose’. This is unexpected in that the music is in a minor key but the tempo is upbeat. The Gloucester choristers articulate the catchy rhythms very well indeed and clearly relish the occasions when they’re asked to do a bit of beat boxing. This is a very attractive and enjoyable set of Christmas songs. The music is well written for young voices in that it gives them something to get their teeth in to and a suitable – but not excessive – level of challenge. I should imagine that youth choirs would enjoy it as much as the Gloucester boys and girls evidently did. However, any choir taking up the songs will need to have an expert clarinettist on hand.
Inspired by the successful premiere of Songs of Celebration with the Gloucester Cathedral choristers, Emma Johnson decided to write something else for them to perform together; Christmas Suite was the result. This contains three arrangements, again for upper voices and clarinet. ‘Carol of the Bells’ is the energetic carol by Mykola Leontovych. Emma Johnson rightly pays tribute to the “panache” with which the Gloucester choristers perform this vivacious setting. In ‘Coventry Carol’ Ms Johnson set out to suggest the weeping of Rachel for her children and the keening clarinet part achieves this. Finally, ‘Silent Night’ is tender and mainly hushed. These are three skilful and appealing arrangements in which, as was the case with Songs of Celebration, the partnership of clarinet and childrens’ voices works really well. The clarinet parts are inventive and the Gloucester chorister do a fine job. In both sets of pieces they’ve obviously been prepared – and conducted - with great attention to detail by Adrian Partington, after which the choristers’ musicianship and enthusiasm did the rest.
The choristers make one more appearance, singing the famous chorale in Emma Johnson’s arrangement of Bach’s ‘Jesu, Joy of Mans Desiring’. Here, the piano accompanies unison voices while the clarinet is ideally suited to Bach’s rippling triplets. In that piece the pianist is John Lenehan who also partners Emma Johnson in Variations on ‘We Wish You a Merry Christmas’. She wrote this as an encore to play at one of the very few concerts she was able to give during the first year of the Covid pandemic. She aptly says of the variations that they are “light and frothy and you may detect one or two other carol quotations in them, to be stumbled upon at random like sixpences in a Christmas pudding”. As you might expect, it’s a fun piece which Johnson and Lenehan despatch with relish.
The longest piece on the programme – playing for just over 28 minutes - is Jonathan Dove’s The Pied Piper. He writes that Emma Johnson approached him to compose this, envisaging herself (with her clarinet) as the Piper with Robert Browning’s poem to be read by an actor. It was Dove’s idea to combine the roles of Piper and reciter and he undertook to write gaps into the clarinet part so that Johnson could switch from one role to the other. So he did, but there are times, such as the section where the poem describes the rats that plagued the citizens of Hamelin, where Ms Johnson must barely have had time to remove the clarinet from her mouth before she has to speak – and vice versa. Nonetheless, the combined role works very well and gives an immediacy which might not always happen, I suspect, if two separate performers were involved. The original idea included a part for childrens’ choir but the forces were expanded when Turner Sims, Southampton, the commissioners, proposed the involvement also of massed (not necessarily expert) recorders and a recorder consort. For this present performance an experienced consort was involved but the massed recorders – who portray the shrieking rats – were played by the Gloucester Cathedral chorister, who were taught to play the instrument by Adrian Partington.
The resulting piece is, I think, both attractive and successful and we learn from the booklet that Emma Johnson has workshopped the piece in many UK schools. Initially, I was slightly surprised that the children don’t have more to do – there are quite lengthy sections which involve just Ms Johnson (in one or both of her roles) and the piano. However, on reflection, two things struck me. One was that the sections in which the children are involved – both as “shrieking rats” and, later, singing as the children who are enticed away by the Piper – offer them enjoyable musical involvement Secondly, I could easily imagine young children being completely absorbed in the whole workshop process and sitting enthralled while they listen to the story being told and hear the clarinet and piano play.
As you might expect, given his expertise as a composer who has several operas and works involving children to his credit, Jonathan Dove’s music is attractive and well-paced. Furthermore, it illustrates the story very adeptly – I love the way, for example, that the writing for the recorder consort just before the Piper starts to charm the children away brilliantly suggests the casting of a spell. Emma Johnson narrates Browning’s poem very well and her many clarinet contributions enliven the proceedings significantly. At the piano, John Lenehan is simply indefatigable. He is an almost constant presence throughout and his playing is colourful, adding considerable atmosphere. I think The Pied Piper is a most successful creation. It’s enjoyable and accessible to hear and I bet it’s a great way either to introduce children to music or to expand further their enjoyment of it. In this performance it sounds as if all concerned were having a ton of fun.
I was already well acquainted with Emma Johnson’s prowess as a clarinettist before I received this disc. The performances here remind us once more of her great skill with the instrument. In addition, though, the style of her Christmas arrangements and the way in which she tells us the story of the Pied Pier of Hamelin indicate a most engaging personality.
The release is well documented. Producer Simon Callaghan and engineer Oscar Torres have recorded the performances very well. The resonant acoustic of Gloucester Cathedral can be tricky but they’ve managed to record the musicians clearly while harnessing just enough of the acoustic to add warmth.
I thoroughly enjoyed this entertaining CD and the highly accomplished performances and I hope you will too.
John Quinn
