This fifth volume in
the Naxos series of ‘English String
Miniatures’ focuses mainly on composers
perhaps better known in the worlds of
stage, screen, broadcasting or education.
This time the accent is on light-music
that is influenced by both English and
foreign folk-song and dance.
The first work is from
Kent-born composer Pamela Harrison who
studied at the Royal College of Music
with Gordon Jacob (composition) and
Arthur Benjamin (piano). Harrison’s
main interest always lay in chamber
music and this suite is one of only
a handful written outside this area.
Written for the first birthday of her
son, the
Suite for Timothy is
a buoyant, light-hearted score, which
is pleasing and highly effective. I
especially enjoyed the well written
fourth piece marked
Lento which
comes across as an
Elegy and
contains an attractive section for solo
violin.
Francis Chagrin was
born Alexander Paucker in Romania, picking
up his new name, en route to England
via France. Chagrin composed in most
genres but is best known for his film
scores, including
The Colditz Story,
An Inspector Calls and various
television series, including
The
Four Just Men. He composed many
Hoffnung music cartoons made by Halas
and Batchelor. The four movement
Renaissance
Suite is scored for ‘string orchestra
(and/or wind quartet)’ and consists
of a pleasant mix of authentic and modern
day arrangements of anonymous sixteenth
and seventeenth century pieces. I found
the
Renaissance Suite to be uneven
in quality and rather uneventful. The
second section
Pavana e gagliarda,
with its irregular phrase lengths,
is especially striking and contains
a catchy melody which could easily be
used as a theme for a TV or radio programme.
The hectic
Rondo giocoso that
concludes the score has some interesting
moments.
Percy Eastman Fletcher
was born in Derby and gained practical
experience playing violin, piano and
the organ. He spent a large part of
his life as a West End musical director
at various London theatres, culminating
at His Majesty’s from 1915 until his
death. One of his earliest theatre successes
was the long-running show
Chu Chin
Chow. Fletcher’s own music includes
songs, choruses, orchestral miniatures
and suites, and also brass band pieces.
The
Folksong and Fiddle Dance,
curiously subtitled ‘suite’, is a succinct
diptych that contains episodes of charm
and vitality with a characteristic freshness
and spontaneity. Yet Fletcher seems
unable to sustain the quality throughout
and the score includes many pages of
inconsequence. The
Fiddle Dance is
a curious piece that incorporates what
sounds like a fiddle at a hillbilly
dance and a Scottish Highlander’s reel.
Born in Brighton, Paul
Lewis spurned university and music college
to make his own way as a composer, composing
his first television score at the age
of twenty. Since then he has written
prolifically for TV, most notably with
Arthur of the Britons, and more
recently, with
Woof! and
Bernard's
Watch. The
Suite navarraise was
written after a holiday in the French
Basque region, and was inspired by the
birth there in 1553 of Henri de Navarre,
later Henri IV of France. Cast in three
short movements;
Arrive à Pau,
Berceau d'un prince and
Le vert gallant,
the score
follows a programme of three events
in the King’s life that are sadly as
uninteresting as the music is tiresome.
London born Albert
Cazabon was a child prodigy on the violin
from the age of four. He later studied
in Paris and London with, among others,
Gustav Holst. A conductor and arranger,
Cazabon was music director at the Everyman
Theatre, Hampstead. Later he went to
Australia to work as music director
at Sydney’s Prince Edward Theatre and
even wrote a song for the grand opening
of Sydney Harbour Bridge in 1932. Returning
to England after the War, he directed
music at Stratford and in the 1950s
went on to give regular BBC broadcasts
with his own orchestra. The short
Giocoso probably dates
from this period, since he was known to have made an arrangement
for small orchestra in 1955 at the request
of Billy Mayerl. Unfortunately I experienced
the short single movement piece as mundane
and rather wearisome. The work is of
the type that could have been considered
but rejected for one of the BBC’s fondly
remembered
Potter’s Wheel interludes.
Born in 1690, Thomas
Roseingrave was an organist, employed
at St George’s, Hanover Square, London
and a composer whose career went downhill
after a failed love affair with a pupil.
Roseingrave’s style was said to be daring,
and too harmonically harsh for his contemporaries.
It is therefore no great surprise to
find that this nonconformist attitude
found a sympathetic resonance with the
twentieth-century composer, Humphrey
Searle, a one-time pupil of Anton Webern.
To mark the 1966 bicentenary of Roseingrave’s
death, Searle selected three movements
from a set of fifteen
voluntaries
and
fugues for organ or harpsichord,
and scored them for string orchestra.
One wonders where Searle found the energy
to make arrangements of these works,
that are meagre in content and lacking
in memorability and inspiration.
John Ireland was born
in Cheshire to literary parents, and
entered the Royal College of Music at
the age of fourteen, teaching there
himself from 1913 to 1939. At the RCM
his teachers included Frederick Cliffe
for piano, Walter Parratt for organ
and his idol Charles Stanford for composition.
Ireland’s output included over ninety
songs, many piano miniatures and a small
number of orchestral works.
A Downland
Suite was originally composed as
a brass band commission for a competition
test-piece in 1932. Nine years later
Ireland began to make a string version,
but finished only the two central movements
before fleeing his Channel Islands home
ahead of the invading Germans. Ireland
seemed to lose interest in the project
and the score was completed in 1978
by his pupil Geoffrey Bush who made
several changes in the transcription.
Thank goodness that a work as excellent
as
A Downland Suite has been
chosen to conclude this Naxos release
on a high note. This delightful four
movement collaboration between Ireland
and Bush is highly appealing with memorable
melodies.
For me this fifth volume
has been the least satisfying of the
Naxos ‘English String Miniatures’ series.
With few exceptions I found much of
this music to be dull and tiresome,
exceptionally lightweight and lacking
in inspiration. As we have experienced
with other recordings miniature string
works certainly needn’t mean slight
and bland. I felt rather sad for the
excellent players and conductor. They
cannot make theses scores better than
what they are but they offer first rate
playing with considerable enthusiasm
and liveliness. The sound quality is
of an acceptable standard and the concise
liner notes from Philip Lane are interesting
and reasonable informative. I should
point out that in the documentation
the stated year of John Ireland’s birth
is incorrect, as he was born in 1879,
not 1876.
I’m not sure how many
more volumes of ‘English String Miniatures’
there are to go but after this
issue the series urgently requires resuscitation.
An injection of quality is needed, such
as, with the inclusion of string works
by Elgar, Parry and more from Vaughan
Williams.
Michael Cookson
see also reviews
by Jonathan Woolf
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Royal
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