LINKS
Victoria
Soames – Clarinet
Concerto
Thea
Musgrave article
Lyrita’s reputation
was never as a champion of the avant-garde.
Of course there was the odd exception
– I think of their LP of the first two
Searle symphonies – but in general the
label spoke for the ‘conservative’ strain
in British music. They were the David
of the tonal voice in the period 1960-1980
when the Goliath of serialism held sway.
The reborn label is now much more accommodating
of the wide vista of British music and
this disc of reissues is an example.
It also fits within the name the label
has made for rescuing lost analogue
recordings under licence from the big
names. From that perspective it sits
alongside their discs of Grace Williams,
Hoddinott, Mathias and Milner.
Musgrave has, since
the early 1970s, lived in the USA where
she has held several illustrious academic
posts. Among her awards are a Guggenheim
Fellowship and a Koussevitsky Award.
A Scot, she was born in Midlothian and
studied in Edinburgh with Hans Gál
and in Paris with Boulanger. She struck
up a close friendship with William Glock
as her music moved towards serialism.
Her musical preoccupations
include opera of which she has written
fifteen; the latest being Simón
Bolivar (1989-1992). There are other
common threads including a concern with
space, drama, movement and theatre.
This is clear from the perambulations
of the soloist notated in the score
of the Clarinet Concerto. In addition
there are spatial and motional directions
in Chamber Concerto no.2 (1966), Concerto
for Orchestra (1967), the Horn Concerto
(1971) and as late as 1997 her orchestral
work Phoenix Rising (1997) incorporates
a floor plan and stage directions. She
has written for Nicolas Daniel, Gervase
de Peyer, Barry Tuckwell, Evelyn Glennie,
Peter Pears and Julian Bream.
The orchestral music
bristles with incident and its soloistic
building blocks individually recall
Stravinsky. Overall though the delicate,
yet steely pointillistic effect is dissonant
but fascinating. In the case of the
Concerto for Orchestra the effect is
like wandering through a surreal forest
where the traveller is slapped, scratched
and bombarded with a wealth of ideas
and impressions. Some of these details
are brazen but many are more subtle;
everything seems superbly weighted and
calculated. The clarinet plays a prominent
role in this work which two years later
was to be rewarded in the form of a
Clarinet Concerto. In this work the
instrumentalist moves from one part
of the orchestra to another as the clarinet
voice entwines and extricates itself
from other groupings. The virtuosic
clarinet line which delights in display
and plangently touching reflection (15:50
sample)
moves amongst an often busily varied
orchestral skein in which light and
air allows individual voices to emerge,
shine and interact with the ever mobile
clarinet. Two years after the Clarinet
Concerto came the Horn Concerto – another
typically poetic instrument – and two
years after that came the Viola Concerto
written for her husband Peter Mark.
The Horn Concerto is of a piece stylistically
speaking with the Clarinet Concerto
– another fundamentally lyrical singing
instrument on a pilgrimage amid dissonance.
Musgrave is no stranger to tumultuous
activity as we hear in the vituperative
tempest of sound at 13:52 but this contrasts
pleasingly with the gentle Bergian strings
at 14:58 ( sample).
Once again the composer’s sense of the
continuity of sound with movement is
reflected at one point in the directions
that the orchestral horns move to different
positions on the stage. Indeed if the
management can run to three additional
horns she asks that they play from the
upper balcony. Naturally these aural-visual
pieces of theatre tend to be lost to
the listener to a sound-only CD – one
of these days a DVD perhaps – I hope
so.
The other works are
for piano. First the composer plays
her own Monologue originally written
for Margaret Kitchin in 1960. It’s a
short dodecaphonic piece – declamatory
and with for me a certain bardic pride.
The eight Excursions were written to
be played by pupil and teacher at one
piano. These are tonal, delightful (try
the Pesante), full of vivid Arnoldian
character although they have some of
the pepper of Goossens too. And if they
drift into Arthur Benjamin from time
to time where’s the harm.
It should also be noted
that the soloists in the two concertos
are the artists for whom the works were
written and who premiered them.
The disc is completed
by what amounts to major encyclopedic
entry for Musgrave by Calum Macdonald;
the perfect companion to this listening
experience.
Not typical fare for
Lyrita but beguilingly done with fervent
authority and great sensitivity.
Rob Barnett
ALSO AVAILABLE
SRCD.236
Finzi Clarinet Concerto
SRCD.316
British Horn Concertos
SRCD.325
Mathias Clarinet Concerto
for details
Gervase de Peyer (clarinet); Barry Tuckwell
(horn); Thea Musgrave (piano); Malcolm
Williamson (piano) 
