I’m not normally
a fan of ‘crossover’ music – though
many of the medieval and renaissance
works that I review are the crossover
music of their day, with secular
chansons re-worked as settings
of the mass – so I was rather sniffy
when I saw this recording advertised,
even when it received general acclaim,
not least from Rob Barnett here
on Musicweb – see review.
There are some reviewers who always
seem to be spot-on: over the years
I found that Edward Greenfield’s
reviews in Gramophone and
The Guardian nearly always
led me in the right direction, apart
from the Naxos Shostakovich Leningrad
and Eighth Symphonies where his
recommendation led me to purchase
Slovak’s seriously under-powered
performances, long since replaced
in my collection.
I’m coming to realise
that Rob Barnett’s reviews are equally
likely to lead in the right direction.
He may be less happy with Andrew
Davis’s first version of Elgar’s
Enigma Variations, recently
reissued on Lyrita, than I was
(SRCD.301 – compare his review
with mine:
at least we both very much liked
the Falstaff) but his advice
led me to what I now consider my
ideal versions of Bax’s first two
symphonies (SRCD.232 and 233 – see
review)
and his review of Josef Holbrooke’s
The Birds of Rhiannon persuaded
me to give a second chance to a
work and recording that I had written
off thirty years ago (SRCD.269 –
see my recent recantation).
Thus it was that I came to Jon Lord’s
Durham Concerto, a work which
I am sure I shall return to frequently.
It took me thirty years to put the
Holbrooke work in its proper place,
so a six month delay for Jon Lord
is comparatively short.
Like the music
of Respighi, the Durham Concerto
is reminiscent of the best film
music, though without the rather
brash edge of Feste Romane.
I don’t mean the comparison in any
derogatory sense: I mean film music
of the quality of John Williams,
Erich Korngold and Franz Waxman.
If I were a film director, I’d feel
seriously challenged to produce
the visual equivalent of this music;
it would need to be several cuts
above the usual run of travelogue
to be a worthy companion to the
music.
Admittedly, aspects
of the Durham Concerto are
derivative – Debussy’s La Mer,
Vaughan Williams’s London Symphony,
Holst’s Hammersmith, Coates’s
Piccadilly – but the influences
are absorbed, as Fauré’s
influence is absorbed by Duruflé.
I didn’t find myself checking them
off, as I do whenever I hear the
Lloyd-Webber Requiem. Nor
did I find the use of the Hammond
organ or the local colour provided
by the Northumberland pipes at all
corny, especially when the pipes
are played by their greatest exponent,
Kathryn Tickell.
The one thing which
I thought was something of a mistake
was the interpolation of the Gaudeamus
igitur theme to represent Durham
University – more of a glance in
the direction of the Brahms Academic
Festival Overture than part
of the British academic tradition.
I’m sure that my contemporaries
at Durham would no more associate
Gaudeamus igitur with that
university than I would with Oxford.
Some of Avie’s
publicity material is on the pretentious
side and not strictly accurate –
the ‘Venerable’ Bede was canonised
long ago and should be accorded
his proper title, as St Cuthbert
is.
The Liverpool Phil
and Mischa Damev clearly take the
music seriously; the performance
is all that could be desired and
the recording engineers have also
done well by the music. If you want
to sample before deciding, RB’s
review and the Avie website offer
several soundclips.
This is one of
many Avie recordings which are also
available from eMusic (emusic.com)
as good quality downloads. The bit
rate never falls below the magic
192kbps and two tracks weigh in
at 224kbps – why the variation,
I wonder, which I have noted on
other eMusic downloads? I certainly
found nothing to complain of in
terms of sound quality. It’s also
available at 320kbps from Chandos’s
theclassicalshop.net.
You do miss the
notes, of course, but RB’s detailed
Musicweb review to which I have
referred above will repair much
of that loss; it also includes as
an appendix a considerable amount
of the Avie publicity material which
accompanied the recording. Whichever
form you go for, you really should
give this work a try.
Brian Wilson
Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra/Mischa
Damev 
Sound
Samples
