Admirers of the fecund Alwyn have good reason to look forward
to Naxos’s continuing exploration of his music. This one contains
a world premiere in the form of the modest but still engaging
six minute Five Preludes of 1927 as well as fine-sounding,
idiomatic performances of other orchestral works, some better
known to aficionados of the composer’s music than others.
Overture to a Masque is a perky affair
that sports a motif that circles swooningly close to Blue
Moon and the waft of dance-hall cigarette smoke. Around
this evocative B section is the fiery drama of Alwyn in dramatic
mode. Three years later came the Concerto Grosso No. 1,
something of a concerto for orchestra, full of fanfare bristle
and commanding opportunities for, amongst others, the trumpet
principal, percussion and solo violin. It was dedicated to the
LSO’s then leader George Stratton and ‘my friends in the LSO’
– the orchestra in which Alwyn was a flautist. There’s a lovely
velvety cushion beneath the cor anglais’s solo in the second
movement and the strings respond with real sensitivity in their
supportive role. This is refined writing full of excellent distribution
of voices. I imagine the vivace finale would have suited Stratton’s
rather biting, resinous tone well and there are puckish opportunities
for orchestral solos alongside plenty of neo-classical frolics.
The Pastoral
Fantasia was premiered by Watson Forbes. It’s a warm, nostalgic
opus, very reminiscent – and surely deliberately so – of The
Lark Ascending. Those previously unrecorded Preludes
were written in 1927. They’re deftly scored miniatures and
embrace a charming little waltz and some Chinese effects. What’s
most admirable is Alwyn’s gift for quick characterisation –
that and his writing for winds which, as one might predict,
is first class. The Tragic Interlude followed in 1936
– full of baleful, brooding, heavy-booted drama that ends resignedly.
Autumn Legend for cor anglais and orchestra is an atmospheric
Nordic affair, somewhat aloof and chilly. Whereas the Suite
of Scottish Dances is a picture postcard miscellany of frolicsome
verve.
The sound in Philharmonic
Hall has been captured with first class attention to detail.
The two instrumental soloists, Philip Dukes (viola) and Rachael
Pankhurst (cor anglais) play with poetic warmth and technical
address. The programme’s balance has a pleasing diversity; terse,
windswept, ebullient, frisky, serious. Not the place to start
for those coming fresh to the composer because it’s too heterogeneous
a collection but definitely one for Alwyn collectors.
Jonathan Woolf
see also Review
by Rob Barnett
Royal Liverpool
Philharmonic Orchestra/David Lloyd-Jones 
