RECORDING OF THE MONTH
Philip SAWYERS (b.1951)
The Gale of Life (2006) [10:32]
Symphonic Music for Strings and Brass (1972) [18:24]
Symphony No.1 (2004) [34:27]
Grand Rapids Symphony/David Lockington
rec. DeVos Performance Hall, Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA, 11-12 January 2002
(Symphonic Music); 19-20 November 2004 (Symphony); 9 September 2008 (Gale
of Life)
NIMBUS ALLIANCE NI 6129 [63:38]
The series of discs being released under the banner of Nimbus Alliance is
rapidly building into a fascinating and significant collection. In part I’m
reminded of the old Argo label which combined high performance and production
values with a questing and questioning approach to repertoire. All of those
qualities are on display here with a disc showcasing the very considerable
talents of the British composer Philip Sawyers. I enjoyed this disc very much
from the very first playing and my appreciation of the stature of the music
it contains has grown with each repeat listening.
Sawyers will celebrate his 60th birthday next year. He spent twenty-four
years from 1973 as a member of the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House Covent
Garden. That orchestra was then and remains today one of the very finest and
Sawyers joined them straight from college so clearly he is a seriously good
violinist as well as composer. I mention that here because I think the playing
experience he has impinges directly on the quality of the music he writes.
Sawyers has written the liner-notes for this disc and they are as informative
as they are insightful. Crucially, from my point of view, they reveal – almost
in passing – Sawyers’ pragmatically practical approach to composition as well
as his innate respect for his fellow players. Both of these facets result
in music that is as rewarding to play and listen to as it is challenging.
I will write about the music chronologically because, as Sawyers explains,
to some degree each work begat the next. The earliest work here is the 1972
Symphonic Music for Brass and Strings written while Sawyers was still
a student at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London. I would challenge
anyone to identify this as a student or even early work. Perhaps it exudes
the confidence of youth but not at the expense of form or fluency. Again the
liner is illuminating; Sawyers cites the Hindemith Konzertmusik Op.50 as
an initial inspiration. He mentions Hindemith’s remark that “tonality is like
gravity – you ignore it at your peril” and that is the key [pun intended]
to all three works presented here. Sawyers avoids keys in the traditional
sense but prefers instead ‘tonal centres’. These act as the gravitational
focal points around which the music can almost literally orbit. I feel he
is being almost too confessional admitting the further influence of Bartók
and Mahler. Not that there aren’t passing moments but lucky the composer who
is able to write in totally splendid isolation unaffected by the writings
of anyone else. What I find most impressive is his confident handling of form
in such an early work. The piece is a single movement span lasting more than
eighteen minutes. Yet never once does the attention wander or the interest
flag. More than anything else this is exciting music. From a calm opening
listen to the way the Sawyer builds the music to the first extended climax
around 3:15. For a violinist I think he’s a frustrated horn-player – as indeed
am I! The brass writing is muscular, athletic and spectacular. In this he
is helped hugely by excellent playing throughout. The continued support of
a fine and dedicated group of musicians is oxygen to any composer. The recordings
here are taken from live performances spread over six years. This is the third
disc I have heard by this orchestra and in each case they have sounded superb.
As an aside I would warmly recommend the Hailstork Symphonies on Naxos
as well as the harder to find Ott Symphonies on Koss. All of these discs show
the Grand Rapids Symphony to have agile and sweet strings, the powerful sonorous
brass already alluded to and characterful alert wind.
I have written elsewhere how I find the use of often pointless ‘extended’
performance techniques irritating. Too often these mask a fundamental paucity
in the composer’s musical imagination instead having to fall back on superficial
effect. Imagine my delight to read in Sawyers’ note “I didn’t want something
devoid of colour, but I wanted to avoid all those gratuitously used special
effects….. I was also interested in absolute music, something classic and
pure with no programmatic overtones”. Take my word for it Mr Sawyers – you’ve
succeeded brilliantly, how refreshing to hear music confident enough in its
own essential strength to be true to itself. This is music without artifice
or ornament, simply honest and strong – and so much the better for that. Although
in one continuous movement the work falls into five sections – again Sawyers
modestly acknowledges a structural debt to Bartók in his use of this arch/mirror
form. At the centre of this is a very beautiful passage for violins and solo
horn – it’s that horn again! – the instruments entwining around each other
in an increasingly passionate musical embrace. Again, for a (then) young composer
the pacing of this build is hugely impressive. Credit too to the engineering
of this disc – yes there are occasional reminders of an audience’s presence
but this is something that rarely bothers me and certainly not when the trade-off
is a group of performances that palpably radiate the energy and electricity
that these do all of which has been caught in wonderfully present sound. Exciting
is a word that my listening notes contain repeatedly. Surely only those congenitally
opposed to any music written post 1920 can fail to find the final climax hurled
out by the trombones at the 17:00 mark thrilling – actually this is a moment
that recalled Hindemith’s Symphony -Mathis der Maler.
One of the mysteries not addressed by the liner-note – or on Sawyers’ own
website – is the compositional silence of the years he was at Covent Garden.
Certainly the demands made on the time and energy of a pit player are greater
than that of a standard orchestral player; more performances of often longer
works requiring more rehearsals. For whatever reason the next orchestral work
mentioned on the website is the next work on this disc too – the Symphony
No.1 of 2004 commissioned by the performers here. Indeed, from the recording
dates I assume that this is a record of that premiere. Fortunate indeed the
composer whose music receives such dedicated and well prepared first performances.
This is a substantial work; cast in traditional four movement symphonic form
it runs to over thirty four minutes. Again the instrumental writing is as
effective as it is impressive – glowering brass climaxes superbly rendered.
Sawyers notes that he has used a 12-note row to forge the thematic material
of the opening movement but this should not be taken to mean that this music
is atonal. Rather this is a structural device, for some reason this music
has the feel of a dark inexorably tragic march magnificent and inevitable
with tubular bells in the background the ‘passing bells for those who die
as cattle’. Not that Sawyers suggests anything of the sort – pure fancy on
my behalf. From this the balm of the D major – initially at least – Adagio
– is very moving indeed. A fragile flute laments over meditative strings.
Again the quality of the players is apparent – the previously mentioned flute
is quite ravishingly beautiful as is the oboe that soon joins. The calm is
shattered by a central section of impassioned protest. A common feature from
the earlier work is Sawyers avoidance of any superficial effect – this is
‘proper’ writing rigorously argued. There is a vocal quality to much of the
writing – lyrical in the literal sense that left me wondering if that is a
consequence of so many years ‘Gardening’. This movement is by some way the
most extended of the symphony and reaches another epic climax at 11:00 which
Sawyers refers to almost guiltily as ‘filmic’. Not to my mind; rewarding,
cathartic, impressive yes; anything pejorative absolutely not. Context is
all – this passage arrives as a natural result of what has come before and
the sinking back to the string led calm of the movement’s opening works all
the better for the resplendent nature of that final peak. Not because there
are musical similarities but because the music evoked a similar emotional
response in me I found myself thinking of the heraldic writing of Bliss in
A Colour Symphony and the Panufnik Sinfonia Sacra - two of
my very favourite works so not faint praise in my book. There follows the
shortest section of the work – a fleet and agile Scherzo all scurrying
energy and nervous vigour. The skirling wind and fraught brass fanfares did
evoke some of Malcolm Arnold’s writing and that word exciting appeared again.
Sawyers’ ability to maintain the momentum cannot fail to impress as does the
playing here; this is a virtuosic movement played with enormous panache. Sawyers
likens the opening of the Finale to having a chorale-like quality.
This is soon displaced by some angrily contrapuntal writing the various sections
of the orchestra warring against each other. Again this is 12-tone based but
the effect is more passacaglia-like with a recurring sequence of chords/melodic
shapes providing the basis from which the movement develops. This leads to
a final craggily impressive statement of the chorale theme [track 6 7:00]
before a resolution into one last D major chord. I see that Sawyers has written
a second symphony – a work I would love to hear on the strength of this one.
The disc opens with the most recent work; the rather splendidly titled The
Gale of Life from 2006. This is a good old-fashioned concert overture
taking its name from a line in A.E. Housman’s “A Shropshire Lad”; ‘…through
him the gale of life blew high’. The commission came from the Albany Symphony
Orchestra in New York State as a result of hearing the scherzo of the symphony.
Certainly they occupy the same helter-skelter world and it makes as cracking
an opener for this CD as it would for any concert. Am I alone in lamenting
the demise of a short orchestral work to open a concert? All the virtues both
compositionally and in execution apparent in the earlier works are evident
here too. My only thought is the basic motif that drives the work is not quite
as interesting or strong as the themes Sawyers develops in the two larger
works. His handling of the material is every bit as confident though. An interesting
thought is how consistent Sawyers has been with his music across the 34 years
that span the music presented here and hopefully there will be many more opportunities
to hear his work both on disc and in concert.
A disc which reflects great credit on all involved – music of instant appeal
and enduring quality performed with zealous passion recorded in excellent
sound. Well-worth investigating.
Nick Barnard
Reflects great credit on all involved – music of instant appeal and enduring
quality performed with zealous passion recorded in excellent sound.