Ronald CORP (b.1951)
And All The Trumpets Sounded (1989) [38:31]
Michael HURD (1928-2006)
The Shepherd’s Calendar (1975) [30:29]
Mark Stone (baritone: Corp), Roderick Williams (baritone: Hurd)
The London Chorus; New London Children’s Choir
Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra/Ronald Corp
rec. June 2011, Lighthouse, Poole, Dorset
No texts but they are available via download
DUTTON EPOCH CDLX 7280 [69:01]
Written in 1989, And All The Trumpets Sounded is a powerful cantata
that reflects on judgement and war in a way both humane and moving. Ronald
Corp takes texts by Edward Thomas, Rupert Brooke, C.H. Sorley and Wilfred
Owen, all four poets killed during the First World War, and adds a long setting
of Walt Whitman’s Vigil Strange, interspersing them with the
Dies irae, Tuba mirum, Rex tremendae, Lacrimosa and Pie Jesu. Corp acknowledges
that the work was intended as a companion for Vaughan Williams’ Dona
nobis pacem and he also cites Britten’s War Requiem and its
exploration of the ‘pity of war’. Instead, however, Corp’s
cantata is suffused with an ultimate pessimism, and a realisation ‘contrary
to my conscious belief’ that war endures and that there is no end of
it.
The terse unyielding Dies irae activates a work of powerful emotion. There
are however lovely moments. One of the most beautiful is surely Corp’s
setting of Brooke’s The Dead (Blow out, you bugles) - turbulent,
passionate and expressive. There are strong hints of Finzi in the word setting
of Sorley’s Such, such is death. Just as Owen’s Asleep
(Under his helmet) suggests some reprieve, back comes the Dies irae onslaught
- pessimistic, remorseless, and pitiless.
Michael Hurd’s The Shepherd’s Calendar (1975) charts a
very different course and sets John Clare’s 1827 poem, though it also
includes as part of the literary fabric - most movingly - the poem O love
is so deceiving! This Choral Symphony, which is itself, in effect, a cantata,
moves through the months with deft orchestration, pictorial wit, pastoral
charm and, in places, a refulgent Finzian quality. It’s a delightful
work, though one not wholly untroubled by doubt and loss, with a giocoso spirit
of freedom and adept word setting, fresh scene depiction and a lovely melancholy
that all prove captivating. Its heart is the setting of Clare’s poem,
a compressed Largo that manages, by virtue of the deftest of means
- wind pointing, string gauze - to imbue the text with a genuine poignancy.
The Harvest verve of the final movement proves culminatory and affecting in
equal measure. Not the least of Hurd’s gifts, as demonstrated here,
is the practical but attentive choral writing which ensures both clarity and
warmth. So, too, one appreciates his refined attention to rhythm and metre.
The two baritone soloists, Mark Stone in the Corp and Roderick Williams in
the Hurd, are both excellent interpreters of song, and they respond to the
texts with imagination and insight. Praise, too, for the choral and orchestral
forces, and Corp’s direction. These contrasting works, both warlike
and pastoral are heard here in premiere recordings. They make for abrupt but
affecting programming.
Jonathan Woolf
Warlike and pastoral works heard in premiere recordings and making for abrupt
but affecting programming.