Michael STIMPSON (b. 1948)
Dylan, for baritone & harp (2006) [46.29]
The Drowning of Capel Celyn, for harp solo (2013) [15.23]
Roderick Williams (baritone)
Sioned Williams (harp)
rec. Llandudno Festival, 11 July 2006 and St Jude-on-the-Hill, London, 16
December 2014
STONE RECORDS 5060192780550 [61.52]
The centenary of the birth of Dylan Thomas (1914-53) was
marked by the appearance of two major works in his Welsh homeland: the opera
Under Milk Wood by John Metcalf, and the orchestral work Four
Portraits of Dylan by Mervyn Burtch – the former has appeared on
CD last year (review)
- but the latter really needs a commercial recording. The song cycle Dylan,
by English composer Michael Stimpson, was composed for the fiftieth anniversary
of the poet’s death, and bears testimony to the attraction of his writings
far beyond the borders of the Principality of Wales itself. His depiction
of Wales, warts and all, comes not from some idealised pastoral setting but
from the small towns which dot the landscape and where he settled for the
last years of his life, immortalising the fishing village of Laugharne in
the guise of Llaregyb (in Welsh spelling, Buggerall backwards) for his radio
play Under Milk Wood. His writing is full of humour and wry observation
as well as a deeply-rooted sense of nostalgia which totally transcends its
origins. Many other composers have felt drawn to the lyrical mood of Dylan’s
words; the fact that the poet can be referred to in this manner by his forename
in isolation testifies to the affection he inspires.
Although Stimpson’s Dylan is described as a song cycle, it
contains a fair admixture of spoken text and dialogue to produce a sort of
biography of the poet’s life as well as settings of some of his poems.
Non-English listeners should perhaps be warned that this spoken material constitutes
probably about a quarter of the recording here, and that the booklet contains
texts in English only. It comes as quite a shock that the performance begins
with the famous opening lines from Under Milk Wood, familiar from
recordings by major Welsh actors such as Richard Burton, Anthony Hopkins and
the author himself. Roderick Williams’s very different sort of voice
has to work hard — although his delivery of the text is excellent —
to erase memories of his predecessors. Sioned Williams joins him for one section
of dialogue from the play, where her natural Welsh accents jar against the
singer’s much more delicate hints at a Welsh style of delivery. It might
have been better if this recording had tracked the spoken text separately
from the songs where possible, but the combination of speech and song does
constitute a whole which those involved were presumably reluctant to disassemble.
The songs themselves are fairly straightforward settings of Dylan’s
poetry and prose texts, generally made with a carefully tuned ear for the
rise and fall of the lyrical lines although there are occasionally moments
that sound less than ideally idiomatic. Even so the songs are streets ahead
of Stravinsky’s setting of Do not go gentle into that good night,
one of the worst treatments of Dylan – or indeed any Anglophone poet
– that I know in terms of wilful and perverse accentuation and emphasis.
On the basis of that setting I think we should be grateful that the suggested
collaboration between the two on an opera never materialised; the results
might have been truly awful.
The full texts, both of spoken dialogue and songs, are given in the booklet;
but so superb is Roderick Williams’s diction that they are hardly needed.
They do serve to point up a couple of minor slips in the performance, but
given its live provenance that is not surprising. What is surprising is the
lack of audience response to the many humorous passages in the dialogue; there
is a murmur of suppressed laughter at a couple of points, but otherwise the
listeners seem to be treating every word as holy writ which must be heard
in respectful silence. Dylan would have been horrified at such behaviour.
The other work on this disc comes from seven years later, but like the song
cycle it was commissioned by Sioned Williams and this time it commemorates
the drowning of the valley of Capel Celyn in North Wales to provide a reservoir
for the city of Liverpool across the border in England despite unanimous opposition
from Welsh MPs. This high-handed action provoked a positive furore of resentment
throughout Wales, and indeed may be said to have kick-started the rise of
the Welsh national party Plaid Cymru, who won their first seat in Parliament
a year later. The ferocity of that protest can be gauged by the fact that
a friend of mine in Cardiff was given the forename of Treweryn by his irate
mother to commemorate the valley drowned in the newly dammed lake –
a name that he will still proudly explain to anyone who asks. That degree
of simmering anger is not really apparent in Michael Stimpson’s music,
a series of five miniatures which emphasise the sense of loss and desolation
rather than the political aspects of the situation. In the final movement
he quotes from Joseph Parry’s partsong Myfanwy, with its final
line Ffarwel; earlier, in the fifth song of the Dylan cycle,
he gives us a set of variants of the hymn tune Cwm Rhondda - which
he describes by its English title Bread of Heaven. Otherwise there
are no specific Welsh allusions in either of these pieces, although he captures
the general atmosphere well and indeed beautifully where appropriate.
The recording of The drowning of Capel Celyn is considerably more
resonant than that of Dylan, clearly reflecting the different acoustics
of the venues; but both are clear and pleasurable to listen to. The booklet
of 24 pages gives us not only the texts, but also extensive and comprehensive
notes by the composer on the music itself. This is a most attractive disc.
Paul Corfield Godfrey
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