Once in a while a disc comes along that is so well
played, so unselfconsciously right, with a well chosen programme and
a recording of well balanced clarity that it makes lengthy commentary
at best unnecessary and at worst redundant. So instead let’s welcome
Philippa Davies and Thelma Owen’s recital and enjoy it for what it is
– a delightfully evocative programme as tender and sun-flecked as the
cover painting, Les amants et les cygnes by Gaston de Latouche,
in which the dazzling gold of the girl’s hair is reflected in the burnish
of leaf and sun and the whiteness of her long gown, orange ringed at
her ankle, finds an echo in the swans’ huddled concentration.
The two musicians first met in the National Youth Orchestra
and have played together ever since. Their programme is reflective of
the move from salon to concert hall, from the simple to the double action
pedal harp, from the amateur to the virtuoso, from decorative to expressive
demands and it’s no great surprise that the recital is very solidly
Franco-German. I was immediately taken by Godefroid’s Etude de Concert
and am indebted to the fine notes by Peter Barber for the information
that he left the Paris Conservatoire because they were slow to change
from the single to the double action harp; his subsequent career as
a touring virtuoso rather proved his point. It has a distinctive and
affecting melancholy and a pervasive lyricism so indivisibly at one
with its chosen means of expression that, whilst it’s possible to imagine
it being played on the piano, it’s a thought made redundant by virtue
of its specific technical demands and concentrated beauty. Beautifully
played too by Thelma Owens.
Fauré was one of the earliest of major composers
to write for the harp. The Berceuse and Impromptu are works of immediate
subtlety and unforced ease. Note how Philippa Davies varies dynamics
in the former and how her tone is beautifully modulated, how the invitation
to opulent tonal display is politely declined. Note also how cleverly
she weaves the line, how softened and hardened notes are proportionate
and how the arch of the line is maintained in an unbroken span. The
Impromptu receives a forthright and magnetic performance from Thelma
Owens and it’s an additional pleasure of the disc how well and intelligently
the duo is interspersed with harp solos. The middle section of the CD
contains well-known transcriptions – Spring Song and Le Cygne – and
between them comes Queen Victoria’s harpist Elias Parish-Alvars, a British
contemporary of Mendelssohn, and similarly short-lived (consumption
in his case). Parish-Alvars was called "the Liszt of the harp"
by none other than Berlioz and so technically adept was he that he even
considered a triple-action harp. The Serenade isn’t one of his fearsome
virtuoso pieces but one can still sense the formidable technical demands
that he makes upon the performer. The Debussy transcriptions are superbly
executed; Davies, long associated with the Nash Ensemble, whose sensitivity
to the French tradition is pronounced, is herself effortlessly inside
the idiom as is her no less eloquent partner. A superb disc.
Jonathan Woolf
Philippa Davies. Flute