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LENGNICK NEWS, MAY 2006 Sir Malcolm Arnold’s 85th birthday dominates much of Lengnick’s performance activity in 2006. (See performance list below.) It will be a wonderful celebration and we send our sincerest congratulations to this fine composer on achieving this great age. As part of these celebrations, Lengnick was happy to collaborate with the Birmingham Royal Ballet in its commissioning of a new arrangement of Solitaire, the ballet based on our English Dances, by Philip Lane. It will have several performances and should prove useful, with its smaller instrumentation (see more details under Arnold below). The Centenary last year of William Alwyn continues to be celebrated with further publications from Lengnick and important recording activity with Naxos. RECENT NEW PUBLICATIONS AND EDITIONS FROM LENGNICK (Purchase from Faber Music Distribution, sales@fmdistribution.com
RECENT AND FORTHCOMING PERFORMANCES OF LENGNICK TITLES
COMPOSER NEWS WILLIAM ALWYN Review of opening of Alwyn archive in Cambridge University Library and accompanying concert A child's photograph; an early exercise book; the flute he played at the Royal Academy of Music. There they were with scores and letters, artefacts of the composer William Alwyn, laid out like pinned butterflies in a Cambridge University Library exhibition, drawn from the 80 boxes of material recently donated by the William Alwyn Foundation. The usual evidence, you might suppose, of a life completed, tidied, and catalogued. But nothing was finite with this restless artist, and nothing certainly is dead. Listening to his first quartet of 1953 [errata – Quartet No. 3], played by the Endellion String Quartet at their related concert, you heard a work concise, chameleonic, bursting with energy and a romantic’s imagination. He was engaged, Alwyn said, on a 'perpetual search for the meaning of beauty’. If the composer couldn't track down beauty, the Endellions certainly did, notably in the slow movement's coup de grace, when the first violin is transformed into a skylark while quiet triplets throb from the other players. Alwyn's prolific work as a film composer had taught him to make every note count; the Endellions didn’t waste any either as they scurried or soared through the quartet's hesitant motifs, always in search of an anchor. Other players should take up this gem immediately. Earlier, in a talk, Richard Andrewes, the library's head of music, had pointed out the black irony in Alwyn's life; just when he gave up film work in 1963, changes in musical fashions made his concert music, his true love, largely unwanted by the commissioning powers. But as the concert proved, Alwyn’s best 'serious' music easily has the fibre to survive, even when it rubs against Haydn's wit..or the muscle of Beethovens’ first Razumovsky quartet...Geoff Brown THE TIMES 06.03.06 The following Alwyn Lengnick copyright works were recorded in January by the RLPO with David Lloyd Jones for the Naxos label: Elizabethan Dances Oboe Concerto Symphonic Prelude: "The Magic Island" Festival March Concerto Grosso No. 1 The soloist for the Alwyn Oboe Concerto was Jonathan Small, principle oboist with the RLPO. He is a fine and sensitive player and has already had CD's released of the Vaughan Williams and Richard Strauss Concertos to great critical acclaim. Other recording projects in the pipeline are song cycles – Invocations, Mirages and Six Nocturnes with Ellen Mannerhan Thomas, soprano, and the baritone, Jeremy Huw Williams, both accompanied by Iain Burnside on piano. MALCOLM ARNOLD Sir Malcolm's 85th birthday year is being celebrated in enormous style, as the many performances in the list above shows. A new arrangement of Solitaire has been commissioned from Philip Lane and will have several performances by the Birmingham Royal Ballet. The instrumentation is for a small ensemble of brass, wind, percussion and keyboards and should prove useful for performances in some of the smaller orchestral pits encountered by ballet companies. Norfolk and Norwich Festival the information that they will be including MA's String Quartet 1 with the Maggini Quartet in their programme for this year. Gerd Jansen of the Institut für bildnerisches Denken, Grenzach-Wyhlen, is planning performances of the following pieces to celebrate Arnold's 85 birthday: op.9 - Variations on a Ukrainian Folk Song (for piano solo) op.36 - Eight Children's pieces (for piano solo) op.19 - Sonatina for Flute and Piano op.29 - Sonatina for Clarinet and Piano EDMUND RUBBRA The month of May was crowned by performances of all the symphonies on the afternoon concert programme on Radio 3, a fitting tribute and a fine opportunity to hear this marvellous achievement. Review Violin Concerto, Improvisations on Virginal Pieces by Giles Farnaby, Improvisation Krysia Osostowicz, vn; Ulster Orchestra/Takuo Yuasa Naxos 8 557591 05 The appearance of this new recording of Rubbra’s Violin Concerto is both welcome and timely….Composed in 1959, it’s one of Rubbra’s most compelling large-scale offerings, comprising a masterly opening Allegro that finds lyrical intensity and organic growth in blissful accord, a ravishing central ‘Poema’ (whose gentle rapture harks back to the ‘Canto’ slow movement of the Sixth Symphony from 1954) and a wonderfully earthy finale, full of bracing vigour and rhythmic elan. The 1956 Improvisation for violin and orchestra also repays close inspection , a 12-and-1-half-minute essay of notable economy of thought and expressive variety that salvages material from an earlier Fantasia for violin and orchestra from the mid-1930s….[Krysia Osostowicz} plays with great spirit and beauty of tone and is unfazed by any technical hurdles….(Improvisations on Virginal Pieces by Giles Farnaby) is a most beguiling, concise score...a very likeable and useful disc overall.
Andrew Achenbach
THE GRAMOPHONE, November 2005 BERNARD STEVENS The complete piano works from Dutton has been released with works for solo piano on the first and further works for solo piano, piano (four hands) and two pianos (four hands) on the second disc. Here is a review of the release: In this case never before have we had such a generous and definitive collection of Bernard Stevens' piano music. Stevens's rose to something approaching prominence in the 1940s and 1950s but suffered grievously because of his communist sympathies. Not as numerically productive as fellow left-winger Alan Bush, Stevens' orchestral output has been well covered in recordings. Both Meridian and Albany have done well by him no doubt with sponsorship from the composer's staunchly dedicated widow Bertha Stevens. The two Meridian CDs of the two symphonies and the concertos for violin and cello are well worth tracking down as is the Marco Polo of the piano concerto. The surprisingly lyrical Shadow of the Glen opera is gripping and very emotional. Hear it on Albany. We must hope that his few remaining unrecorded orchestral works will make it to disc alongside his half a dozen plus chamber orchestra cantatas. There have been previous CDs of Stevens piano music but nothing as ambitious as this Dutton project. It is clear that Florian Uhlig - who previously I had not heard of - is fundamentally engaged in this music. He presides over the first disc. The Farnaby Fantasia was written for Denis Matthews in 1953. It is not at all precious or twee and avoids the smock gentility of parts of Rubbra's Farnaby Improvisations for orchestra. There is an impetuous storminess in some of this writing which recalls the symphonic Rubbra at one point and Howard Ferguson's piano sonata at another. The piece ends with a return to the atmosphere of the Farnaby original. In 1972 Stevens orchestrated the piece as Introduction, Variations and Fugue on a theme of Giles Farnaby. The Five Inventions were written in 1950 for James Gibb. They are brevities although two run for 2:55 and 3:42. Brief they may be but none are inconsequential. The Adagio broods in bleakness. The cut-glass gallop of the Presto reminds me of Rawsthorne at his most fleet-fingered. The Theme and Variations was written for Eiluned Davies who some years ago recorded, on cassette only, much of the solo piano music of Bernard van Dieren. Here it is not van Dieren we think of but Finzi - and we will return to that name. Stevens had several of his works played by Finzi's Newbury String Players so there are biographical links as well. Mild dissonances and a grave manner recall the sobriety of the Farnaby Fantasy although there are fireworks and a skip in the step in the final bars. There are two Ballades. The First Ballade from 1951 was dedicated to Leonard Cassini who gave the premiere in London in 1953. It will be recalled that Cassini recorded various things for the Revolution LP label circa 1970. The moderato pace of the First Nocturne is clearly typical of Stevens here leavened by a gently undulating song - a distant relative of de Falla - and a devilish jig. The Second Ballade followed eighteen years later having been written for and premiered on the BBC by Ronald Stevenson. Here Stevens taps into a more vigorous vein - less prone to moderato. It is a fantastic piece -and the mood could be compared to a specially grotesque Rachmaninov Etude-Tableau or one of Medtner's Ballades updated. Who remembers Clive Lythgoe? I hope I am not alone. I recall his two Philips LPs - one of Macdowell and the other that included piano solos by Griffes and Robert Nathaniel Dett. He is the dedicatee of the Sonata written in 1954 and premiered that year in Cheltenham. Lewis Foreman in his typically valuable notes - perhaps drier than his usual style though - tells us that it could be considered a sonata-ballade in the Medtner tradition. That is spot-on. Medtner yes ... but Medtner with infusions of Bartók and Rawsthorne. This is powerful music rising to bell-tower heroics at 11:26 then slipping into Bach-Finzi 'zippiness' at 13:00 accelerating into the home straight before changing down for a splendour-weighted and lightning-lit finale. Outstandingly impressive! On to the second disc: ...The Fantasia on an Irish Ho-Hoane was Stevens’ first piano duet composition. It dates from 1949 and was written for Helen Pyke and Paul Hamburger; the latter a familiar name from BBC broadcasts of the 1950s-1970s. Ho-Hoane derives tortuously from the Gaelic for a croon or lament. The Fantasia is part of a group of four keyboard pieces modelled on Elizabethan fantasias. It is a wide-ranging piece: dancing, dramatic, regal and reflective. There are no avant-garderies here. Then come four short pieces for piano solo. There is a gently rocking Barcarolle, a Holst-Grainger like Haymaker's Dance... Finally there is the Concertante for Two Pianos. This was for the Daguls and was written in Minorca in 1982. They had in fact requested a concerto for two pianos and string orchestra but the score recovered after Stevens' death was only for two pianos. After a heroic and challenging first movement comes another of those starry firmaments (cf the Stevenson Nocturne). The motion of the halting waltz-inflected finale has an irresistible momentum that makes this piece extremely imposing even if the final page left me wondering about the work's completeness. This is a fine set with clearly authoritative playing from the Daguls, a touching and historically important contribution by composer-pianist Michael Finnissy and wondrously impressive work by Florian Uhlig. No collection of British piano music is complete without this two CD single width set. There are so many highlights here - any one of which would justify the purchase of this invaluable set. Personal favourites include the Piano Sonata, the Ballades, Barcarolle and Birthday Song, the Concertante and the majestic Elegiac Fugue. Not to be missed ... and at 2 for 1 price. Rob Barnett NEW RECORDINGS OF LENGNICK TITLES
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