British Composers on Dutton

*  Erik Chisholm: Symphony No. 2 "Ossian"*
*  Trevor Hold: The Unreturning Spring, op. 3^
*  Eric Fogg: Sea-Sheen, an Idyll, op. 17**
  Merok^^

Ailish Tynan (soprano),^
Roderick Williams (baritone),^
Royal Scottish Orchestra/Martin Yates,*
BBC Concert Orchestra/Martin Yates,^ Gavin Sutherland,** Vernon Handley.^^
Dutton Epoch CDLX 7196  Total time: 63:29.

Summary for the Busy Executive: British byways.

Lewis Foreman and Dutton continue to bring to light composers from Great
Britain you probably have never heard of.  So far, I count Richard Arnell
as the most notable discovery, a writer of big, passionate symphonies,
but even more there have been first meetings that make me look forward
to further revelations.  Chisholm, Hold, and Fogg -- which sound like a
firm of lawyers or bespoke tailors -- are all new to me, after nearly
fifty years of passionately collecting British music.

Erik Chisholm (1904-65), with Ronald Stevenson the two most distinguished
Scottish composers between Mackenzie and MacMillan, was basically a man
of the Left, not only during the Thirties, but well into the Fifties.
Nevertheless, he wound up as head of the South African College of Music
in Cape Town.  He opposed apartheid and that and a couple of trips to
the Soviet Union put him on the security police's "subversives" list.
Indeed, security forces broke into and tore up his study as they searched
for incriminating evidence.  Nevertheless, Chisholm, a student of Tovey,
hardly ever got political in his music.  He championed "hard" Modernists
like Bartok and Schoenberg.  Lewis Foreman contends that Chisholm's
politics interfered with performances of his music.  But at least two
leftists -- Britten and Tippett -- came into their own and enjoyed many
performances after World War II.  Nevertheless, they based themselves
in England, while Chisholm had moved to South Africa.  I suspect it was
more a case of "out of sight, out of mind," as well as a swing of musical
fashion.

The symphony was never performed as such during Chisholm's life.  Part
of the first movement became a separate little tone poem.  Much of it
found brief life as a ballet.  We can blame Chisholm for part of this.
The symphony, in three formal movements, nevertheless falls into six
distinct parts, with the first movement divided in two and the last in
three.  Although Chisholm treats us to many interesting scenic views
along the way, we miss a compelling argument from beginning to end,
although none of the six sections rambles.

Despite Chisholm's affinity for difficult Modernism, his own music
rides on slightly more comfortable tracks.  I found myself most arrested,
I think, by the abstraction of Scottish folk elements in the symphony.
The first part of the opening movement treads slowly, but purposefully
(something like a French overture) in Celtic rhythm -- a taut elaboration
of the opening measures.  The sound of bagpipe chanters seems never far
away, and the second part of the movement (subtitled "A Celtic Wonder-Tale")
takes as its main idea running skirls.  Underneath, especially in the
orchestration, one hears traces of Bartok's bagpipe music.  The second
movement ("Scherzo-Toccata") takes off from the early Stravinsky ballets,
Petrushka especially, or perhaps similar movements in Shostakovich.
Although Chisholm shows himself as one of the most Continentally-aware
of British composers, the symphony in its essence doesn't jar with the
British symphonies of its time.  It may look toward the Continent, but
it is not of the Continent.  One might say the same of a Vaughan Williams
symphony.  Although its idiom differs, you have no difficulty placing
it side by side with the Walton First, the Bax Third, or the Moeran
g-minor.

The final movement impressed me the most.  Despite its three sections
-- distinguished mainly by different rhythms, tempi, and primary themes
-- it coheres the best, with the characteristic themes of earlier sections
showing up in later ones.  The movement proceeds along a giant arc.  It
begins with a slow introduction, moves to an animated middle, and winds
down with an elegiac epilogue.  It's also the most "British" of the
movements, with the occasional Scottish snap, all the way down to its
ending on a series of Vaughan-Williams-y "magic chords."

Eric Fogg (1903-39) led a short but interesting life.  A student of
Bantock, he became involved with both music and children's programming
on the BBC.  In fact, he was one of the early BBC "uncles." A man of
sudden mood shifts, he fell under a tube train the day before his second
marriage.  Pushed?  Fell?  Jumped?  The coroner returned an open verdict.
He died the year Chisholm completed his second symphony.  Fogg's best
piece seems to be his 1930 bassoon concerto, to judge by the high praise
from reviewers of a recent CD (available on ASV White Line 2132).  The
bulk of his output seems to consist of piano morceaux, songs, and short
orchestral pieces.

Sea-Sheen, first performed in 1919, exemplifies a kind of non-Debussyan
Impressionism promulgated by composers like Delius, early Bridge, and,
of course, Bantock.  It's pleasant, but little more.  The most notable
things about it are Fogg's age (16) and his control over orchestration.
Merok, a brief set of variations on a Norwegian folk-song, comes from
1934.  Again, the Delian influence comes through -- think Brigg Fair --
and the impulse of pretty pictorialism remains much the same, but the
musical thought has deepened considerably.  Full of wonderful solo
opportunities for the principal winds, this piece will haunt you,
as the best of Delius does.

Trevor Hold (1939-2004), poet and composer, is known for his song cycles.
On the basis of The Unreturning Spring, I consider him a songwriter at
the level of Britten.  The influence of Britten, particularly of the
later cycles like Nocturne, shows up in Hold, although the strongest
link of Hold's Unreturning Spring runs to Britten's Songs and Proverbs
of William Blake, written two years after.  Go figure.

Hold's cycle uses poems by James Farrar, killed in action during World War
II.  Farrar is a poet on the lookout for the perfect word and who seeks to
overwhelm you by understatement.  A breeze whispers through the "susurrant
trees."  An airman's wife searches the sky for her husband's take-off and
return:

. . . I understand
How much of life is evening, engine-sound
And being crucified alone at night.

The crucifixion points two ways: to the waiting, anxious wife and, through
the shape of the plane overhead, to the husband.

Hold's music has something of the North Atlantic gloom in it, although
he comes from Northampton and lived much of his life in the East Midlands.
Like Britten's, Hold's music has elegance and precision, as well as a
great sensitivity to the movement and structure of poetry.  There's not
really a hummable tune in the cycle, but that doesn't matter.  The songs
capture not only the shifts of the poetry without flying apart, but also
the emotional landscape.  They get under your skin.  Furthermore, Hold
somehow binds all the songs together.  I suspect this comes down to less
a matter of structural links than to a sure dramatic instinct.  I don't
hesitate to place this cycle at the level of Britten's bests.

All the performances are quite fine, with Tynan, Williams, and Yates
outstanding in the Hold, and Vernon Handley leads an exquisite reading
of Fogg's Merok.

Steve Schwartz

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