Johann Adolf Hasse - Cantatas, Ballads & Sonatas

"Johann Adolf Hasse suffered the sad fate of a highly successful composer who lived too long and was left behind by his own art. His life encompassed the period from late Baroque to the early stirrings of Romanticism, and although he attempted to keep up with changes in musical taste it was, understandably, beyond the powers of even so resourceful a composer as Hasse. He was baptised on 25 March 1699 near Hamburg; when he died in Venice on Tuesday 16 December 1783 he was well into his 85th year.

"Hasse is regarded as a member of the 'North German School', a group of composers centred round Frederick the Great's court at Potsdam, even though Hasse spent much of his profession life elsewhere. The king's fanatical attachment to the flute accounts partly for Hasse's frequent use of it: in the Cantata 'Fille, dolce mio bene', where a violin obbligato is permitted, Hasse's preference is for flute.

"His career began as a tenor in Hamburg but he soon began composing. 'Antioco', his first opera, was given in August 1721 in Brunswick, after which he left for the traditional home of opera: Italy. Hasse studied with Alessandro Scarlatti, and his repeated successes early on proved that this study had been most fruitful. Between 1725 and 1729 he produced nine operas for Naples and a further dozen for other Italian centres before moving to Dresden in 1736. Meanwhile, Hasse and his wife, the singer Faustina Bordoni, visited Dresden for three months in 1731. There they found the Czech composer Jan Dismas Zelenka standing in for Johann David Heinichen, who had died in 1729. Hasse had already been appointed as Heinichen's successor, much to Zelenka's chagrin since he had for and expected the post. Hasse enjoyed the financial benefit even though he left soon afterwards to return to Italy. Zelenka's bitterness at being thus snubbed may be imagined.

"Hasse's success continued, his operas being premiered in Vienna, Hubertusburg and Dresden as well as in Italy, and his popularity extended even as far as London, though he never visited England. Eventually the changing times began to tell on him. In 1769 he vowed that 'Piramo e Tisbe' was to be his last opera, but 'Il Ruggiero' followed in 1771, written at the request of Maria Theresa and given in Milan. Its companion piece was 'Ascanio in Alba' by a 15-year-old Austrian called Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and the juxtaposition of old and new styles painfully brought home to Hasse that he written one opera too many. He was now 72, and when he renewed acquaintance with Mozart (whom he had first met in Vienna in 1768) he was wise enough to remark: 'This youngster will consign us all to oblivion.' He may have experienced the disappointment Zelenka had felt 40 years earlier but he certainly did not show it. On the contrary, he displayed much charm and courtesy, respect and admiration, as graciously yielded to Mozart's superiority.

"Nevertheless, Hasse continued to compose. He left a vast amount of vocal music: 63 operas, a dozen oratorios, some 20 masses and requiems, and hundreds of other works. Of his nearly 90 cantatas, two are included in this recording. They were doubtless written to be performed by his wife Faustina Bordoni, a singer renowned in her time for the penetrating clarity and flexibility of her voice, the skill with which she sustained the line by disguising her intakes of breath, and - something not too common amongst singers - her ability to act. Sir Charles Burney in his 'General History of Music' (1776) wrote: 'She in a manner invented a new kind of singing, by running divisions with a neatness and velocity which astonished all who heard her.' Hasse would have been less than faithful to his wife's fame if he had not written his vocal music in order to accommodate and exploit her special qualities.

"'Cantata: Quel vago seno, O Fille': This cantata for soprano with flute obbligato and continuo is planned in the common form of alternating recitatives and arias. After the bitter message of the opening recitative the first aria gives the honour of the main theme to the flute. Later in this A-B-A form movement there is intricate interplay between flute and voice. Further pleading to the unresponsive Phyllis in the second recitative would have given Faustina a chance to display her famous dramatic skill, while telling chromatic passages in the triple-time final aria maintain the soulful mood of the cantata.

"'Sonata in B minor, Op. 2 No. 6, for flute and basso continuo': In effect and format this sonata, published in London in 1740, resembles the cantata except that the recitatives are replaced by slow arias. Even the withdrawn, almost tragic, mood is similar: it is a mood that was much practiced by North German composers, who prided themselves upon their ability to wrench the heart with or without the assistance of words.

"'Aria: Ah Dio, ritornate' from 'La conversione di Sant'Agostino': This is graphically proved in this aria, in which the voice part is entrusted to viola da gamba. It was common practice for composers to make their works available for alternative instruments (Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, the greatest member of the North German School, composed concertos in such a way that harpsichord or flute or cello might take the solo), and to play a vocal aria on an instrument was quite acceptable.

"'Cantata: Fille, dolce mio bene': The poor swain (traditionally sung by a high male voice) now seems reconciled that his burning love for the 'beautiful Phyllis' will be unrequited. The flute obliggato stays predominantly in the low register to allow the voice its brilliance but also to reflect the hopeless yearning of the lover. Yes, after all, there is joy in the finale, the flute, for all its suppression, announcing a confident theme.

"'Sonata in C minor, Op. 7 No. 6, for harpsichord': Again in slow-fast-slow-fast form, this substantial sonata opens with a French-overture-like Adagio: declamatory, with dotted rhythms, each half repeated. The Allegro's earnest rhythmic drive is succeeded by an Adagio in aria style, reminiscent in its reflective mood of the central movement of Bach's 'Italian Concerto'. A catch two-note bell motif marks off the sections and repeats of the finale. The six sonatas of Op. 7 were printed in London in 1758.

"'Venetian Ballads': These four little gems are full of charm and variety and, although simple in structure, are open to imaginative interpretation. In addition to the sung text there are instrumental introductions and postludes (flute and continuo in the first, gamba alone in the second) together with subtle ornamentation. The barcarolle-like fourth ballad is a languid reminder of the city for which these miniatures were written." (Robert Dearling, 1994. From the liner notes.)

Performers: Julianne Baird, Nancy Hadden, Erin Headley, Malcolm Proud

1. Quel Vago Seno, O Fille: Quel Vago Seno, O Fille

2. Quel Vago Seno, O Fille: Nel Verd'e Dolce Aprile

3. Quel Vago Seno, O Fille: Impara, Fille, Impara, Fille, Ingrata

4. Quel Vago Seno, O Fille: Or Che Gradita

5. Sonata In B Minor, Op. 2 No. 6: I. Andante

6. Sonata In B Minor, Op. 2 No. 6: II. Allegro

7. Sonata In B Minor, Op. 2 No. 6: III. Arioso

8. Sonata In B Minor, Op. 2 No. 6: IV. Presto

9. La Conversione De Sant'Agostino: Ah Dio, Ritornate

10. Fille Dolce, Mio Bene: Fille, Dolce Mio Bene, E Tempo Omai

11. Fille Dolce, Mio Bene: Io Non Chiedo, O Belle Fille

12. Fille Dolce, Mio Bene: Vedi Se Son Discreto

13. Fille Dolce, Mio Bene: Per Te, Mia Fille

14. Sonata In C Minor, Op. 7 No. 6: I. Adagio

15. Sonata In C Minor, Op. 7 No. 6: II. Allegro

16. Sonata In C Minor, Op. 7 No. 6: III. Adagio

17. Sonata In C Minor, Op. 7 No. 6: IV. Allegro

18. Venetian Ballads: Grazie Agli Inganni Tuoi

19. Venetian Ballads: No Ste'a Condanarme

20. Venetian Ballads: Cosa E' Sta Cossa?

21. Venetian Ballads: Si', La Gondola Avere', No Crie'

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Georg Friedrich Händel - Berenice

"The premiere of Handel's 'Berenice' in London on May 18, 1737 came at a low point in the composer's life. From 1710 - the year he first set foot on English soil - until the night of the premiere, Handel had been at the center of London's music life. Starting in 1719, he had been largely responsible for bringing Italian opera - and virtuosic Italian singers - to the London stage. But by 1737, the year 'Berenice' premiered - and then disappeared after only four performances (the fewest of any of Handel's operas) - Italian opera and, it seemed, Handel himself, had fallen from fravor with both the general public and the high-born Englishmen who had underwritten London's operatic activities. The road to ruin was as long and tangled as a Handelian plot.

"When Handel arrived in England in 1710, he found a country more accustomed to music as an accompaniment to spoken drama than as a vehicle for drama. Resistance to a foreign form which presented a story in song never completely disappeared and, in the end, was one factor leading to the eclipse of Italian opera in London. But not before it enjoyed a brief - and brilliant - run on the capital's stages, largely under George Frideric Handel's direction.

"Handel, already an established composer when he came to London from Italy, quickly ingratiated himself with English nobility and royalty; by 171 he was being described as 'His Majesty's principal Court Composer'. His first three operas in London - 'Rinaldo' (premiered 1711), 'Il Pastor Fido' and 'Teseo' (both 1712) enjoyed some success. But it wasn't until 1719, when some of Handel's high born friend saw the possibility of reaping financial profit from opera, that Italian opera really took hold in the English capital.

"That year, a group of noblemen joined together to erect 'an academy at the Haymarket...' The investors, who dubbed their venture the Royal Academy of Music, named Handel 'master of the Orchestra with a sallary', and on May 14, 1719, Handel headed to Italy to recruit singers for the new company.

"These singers, as much as the operas written by Handel and other composers, most notably Bononcini and Attilio (Ariosti), contributed both to the wild popularity and ultimate failure of opera in 18th-century London. English audiences, once described as having 'vile tastes' by Mrs. Pendarves, a friend of Handel, may not have understood or appreciated the convoluted plots and foreign tongue of Italian opera, but they could grasp a good rivalry, and the Italian singers provided a steady supply of fireworks. The best-known duel was between the divas Cuzzoni and Faustina.

"But the display of singer's ego that was to cause Handel the greatest grief came from the alto 'castrato' Senesino, who, in 1733 had a hand in the formation of a rival company to Handel's known at the time various as 'Senesino's Opera' or 'The Opera at Lincoln's-Inn Fields' and later as 'Opera of the Nobility', because of its support by many of Handel's former patrons.

"The formation of Senesino's company came five years after the financially troubled Royal Academy had been dissolved and control turned over to Handel and John Jacob Heidegger, an impressario and the Academy's manager. After assuming control, the two had to rebuild from the ground up, as many of the Academy's singers had already returned to the continent, among them Senesino, a star of the Royal Academy for the eight years of its existence. His absence was sorely felt and the first season of Handel's reorganized company was essentially a failure. Lured by a hugely inflated salary, the 'castrato' did return for the following season and his reappearance in 1730 reportedly 'charm'd much'.

"Despire the continuation of a Handel-run company and the premieres of several of his new operas duiring the close of the twenties and the first years of the thirties ('Siroe' and 'Tolomeo' in 1728, 'Poro' in 1731, and 'Sosarme' in 1732) there were strong indications that Italian opera, never on firm footing in England, was slipping further out of favor with English audiences. The most dramatic evidence Handel could have had for their apparent desire for simpler plots, presented in a familiar language, was the great success of his first English-language oratorio, 'Esther', premiered in 1732. But despite direct suggestions from friends to write English operas for native audiences and despite the growing success of a budding English opera; the wild popularity of John Gay's burlesuqe, 'A Beggar's Opera'; and even the success of his own 'Esther', Handel clung stubbornly to Italian opera, a form he knew intimately and of which he was a supreme master.

"It would appear that on top of their boredom with Italian opera and with the endless feuds among Handel's singers, the nobility that provided a substantial portion of the company's funding were fed up with Handel himself. Their displeasure with his 'imperious and extravagant Will', as one press account put it, eventually led to the formation of the rival opera company with a cast headed by Senesino and comprising the remainder of Handel's singers, who - with the exception of the loyal soprano Anna Maria Studo - had decamped 'en masse' to join the upstart ensemble.

"In 1734, Handel's longtime partner, Heidegger, added insult to injury by leading the Haymarket theater to Senesino's new company. Reports in 1735 to indicate Handel's productions playing to nearly empty houses at his new digs in Covent Garden, while his rivals were drawing enthusiastic crowds with their newest imported star, the castrato Farinelli. 

"Handel still enjoyed the support of the royal cort and even received funding from the Prince of Wales, a major backer of Senesino's company. But London, which could barely support one opera company, could certainly not sustain two. The competing enterprises survived for another four seasons and then both collapsed, but not before 'Berenice' - one of Handel's last operas - saw the light of day.

"Years of seeing his singers and patrons desert him and decades of championing an art from that was misunderstood by audience and overly expensive to produce in a climate wracked by rivalries among the artists and patrons had taken its toll on Handel. In April of 1737, just a month before the 'Berenice' premiere, the maestro suffered a minor, but debilitating stroke, which prevented him from being present at the premiere of his latest creation.

"What appeared at that time as a tragic end to a glorious career was, in fact, a turning point, for after Handel's return from taking the cure on the continent, the composer was to spend the next few years gradually shifting his attentions from his beloved opera to oratorio, the form that would bring him renewed acclaim from the audiences of that day.

"Handel composed his three-act Italian drama 'Berenice' in the last weeks of 1736 and finished it in January of 1737. The librettist Antonio Salvai - his collaborator on 'Rodelinda' (1725) - supplied 'Berenice, regina d'Egitto', a subject which had previously been set to music by Jacopo Perti and ironically by Nicola Porpora, who was later to direct Senesino's Opera. Handel's choice of 'Berenice' could not have been coincidence; it was to be his final thrust against a competitor for the affections of London audiences.

"Salvai's story, set in ancient Egypt, was subtitled 'The Contests of Love and Politics', and was filled with the customary amorous intrigues, deceit, ambition, and fidelity - the stuff of some of Handel's most inspired and glorious musical settings.

"Though Handel could not be present at the premiere, it was attended by the King and Queen and several of their children. Anna Strada sang the title role, Gioachino Conti sang Alessandro, and Signora Bertolli who had decamped from the now-defunct rival troupe to join Handel's company, took the mezzo role of Princess Selene. The bravura part of Demetrio went to Domenico Annibali, Prince Arsace to Negri and the two lower male roles to John Beard and Thomas Rheinhold.

"No contemporary accounts of 'Berenice's launch have survived, although Charles Burney, the 18th-century music historian, described the minuet as 'happy and pleasing to an uncommon degree'. The score of the opera was published by John Walsh in June 1737. Several airs from the score were borrowed by the composer for one of his many 'pasticcio' operas in February 1738. Aside from a single revival of 'Berenice', supposedly offered in Brunswick in 1743 in a production not overseen by the composer, the work has remained unknown for centuries except for its overture and one popular aria. Ironically, the latter, 'Si, tra pi ceppi' - now a standard of vocal anthologies - was not part of Handel's main score, but rather an 'ossia' for Demetrio, which we present on this premier recording because of its superior musical inventiveness as well as its obvious and enduring appeal.

"Aside from those two well-known selections, this work offers the modern listener many other pleasures. Handel himself must have been pleased with the work, as he borrowed from it later in his career, reworking Berenice's Act Two aria 'Sempre dolci' into Clomiri's aria 'V'è un infelice' in 'Imeneo' (1740), and reusing themes from the third-act Sinfonia in his 1749 'Music for the Royal Fireworks'.

"The virtuosic vocal writing, occasioned by the egoistic demands of his singers, is well-represented in 'Berenice'. Each of the seven principals enjoys the knd of challenging solo writing that thrills the modern listener as much as it did 18th-century London audiences.

"Knowing what we do now about the shaky state of of opera's economics in Handel's London - particularly after the formation of Senesino's Opera - one wonders if 'Berenice's simply, yet effective scoring for strings, oboes, and continuo was as much a financial as an artistic decision. There are many occasions - among them the heroic Berenice-Demetrio duet of love and vengeance ending Act I ('Se il mio amor fu il tuo delitto'), as well as the ceremonial orchestral movements - that lend themselves to scoring for trumpets, horns and timpani. Was it budgetary considerations or Handel's rush to present a new work to match his rivals' offerings? We can't know for sure. But we do know that there was no shortage of large forces later in his career, when Handel, fully recovered from his illness, proceeded to pen some of his most glorious and enduring music, including several new operas and numerous richly scored oratorios. (From the liner notes.)

Performers: Brewer Chamber Orchestra, Rudolph Palmer, Edward Brewer, Julianne Baird, Drew Minter, D'Anna Fortunato, Jennifer Lane, Jan Opalach, Andrea Matthews, John McMaster

1.1. Ouverture: Maestoso

1.2. Ouverture: Allegro

1.3. Ouverture: Minuet

1.4. Ouverture: Gigue

1.5. Atto I: 'Aristobolo, A Noi Venga Il Romano'

1.6. Atto I: 'No, No, Che Servire Altrui'

1.7. Atto I: 'Fabio, Vedesti Mai Più Bell'orgoglio?'

1.8. Atto I: 'Vedi, L'ape Ch'ingegnosa Su Quei Fior'

1.9. Atto I: 'Io, Di Selene?'

1.10. Atto I: 'Che Sarà Quando Amante Accarezza?'

1.11. Atto I: 'Cara, Non Sospirar'

1.12. Atto I: 'No, Soffrir Non Può Il Mio Amore'

1.13. Atto I: 'Selene, Oh Dei!'/'Gelo, Avvampo, Considero E Sento'

1.14. Atto I: 'Alla Quiete D'Egitto'

1.15. Atto I: 'Con Gli Strali D'amor'

1.16. Atto I: 'Ascolta, E All'alma Quiete Comparti'

1.17. Atto I: 'Dice, Amor, Quel Bel Vermiglio'

1.18. Atto I: 'Principessa, Ed È Ver'

1.19. Atto I: 'Senza Nudrisce Alcuna'

1.20. Atto I: 'Alessandro, Che Pensi?'

1.21. Atto I: 'Quell'oggetto Ch'è Caro'

1.22. Atto I: 'Che Valor!'

1.23. Atto I: 'Se Il Mio Amor'

2.1. Atto II: 'Se Non Ho L'idol Mio'

2.2. Atto II: 'Già Che Per Tuo Consorte'

2.3. Atto II: 'Guerra E Pace'

2.4. Atto II: 'Molto Afflitto, Demetrio'

2.5. Atto II: 'Sempre Dolci Ed Amorose'

2.6. Atto II: 'Selene, Infida'

2.7. Atto II: 'Su, Megera, Tisifone, Aletto!'

2.8. Atto II: 'Mio Bel Sol'

2.9. Atto II: 'O Dei!'

2.10. Atto II: 'La Bella Mano'

2.11. Atto II: 'Aristobolo, Oh Dei!'

2.12. Atto II: 'Amore Contro Amor'

2.13. Atto II: 'Tiranne Degli Affetti!'

2.14. Atto II: 'Senza Te Sarebbe Il Mondo'

2.15. Atto II: 'E Qual Furor Geloso'

2.16. Atto II: 'Traditore, Traditore'

2.17. Atto II: 'Principessa, T'arresta'

2.18. Atto II: 'Si, Tra I Ceppi'

2.19. Atto II: 'È Questo L'amor Tuo?'

2.20. Atto II: 'Sì Poco E Forte'

3.1. Atto III: Sinfonia

3.2. Atto III: 'Olà! Tra Lacci Suoi'

3.3. Atto III: 'Per Si Bella'

3.4. Atto III: 'Regina, Addio!'

3.5. Atto III: 'Chi T'intende?'

3.6. Atto III: 'Tortorella Che Rimira Presso'

3.7. Atto III: 'Qui Dove Il Mio Tesoro'

3.8. Atto III: 'Questa Qual Sia Beltà'

3.9. Atto III: 'Qual Arduo Impegno, O Arsace!'

3.10. Atto III: 'Le Dirai... Dirò Che Amore'

3.11. Atto III: 'Prence, D'Iside Al Tempio'

3.12. Atto III: 'In Quella Sola'

3.13. Atto III: 'De' Satrapi E Adunata'

3.14. Atto III: 'Avvertite, Mie Pupille'

3.15. Atto III: Sinfonia

3.16. Atto III: 'Gran Nume Tutelar Di Questo Regno'

3.17. Atto III: 'Quella Fede, Quel Volto'

3.18. Atto III: 'Se Di Mia Libertà Prezzo'

3.19. Atto III: 'Con Verace Dolce Pace'

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Marc-Antoine Charpentier - La Descente d'Orphée aux Enfers

"Charpentier was born in Paris in 1643. We know nothing of his early life in France, but in the 1660s he went to Rome, where he studied for several years with Giacomo Carissimi, master composer of church music, oratorios, and chamber cantatas. Back in Paris about 1670, Charpentier was apparently given lodging and support by the pious, music-loving Marie de Lorraine, duchesse de Guise (always called 'Mademoiselle de Guise'); he remained in her service, as composer and singer, until about 1687. During the same period, however, he collaborated with the Troupe de Roi - Molière's company, renamed the Comédie Française - composing songs, orchestral overtures, and dances for their plays, and comic skits for the intermèdes between acts. He came close to service at court for a few years (around 1680), as composer for the chapel of the Dauphin - and wrote for him one of two operatio divertissements ('Les plaisirs de Versailles', perhaps also 'La fête de Ruel') - but was never appointed by Louis XIV to a royal post.

"By the mid-1680s, having achieved a considerable reputation as a composer of sacred music, Charpentier was appoint maître de musique at the most prestigious Jesuit church in Paris, St. Louis, renowned for the high quality of its music. And ultimately, in 1698, he became maître de musique at the Saint-Chapelle, a position in French sacred music second only to that of music director in the King's chapel. He remained there until his death early in 1704.

"Quite possibly, had Jean-Baptiste Lully and Michel Richard de Lalande not dominated so successfully the music at the court of Louis XIV, Charpentier might himself have become a figure there and composed more instrumental music and especially works for the theatre. He had great talent for musical drama, as is apparently in the stage work we have by him - notably the sacred opera 'David et Jonathas' (1688); 'Médée', perhaps the greatest masterpiece (produced at the Académie Royale, the Opéra, in 1693); and operatic divertissements, pastorales, and cantates - not to mention dozens of dramatic motets (histoires sacrées). With 'La descente d'Orphée aux enfers', Charpentier joined the many composers drawn to the myth of Orphée as the basis for operas.

"Understandably: not only is it a poignant love story and dramatic tragedy, it celebrates the mysterious and formidable power of music itself, over even supernatural forces. The earliest surviving operas, composed in Italy about 1600, were based on that myth (settings by each of the Florentines Jacopo Peri and Giulio Caccini of Rinuccini's libretto, 'Euridice', and Claudio Monteverdi's masterpiece, for Mantua, to Striggio's 'Orfeo'). Other operatic versions predating Charpentier's were Stefano Landi's 'La morte d'Ortfeo' (1619) and Luigi Rossi's 'Orfeo' (1647) - which was staged at the Palais Royal, as part of Mazarin's campaign to italianize French culture. Charpentier himself composed a sort of warm-up for 'La descente d'Orphée' in a chamber cantata (probably the first of that genre by a French composer): 'Orphée descendant aux enfers', a modest work for three male singers (representing Orphée and the shades Ixion and Tantale) and a small chamber ensemble.

"About three years later - late 1686 or early 1687 - came 'La descente d'Orphée aux enfers'. Charpentier composed it for the musicians of M'lle de Guise, though we know nothing about the circumstances of its performance. Although not on the grand scale of the 'tragédies en musique' staged at court (with their full orchestras, generous corps de ballet, massive choruses, and panopolies of solo-vocalists), the work called for the entire musical équipe of M'lle de Guise, plus some extra instrumentalists: Charpentier's manuscript mentions by name five female and five male singers, with an instrumental ensemble consisting of flutes (alternating with violins), viols, and harspichord. 'La descente d'Orphée' seems also to have been the last major work in which Charpentier participated as a singer: he had been for years the principal 'haute-contre' of the de Guise establishment, but in this opera, a newly appointed one, François Anthoine, sang the title role and Charpentier was relegated to the secondary one of Ixion. Charpentier's score also mentions (as player of flute or violin) 'Luollié' - Etienne Loulié, best-known as a music theorist - and a pair of flautists, 'Anth' and 'Pierrot', probably the brothers Antoine and Pierre of the family Pièche, well known at the time in court circles. Various 'chœurs' appear in the opera: a high-voiced 'Chœur de Nymphes' and a mixed-voice 'chœur de Nymphes et de Bergers' in Act I; in Act II, a mixed 'Chœur de Furies', a slighter 'Chœur d'Ombres heureuses et de Furies'. Not independent choral ensembles, these were varied combinations of the named solo singers, who may also have served as dancers for the brief ballet entrées in both acts.

"In sum, as conceived by Charpentier, 'La descente d'Orphée' was a chamber opera, probably performed only once - and not in public but in the private quarters of M'lle de Guise (or perhaps of her less single-mindedly devout younger relative known as Mme. de Guise').

"The librettist of 'La descente d'Orphée is unknown, but the ultimate source is the 'Metamorphoses' of Ovid (Libre X, histoire 1). The leading actors in the drama are, of course, Orphée and his bride Euridice (the latter mortally stung by a serpent on their wedding day). To Ovid's couple the librettist added, in the happy first scene of Act I, some nymphs and shepherds; as the act ends, Apollon, father of Orphée, also makes a brief appearance, inviting Orphée to go to Hades and persuade its sovereign, Pluton, to allow Euridice to return to the upper world. (Apollon appears similarly as 'deus ex machina' in Monteverdi's 'Orfeo'.) In Act II, the opera's underworld characters are all Ovidian: the 'ombres coupables' Tantale (punished by eternal hunger and thirst), Ixion (bound to a revolving wheel), and Titye (his liver torn by vultures), as well as a crowd of Furies - all brought to tears (the Furies for the first time ever) by the beauty of Orphée's singing.

"Pluton is at first resistant to Orphée's pleading and not persuaded by Orphée's argument (as related by Ovid) that, after all, both Euridice and Orphée must eventually return to Hades and thus, surely, Pluton can afford to make a temporary -loan- of Euridice! Ultimately, however, implored by his queen Proserpine (supported and echoed by groups of shades), Pluton yields and gives permission for Euridice to be restored to Orphée.

"And here is where Charpentier's opera ends - or, at least, where the unique surviving score (the composer's autograph) ends. Some believe that he intended to end here - and indeed, Act II has an effective conclusion, a 'Sarabande légère' to be danced by the 'Fantômes' who, moments before, have lamented that the beautiful voice of Orphée will be only a 'souvenir si doux' when he departs with Euridice. I believe, however, that Charpentier planned (and may in fact have composed) a third, concluding act, the music for which has not survived.

"The little opera is full of musical charm and cunning characterization. It opens with an overture that is vaguely Lullian (in two parts, each repeated, the first a sort of march, the second a livelier, more contrapuntal triple-meter dance), but lighter in texture and briefer than most overtures by Lully - perfectly appropriate in scale for the chamber opera to follow. The tonality is A-major, characterized as 'joyeux et champêtre' by Charpentier in a list he once drew up of 'Energie des modes', thus preparing perfectly the pastoral ambience with which the drama opens.

"Nymphs and shepherds celebrate the marriage of Orphée and Euridice with bright, light songs and dances. These are interrupted by a single cry - 'Ah!' - from Euridice, which her friend Enone blithely laughs off as due only to a thorn-prick. But Euridice's next words contradict her: 'Soutiens-moi, chère Enone, un serpent m'a blessée'. Charpentier sets these to a descending bass figure much favored by Baroque-era composers as an 'emblem of lament' (as the American musicologist Ellen Rosand has put it), and with it a shift from A-major to A-minor ('tendre et plaintif') for the brief, heartbreaking scene of Euridicie's death. The same 'emblem of lament' marks Orphée's griefstricken reaction to Euridice's loss (and the chorus's echo of it), and the gloomy pall of A-minor hovers over the mournful scene, which ends with Orphée wishing death for himself. Whereupon Apollon appears (to mild music - but in the key of C-major, 'gai et guerrier', according to Charpentier). He succeeds in arguing Orphée out of suicide and into a determination - not a very optimistic one, as both his words and the music to A-minor tell us - to attempt to gain back Euridice.

"Act II is set in Hades, and we hear first the bitter complaints of the trio of guilty, tortured shades (Ixion, Tantale, and Titye). Orphée sings - to a new, alluring soft sonority: viols, not the more brilliant violins or the rustic flutes heard before - and the shades, even the 'Chœur de Furies', are utterly beguiled ('Que tes chants ont d'appas!'). Pluton and Proserpine appear. Orphée goes to work - sensuously, seductively, lyrically - overcome Pluton's blustering opposition. (Prosperine is immediately won over, as is the Chœur d'Ombres heureuses'.)

"The more Pluton denies him, the more Orphée's song becomes persuasively voluptuous (and the more Proserpine pleads on his behalf). Finally Pluton relents (before he and his queen depart) - warning Orphée, however, that although Euridice will follow him, Orphée is not to look back to make sure. Orphée has one final prophetic couplet - 'Amour, brûlant Amour, pourras-tu te contraindre?'/'Ah! Que le tendre Orphée à lui-même est à craindre' - before he too leaves the stage. The trio of 'Coupables' and the 'Chœur d'ombres heureuses et de Furies' are left to lament his loss, or rather that of his captivating voice - but their music belies their words: foreshadowing in both its bright D-major key ('joyeux et très guerrier') and its rhythms the finale 'Sarabande légère', it seems in fact to be voicing joy over the lovers' reunion. (H. Wiley Hitchcock. From the liner notes.)

Performers: Les Arts Florissants, William Christie, Patricia Petibon, Monique Zanetti, Kátalin Karolyim, Sophie Daneman, Paul Agnew, Jean-François Gardeil, Steve Dugardin, François Piolino, Fernand Bernadi

1. Ouverture

2. Acte I, Scène I: 'Inventons Mille Jeux Divers'/'Ruisseau Qui Dans Ce Beau Séjour'

3. Acte I, Scène I: 'Compagnes Fidèles'

4. Acte I, Scène I: 'Soutiens-moi, Chère Énone'/Scène II: 'Qu'ai-je Entendu, Que Vois-je?'

5. Acte I, Scène II: 'Ah! Bergers, C'en Est Fait'

6. Acte I, Scène II: Entrée De Nymphes Et De Bergers Désespérés/'Lâche Amant'

7. Acte I, Scène III: 'Ne Tourne Point, Mon Fils'

8. Acte I, Scène III: 'Que D'un Frivole Espoir'/'Juste Sujet De Pleurs'

9. Acte II 'L'Enfer', Scène I: Prélude/'Affreux Tourments'

10. Acte II 'L'Enfer', Scène II: Prélude/'Cessez, Cessez, Fameux Coupables'

11. Acte II 'L'Enfer', Scène II: 'Je Ne Refuse Point Le Secours'/'Il N'est Rien Aux Enfers'

12. Acte II 'L'Enfer', Scène II: Les Fantômes

13. Acte II 'L'Enfer', Scène III: Prélude/'Que Cherche En Mon Palais'

14. Acte II 'L'Enfer', Scène III: 'Je Ne Viens Point Ici'/'Pauvre Amant'

15. Acte II 'L'Enfer', Scène III: 'Euridice N'est Plus'/'Le Destin Est Contraire' (Pluton) - 'Ah! Puisqu'avant Le Temps'

16. Acte II 'L'Enfer', Scène III: 'Tu Ne La Perdras Point, Hélas'/'Quel Charme Imperieux'/'Courage Orphée'

17. Acte II 'L'Enfer', Scène III: 'Souviens-toi Du Larcin'

18. Acte II 'L'Enfer', Scène III: 'Je Cède, Je Me Rends'

19. Acte II 'L'Enfer', Scène IV: 'Vous Partez Donc, Orphée'

20. Acte II 'L'Enfer', Scène IV: Entrée Des Fantômes

flac/16-bit

Jean-Joseph Cassanéa de Mondonville - Titon et l'Aurore

"'If I couldn't be Rameau, there's no one I'd rather be than Mondonville', Pierre-Louis Daquin wrote at the time of the first performance of Mondonville's 'Titon', thereby reflect the latter's immense reputation at this period. Famous as a violinist, Jean-Joseph Cassanéa de Mondonville had first made a name for himself as a writer of instrumental and religious music, and it was this which, in 1739, gained him a post as 'maître de musique' in the 'Chapelle Royale', while his 'grands motets' enjoyed enormous popularity at the Concert Spirituel: according to 'Le Mercure de France', his music was performed at nine out of every ten concerts over a twenty-year period, in other words, it was played on no fewer than 363 occasions between 1742 and 1762. Considered worthy successors to those of Lalande and Campra, Mondoville's motets were universally admired and regarded as seminal works. In the second of his 'Lettres de Correcteur des Bouffons', J.-B. Jourdan wrote that the composer fully deserved to be acknowledged as 'the man to whome France should be as indebted for her sacred vocal music as she is to Monsieur Rameau for his vocal music for the theatre'.

"Mondonville's own works for the state, by contrast, enjoyed mixed fortunes although his three mid-century operas ('Le Carnaval du Parnasse', 'Titon et l'Aurore' and 'Daphnis et Alcimadure') were among the most brilliant successful works of that time. It has been argued that the success of 'Titon' was due, essentially, to external circumstances: in the 'Querelle des Bouffons', which was raging at this time, it is said that the advocated of French opera drew a deliberate contrast between 'Titon' and Pergolesi's 'La Serva Padrona' and that they organised an elaborate cabal in high places to ensure that its first performance, at the 'Académie Royale de Musique' on 9 January 1753, was a triumph for all concerned. Indeed, the partisans of Italian opera even claimed that when they arrived at their usual seats, they found them already occupied by members of the Royal Guard, while the rest of the pit had been requisitioned by members of the Household Cavalry and King's Own Musketeers, who thus made their own contribution to this aesthetic war.

"Even if there is any substance to this report, it does not explain the extraordinarily durable nature of the work's success: box-office takings were such that the piece was staged, twice a week, for thirty-five consecutive performances between January and June 1753, before being revived in the autumn of that year. It returned to the repertory of the 'Académie Royale de Musique' in February and March 1763, between January and May 1764, finally but no less successfully, between January and March 1768. It is difficult, therefore, not to share the opinion of the contributor to 'Le Mercure de France', who wrote in March 1763: 'From the very first of its current run of performances, the public has proved that the work has gained its favbour due not to circumstances but to its own particular merit.'

"Some doubt surrounds the authorship of the libretto, although Mondonville's contemporaries had firmly fixed views on the subject. The Prologue, they were convinced, was the work of Antoine Houdart de la Motte (1672-1731), who had written the words for twelve operas by Campra, Destouches, Collasse, Marais and others. The three acts of the 'pastorale héroïque itself have always been attributed to the Breton poet, the Abbé de la Marre, who also wrote the words for Joseph-Nicolas-Pancrace Royer's 'Zaïde' and who died in tragic circumstances when he fell from a window in 1742. Some writers have suggested that the original text was revised by 'several men of wit', including Mondonville himself.

"According to the 'Dictionnaire dramatique' of 1776, 'the subject of the Prologue is Prometheus's ravishment of fire from heaven; he uses this fire & that of Love to breathe life into statues of men and women and, with them, peoples the Universe.' The author of 'La Guerre de l'opera' sums up the pastorale proper with elegant concision: 'There are two Lovers crossed by two persons that are jealous.'

"The Prologue follows tradition, therefore, in being apparently independent of the main action. None the less, the two parts end in similar fashion with the appearance of triumphant Love, whose blessings are duly celebrated.

"Although space permits no more than a rapid survey of the piece, we will perhaps attempt to identify certain aspect of the audience's reaction as recorded in accounts of the time.

"The dramatic power of the anguished overture, with its quasi-rhetorical questions, looks forward, in its intensity, to Prometheus's following narrative; it was found to be 'full of noise' by certain early listeners, who were disconcerted by its 'excessive strangeness'. In the Prologue, listeners 'enjoyed the sinfonia which announces the moment when the spiritus comes to life' - in other words, the moment when the statues come alive. Certainly, the gentleness of this passage - which marks the first appearance of a major tonality - and the shimmering, interlanced arpeggios create an otherworldly atmosphere worthy of Rameau's 'Pygmalion'. Other writers drew a contrast between the lofty sentiments of the opening chorus and the triviality of 'La Serva Patrona': 'the chorus of animated statues expresses the philosophical terror which each man must feel when he contemplates himself, questioning the whole of nature in order to know his place in it &, by a natural impulse, addressing himself to Heaven in his wish to understand the plight in which his own existence places him. [...] These are the tableaux that our Operas should present, instead of depicting a man's impatience as he waits for his drink of chocolate.

"The opening act was said to be 'the most agreeable in the opera', with 'Titon's monologue and its accompaniment' being 'applauded with particular warmth'. The commentator is no doubt referring here to the instrumental effect produced by the basses and bassoons in their lowest registers to reproduce the darkness of night, as required by the staging. Also admired were the duet for Titon and Aurora, the ariett 'Venez, petits oiseaux', and Titon's Romance, a musette entitled 'Votre cœur aimable Aurore', which, published in 'Le Mercure de France', was soon being sung all over Paris. The author of 'La Guerre de l'Opera' particularly liked the depiction of dawn: 'The Music which heralds the dawn is perhaps the most florid and voloptuous that I have ever heard at the Opera. The listener has the sensation of seeing the flowers open and the dew begin to fall; he thinks he hears birds singing and feels all nature atremble at the approach of day.'

"Contemporary accounts of the second act singled out a 'chorus for the Winds' which, 'full of noise and harmony', claimed the listener's attention, while the 'village fête' merited mention for its 'attractive violin airs and tuneful ariettas'.

"In the third act, 'Titon's final arietta was predictably praised but, above all, it was his monologue in the second scene which drew attention to itself, shocking certain listenerds who, otherwise well disposed, felt that this depiction of the hero's decrepitude was somehow 'disagreeable': 'It seems that the composer has sought to depict the painful and useless effort made by a dying octogenarian to cough up phlegm from his chest.' The 'cognoscenti', by contrast, found this number 'a product of genius', a 'tragic flaw' that produced 'both one of the most beautiful pieces of French Music & one of the most felicitous dénouements in all dramatic Art.'

"'The only thing we found that was genuinely new in this Opera was the costumes worn by the actors', one detractor noted, a remark which one of the work's admirers was able to turn to advantage when he described the effect of the first-act celebrations: 'Nothing astonishes you, yet everything is pleasing.' It is difficult to think of a more apposite characterisation of Mondonville's operatic art than this, for it is this, among other things, which sets him apart from Rameau's often disconcerting genius.

"According to a chansonnier published in 1750, 'In fine, the difference between Mondonville and Rameau is that the one amazes the ignorant through an excess of learning, forcing the connoisseur to admire his talent; the other, a less affected but more amiable Orpheus, flatters his listener and bring him within his grasp.'

"Mondonville certainly showed an innovative bent not only in his instrumental writing, with its use of harmonics and novel orchestration, but also in creating new genres, including harpsichord sonatas with violin accompaniment, vocal concertos and oratorios set to French words. But this is not the style of his operas, where he prefers to seduce his listeners with grace and tenderness, elegance, delicacy and lightness of approach. As the success of his works attests, they must be judged as the perfect embodiment of a taste that is typical of a refined century. As Caux de Cappeval wrote in his 'Apologie du goût françois', 'To glorify that taste which France may call her own, Rameau will be Virgil, as Lully once was Homer: baside them at the opera Mondonville now rises to support them, like some new constellation.' (Jean-Paul Burgos, 17th July 1991, tr. Stewart Spencer. From the liner notes.)

Performers: Ensemble Vocal Françoise Herr, Les Musiciens Du Louvre, Marc Minkowski, Jean-Paul Fouchécourt, Catherine Napoli, Philippe Huttenlocher, Jennifer Smith, Anne Monoyios

1.1. Ouverture

1.2. Prologue, Scène I: 'Dieux! Connaissez-vous D'autre Félicité'

1.3. Prologue, Scène I: 'Faisons De Leur Repos Rougir Les Immortels'

1.4. Prologue, Scène I: 'Esprits Soumis À Mon Empire, Que Ce Peuple S'anime'

1.5. Prologue, Scène I: Air Pour Les Esprits Du Feu

1.6. Prologue, Scène I: 'Soyez De L'Univers Le Plus Parfait Ouvrage'

1.7. Prologue, Scène I: Lent

1.8. Prologue, Scène I: 'Chantez Mortels'

1.9. Prologue, Scène I: 'Quelle Clarté Brille À Nos Yeux?'

1.10. Prologue, Scène I: 'Vous, Dont L'obéissance A Rempli Mes Souhaits'

1.11. Prologue, Scène I: Air Léger

1.12. Prologue, Scène I: 'Quelle Agréable Mélodie'

1.13. Prologue, Scène II: 'Lorsque Des Eléments J'ai Terminé La Guerre' (L'Amour, Prométhée)

1.14. Prologue, Scène II: 'Qu'on Ne Parle Que De Ta Gloire' (L'Amour, Prométhée, Chœur)

1.15. Prologue, Scène II: 'Vous, Qui De Tant D'attraits Embellissez Cythère'

1.16. Prologue, Scène II: Air Pour Les Grâces

1.17. Prologue, Scène II: Premièr Et Deuxième Gavottes

1.18. Prologue, Scène II: 'Jeunes Mortels, Livrez Vos Armes Aux Douceurs De La Volupté'

1.19. Prologue, Scène II: Air

1.20. Prologue, Scène II: 'De L'Amour Le Pouvoir Suprême'

1.21. Prologue, Scène II: 'Célébrons Le Dieu Des Amours'

1.22. Prologue, Scène II: Reprise De L'Ouverture

1.23. Acte I, Scène I: 'Que L'Aurore Tarde À Paraître'

1.24. Acte I, Scène II: 'Je Vous Revois Enfin'

1.25. Acte I, Scène II: 'Règne, Amour Dans Nos Âmes'

1.26. Acte I, Scène II: 'Bergers, Soyez Témoins De Nos Tendres Soupirs'

1.27. Acte I, Scène III: 'Célébrons L'amour Et L'Aurore'

1.28. Acte I, Scène III: Musette/'Votre Cœur, Aimable Aurore'

1.29. Acte I, Scène III: Air Pour Les Pâtres

1.30. Acte I, Scène III: Venez Sous Ce Riant Feuillage'

1.31. Acte I, Scène III: Air Léger

1.32. Acte I, Scène IV: Prélude/'Que Vois-je, Ô Ciel!'

1.33. Acte I, Scène IV: 'Vous Me Fuyez En Vain'

1.34. Acte I, Scène IV: 'Divinité Des Cœurs Jaloux'

1.35. Acte I, Scène V: 'Eole, Quel Sujet Cause Votre Fureur?'

1.36. Acte I, Scène V: 'Fiers Aquilons, Soumis À Mon Obéissance'

1.37. Acte I, Scène VI: 'Quel Succès, Quel Bonheur!'

1.38. Acte I, Scène VI: 'Tout Favorise Dans Ce Jour Mes Feux Et Ma Vengeance'

2.1. Acte II, Scène I: 'Dois-je Amour De Tant De Larmes'

2.2. Acte II, Scène II: 'L'Instant Ou L'on Perd Ce Qu'on Aime'

2.3. Acte II, Scène III: 'Avez-vous Adouci Les Regrets De L'Aurore?'

2.4. Acte II, Scène IV: 'Vents Furieux, Sortez De La Grotte Profonde'

2.5. Acte II, Scène IV: Air Pour Les Vents

2.6. Acte II, Scène IV: 'Partez, Et Que Titon Éprouve Ma Fureur'

2.7. Acte II, Scène V: 'Bergers, Je Connais Vos Malheurs'

2.8. Acte II, Scène V: Air Pour Les Nymphes

2.9. Acte II, Scène V: Air Lent Et Très Doux

2.10. Acte II, Scène V: 'Que Je Plains Les Cœurs Amoureux'

2.11. Acte II, Scène V: Rondeau

2.12. Acte II, Scène V: 'Ce Ruisseau Qui Dans La Plaine'

2.13. Acte II, Scène V: Première Et Deuxième Gavottes

2.14. Acte II, Scène V: 'Amour, Amour Lance Dans Nos Ames'

2.15. Acte II, Scène VI: 'Rien Ne Peut Dissiper L'ennui Qui Vous Dévore'

2.16. Acte II, Scène VII: 'Tu Vas Sentir Les Effets De Ma Rage'

2.17. Acte III, Scène I: Ritournelle

2.18. Acte III, Scène I: 'Avez-vous Triomphé Du Rival Que J'abhore!'

2.19. Acte III, Scène I: 'Ne Craignez Aucun Retour'

2.20. Acte III, Scène I: 'Pour Le Sauver, Vous Cherchez Un Détour'

2.21. Acte III, Scène I: 'Connaissez Votre Erreur'

2.22. Acte III, Scène I: 'Ah! Quel Plaisir Dans Nos Malheurs'

2.23. Acte III, Scène II: 'Que Vois-je?'

2.24. Acte III, Scène III: 'C'est La Voix De Titon'

2.25. Acte III, Scène III: 'Quels Sons Harmonieux? Quelle Clarté Nouvelle?'

2.26. Acte III, Scène IV: 'Ne Craignez Plus La Jalouse Vengeance De Palès'

2.27. Acte III, Scène IV: 'Quel Dieu M'anime Et Me Rend La Clarté?'

2.28. Acte III, Scène IV: 'Amour, Amour, Après Tant De Bienfaits'

2.29. Acte III, Scène IV: 'De Deux Parfaits Amants, Occupez Les Loisirs'

2.30. Acte III, Scène V: 'Chantons, Chantons La Gloire Et La Puissance'

2.31. Acte III, Scène V: Aria Et Altro

2.32. Acte III, Scène V: 'La Tourterelle Tendre Et Fidèle'

2.33. Acte III, Scène V: Rondeau En Chaconne

2.34. Acte III, Scène V: 'Du Dieu Des Cœurs, On Adore L'empire'

2.35. Acte III, Scène V: Contre Danse

flac/16-bit

Herbert Howells - Piano Concerto No. 2; String Concerto; Three Dances

"What a sea change there has been in public opinion in the last ten years or so which has made the recording of the music here not only possible but desirable. Two of the works have not been heard since their first performances (Three Dances, 1915; Piano Concerto, 1925) until 1989 when the present write put together a 'Composer of the Week' series on Radio 3, concentrating for the first time on the orchestral music. It was a revelation.

"Herbert Howells was the most brilliant student of his generation at the Royal College of Music and was dubbed his 'son in music' by the notoriously difficult Sir Charles Stanford, his composition teacher. Sir Arthur Bliss, who went to the RCM a year after Howells having done a music degree at Cambridge, remembers:

"'Howells had the outstanding talent. His quickly written scores, showing a beautiful resolute calligraphy, with their technical maturity simply disheartened me. I had to learn one of the most painful lessons of my life, that there are other who are born with more gifts than oneself; no amount of self-confidence can at heart convince one to the contrary.'

"What is the reason for the neglect over so many years of almost all of Howells's orchestral music? The answer, perhaps, is twofold. Firstly, Howells was notoriously sensitive to criticism. An adverse word from any source would trigger the immediate withdrawal of a work from circulation. Why this was so is difficult to say. Probably the answer lies in his being put on a pedestal by Stanford where he was led to believe that everything he did was good. When subsequently he was prey to the whims and prejudices of the lions' den of the critical press he did not have the inner self-confidence and strength to cope with their claws. Secondly, where he once said 'there's no room for symphonic lengths these days' (feeling, perhaps, that the concert-going public's attention span was not capable of taking a major new symphonic work), in reality it was not his way and that was just what the public did want.

"Of the three works recorded here, two - the Piano Concerto and the Concerto for String Orchestra - are major three-movement works. The 'Three Dances', on the other hand, are delightful miniatures, written in 1915 in relatively carefree student days (relatively, because the Great War was already a year old and Howells, through ill health which nearly killed him in 1917, was exempted from active service). They were composed for a young fellow-student George Whittaker, a highly gifted violinist who had entered the College aged only eleven. Certainly the music has no hint of the momentous events beginning to take shaep and which would fundamentally affect one of his closest friends, Ivor Gurney, and kill a number of others. The Dances are, in fact, extremely sunny pieces, not yet imbued with the Howellsian pathos which grew to dominate his mode of speech. To this end they are as yet uncharacteristic, speaking more of his teacher's influence than of his own intuitive nature which was still to come to its maturity. Putting that aside, however, what lovely pieces they are! The first, quite big-scale, is almost a gypsy dance with some brilliantly colourful orchestration laid out for large forces. In the manuscript Howells writes at the end that he finished the score in bed. It is nice to know that student habits don't change over the years!

"The second Dance has on of the most beguiling tunes of the period. To some extent it is the change in his later music away from writing to a tune to creating long-breathed, melismatic phrases, which creates the aural problem for the unsophisticated listener who wants the 'anchorage' which a regular-metre melody gives. Here, though, there is no problem. Why this Dance alone did not become a classic 'pop' of the period is difficult to understand, though it is probably bound up with Howells's reticence and his impatience, as a student, to be getting on with the next project.

"The last Dance is, by contrast, short and furious, providing an exquisite foil to the others. Here is Howells, already, aged only twenty-three, a consummately skilled orchestrator, a highly gifted creator of atmosphere (one of the most important features of his mature style) and having a considerable skill with both form and melody.

"Ten years on from the composition of those Dances Howells was a familiar name. He had been thrust into the limelight in 1916 with the publication of his Piano Quartet in A minor under the auspices of the Carnegie Trust. Amongst the seven composers chosen to have works published, Howells's was the only unknown name, and his was the only piece of chamber music. The Quartet was also the first to be published.

"In these early years it appeared that nothing could stop Howells's meteoric rise to stardom. Music flowed from him in an unstoppable flood of inspiration; orchestral works, a remarkable series of chamber works including three String Quartets (the Third, 'In Gloucestershire', recorded on Hyperion CDA66139) and a Clarinet Quintet (recorded on Hyperion CDA 66428), music for piano, for organ, three violin sonatas, solo songs including 'King David' - one of the classics of the period - and works for chorus and orchestra including a Gloucester Three Choirs Festival commission in 1922 at the behest of Elgar, called 'Sine Nomine', which only had its second performance this year (1992), also at Gloucester.

"The came a commission from the Royal Philharmonic Society for a 'Piano Concerto' for performance in the Queen's Hall, London, in 1925. Sargent was to conduct (his debut with the Society) and Harold Samuel (famous for his Bach recitals) was to be soloist. The first signs of a problem arose when Samuel received the score and found that he heartily disliked the work. The composer Howard Ferguson, who was a pupil of Samuel's and lived in his house at the time, remembers helping Samuel to learn the work by being the 'orchestra' on a second piano. He recalls that Samuel tried to get the Society to release him from the engagement which they refused to do, and so the performance went ahead as planned.

"It was a mark of Howells's burgeoning reputation that the performance was widely anticipated in London musical circles and that the programme in which it was placed included recent works by composers of the previous generation - Vaughan Williams's 'Pastoral Symphony', Ireland's 'Mai Dun', and music by Bax and Berners. However, the performance was to all intents and purposes a disaster. Certainly, for Howells, it contained the seeds of self-destruction. As a critic noted:

"'Our Royal and ancient Philharmonic Society has given many first performances of works by the world's greatest musicians, but the event to which I refer was specially remarkable because at the conclusion of the Concerto there was the usual spontaneous applause, but on this occasion mixed with angry shouts of disapproval from one gentleman in the audience. For a few seconds there was a shocked silence, and then the applause broke out with a renewed force as a sort of counter-protest against the unseemly conduct of the gentleman who evidently did not like music of a modernity unpalatable to his taste.'

"The reception of this work caused Howells to freeze as a composer. Although the Concerto was at proof stage with the publishers he instantly withdrew it and virtually stopped composing for some ten years, writing in the interim only very small-scale pieces and revising some early compositions.

"All this was, of course, a huge over-reaction to a histrionic display which, in any country other than England, would have been regarded as par for the course and merely amusing. To the oversensitive Howells, though, it was a nightmare. Late in his life the pianist Hilary Macnamara persuaded him to have another look at it. He began revising the work but soon put it aside again.

"The Concerto is a big-scale three-movement work which is designed on a very unusual ground plan (which was possibly what led to the outburst). Howells organized three movements as a huge sonata-form structure with the first movement acting as the exposition, the slow movement as the development, and the last movement as a modified recapitulation (all the movements are linked). To this extent the constant referral back to the first subject (a short, diatonic tune) can become monotonous unless sympathetically interpreted. The problems at the first performance were exacerbated by unsympathetic performers. This must have come across to any with ears to hear.

"In describing the form of the work, Howells also hints at something deeper which was to become such a hallmark of his style later on: 'What always matters to a modern is to express a complex mood. Now for that, sonata form is not always suitable, or a sonata for as hitherto accepted.' This 'complex mood' was something which Vaughan Williams brought to perfection in his utterly original 'Pastoral Symphony'. Howells described this more fully in a penetrating article in 'Music and Letters' in April 1922:

"'He neither depicts nor describes. It is not his concern to 'make the universe his box of toys.' He builds up a great mood, insistent to an unusual degree, but having in itself far more variety than a merely slight acquaintance with it would suggest. In matter and manner it is entirely personal... You may not like the Symphony's frame of mind; but there it is, strong and courageous; it is the truth of the work, and out of it would naturally arise whatever risk it has run of being publicly cold-shouldered.'

"Howells's Second Piano Concerto is full of drama and lyricism. He intended it to be 'a diatonic affair, with deliberate tunes all the way [...] jolly in feeling, and attempting to get to the point as quickly as maybe.' Certainly it is a 'tour de force' and is quite unlike any other Concerto of the period. With its brilliant use of the orchestra and its colourful effects it must have sounded very modern indeed to that audience on the 27 April 1925.

"In 1935 Howells's only son died of polio, aged only nine. It was another and far more devastating moment in his life. Emotionally paralysed for some time, he began to pick up composition against as a means of purging the ghost of his son. Before the boy's death Howells had been composing a work for string orchestra to commemorate the recent death of Elgar. In 1938 he completed it, giving it the title 'Concerto for String Orchestra'. Not all of it was new: the first movement was an extensive re-working of the ebullient 'Preludio' from an early string orchestra Suite of 1917, the second movement of which became a separate work - the 'Elegy' for viola, string quartet and strings, one of the composer's most beautiful orchestral works. The second movement jointly commemorates Elgar and Michael Howells. Howells called it 'submissive and memorial in its intention and purpose.' The third movement balances the first in its energy and drive.

"Howells described the inspiration behind the work:

"'It was meant to be a modest expression of the abiding spell of music for strings, and the be, in that genus, in humble relationship to two supreme works, Vaughan Williams' Tallis Fantasia, and Elgar's Introduction and Allegro. In 1910 at the Three Choirs Festival in Gloucester Cathedral I was present at the first performance of the Fantasia. Within days, and for the first time, I hard the Introduction and Allegro. I was at the time 17; deeply impressionable. 25 years later, again at Gloucester, walking with Sir Edward Elgar in the cathedral precincts, he talked quietly and earnestly of the technique of writing for strings. One name dominated his talk, George Frederick Handel.'

"The death of Howells's son ironically unlocked the frozen powers which had stopped him composing after the debacle of the Second Piano Concerto. He went on to write his undisputed masterpiece, 'Hymnus Paradisi', and the whole emphasis of his work shifted from music for the concert hall to music either for the church, or choral music with non-liturgical religious texts such as the 'Stabat Mater' written in the mid-fifties. This (the church music) is the music by which he is best known. Recordings such as this serve to redress the imbalance which has existed for years in the appreciation of Howells's output by giving us the opportunity to reassess these major orchestral scores through which Howells's career developed and his musical personality reached maturity. (Paul Spicer. From the liner notes.)

Performers: Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, Vernon Handley, Kathryn Scott, Malcolm Stewart

1. String Concerto: I. Allegro, Assai Vivace

2. String Concerto: II. Quasi Lento. Teneramente

3. String Concerto: III. Allegro Vivo. Ritmico E Giocoso

4. Three Dances, Op. 7: I. Giocoso Molto

5. Three Dances, Op. 7: II. Quasi Lento, Quieto

6. Three Dances, Op. 7: III. Molto Allegro

7. Piano Concerto No. 2 In C Minor: I. Allegro (Hard And Bright) -

8. Piano Concerto No. 2 In C Minor: II. Poco Lento, Calmato -

9. Piano Concerto No. 2 In C Minor: III. Allegro (Hard And Bright Again)

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Duke Ellington - "...And His Mother Called Him Bill"

"When Billy Strayhorn died of cancer in 1967, Duke Ellington was devastated. His closest friend and arranger had left his life full of music and memories. As a tribute, Ellington and his orchestra almost immediately began recording a tribute to Strayhorn, using the late arranger's own compositions and charts. The album features well-known and previously unrecorded Strayhorn tunes that showcased his range, versatility, and, above all, the quality that Ellington admired him most for: his sensitivity to all of the timbral, tonal, and color possibilities an orchestra could bring to a piece of music. The set opens with a vehicle for Johnny Hodges called 'Snibor', written in 1949. A loose blues tune, its intervals showcase Hodges against a stinging I-IV-V backdrop and turnaround, with a sweeping set of colors in the brass section before Cootie Williams takes a break and hands it back to Hodges to take out. The melancholy 'Blood Count' was written in 1967 for the band's Carnegie Hall concert. It proved to be his final composition and chart. Hodges again gets the call and blows deep, low, and full of sadness and even anger. The music is moody, poignant, and full of poise, expressing a wide range of feelings as memories from different periods in the composers' and bandleaders' collective careers. Given all the works Strayhorn composed, this one - with its muted trumpet section set in fours against Hodges' blues wailing - is both wistful and chilling. Also included here is a remake of 1951's 'Rock Skippin' at the Blue Note', in a spicy, funky version with a shimmering cymbal ride from Sam Woodyard and a punched up, bleating Cootie Williams solo as well as one from Jimmy Hamilton on clarinet, smoothing out the harmonic edges of the brass section (which features a ringing break from John Sanders). In cut time, the tune shuffles in the groove with Ellington accenting on every eight as the brass and reeds mix it up joyously. There are two versions of 'Lotus Blossom'. Ellington claimed it was the piece Strayhorn most liked to hear him play. The LP version is a quiet, restrained, meditative rendition played solo by Ellington, with the most subtle and yet emotional nuances he ever presented on a recording as a pianist. Finally, closing the album is a bonus track, a trio version played in a whispering tone with only baritone saxophonist Harry Carney and bassist Aaron Bell accompanying Ellington. The piece was supposedly recorded as the band was packing up to leave. Its informality and soulful verve feel like they are an afterthought, an unwillingness to completely let go, a eulogy whose final words are questions, elegantly stated and met with only the echo of their last vibrations ringing in an empty room, full of wondering, longing, and helplessness, but above all the point of the questions themselves: 'Is this enough?' or 'Can there ever be enough to pay an adequate tribute to this man?' They are interesting questions, because only five years later we would all be saying the same thing about Ellington. For a man who issued well over 300 albums, this set is among his most profoundly felt and very finest recorded moments." (Review of the Bluebird re-issue by Thom Jurek. From AllMusic. See here.)

1. Boo-Dah

2. U.M.M.G.

3. Blood Count

4. Smada

5. Rock Skippin' At The Blue Note

6. Rain Check

7. Midriff

8. My Little Brown Book

9. Lotus Blossom

10. Snibor

11. After All

12. All Day Long

13. Lotus Blossom

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Carl Nielsen - Symphonies Nos. 4 & 5

"Despite being born in the same year, Nielsen and Sibelius, the twin peaks of Nordic symphonism, pursued wholly independent paths. Where Sibelius's First Symphony (1899, rev. 1900) took Borodin and Tchaikovsky as its starting point, Nielsen's (1891-94) paid homage to Berlioz, Grieg and Svendsen. And while Sibelius gradually stripped away elements of Romanticism and went ever deeper into elemental representations of Nature and movement, Nielsen accumulated, explored ever wider horizones, and rather than moving away from his roots made symphonic dramas from confronting them with new, often inimical forces.

"The Dane's Third Symphony (1911) celebrated a conglomeration of positive values - freedom, creative energy, oneness with Nature, and, in the finale, what Nielsen himself dubbed the 'healthy morale' of the ordinary working man - all under the umbrella title of 'Sinfonia espansiva'. At its core, his next symphony, 'The Inextinguishable' (1914-16) is a defence of those same values against elements that threaten their very existence. By the time of its composition, Europe was being torn apart by a war in which Denmark remained neutral but which caused Nielsen to question the 'national feeling' he had previously regarded as wholesome and which he now likened to a 'kind of spiritual syphilis'. There were conflicts, too, in his personal life. His marriage, to the prominent sculptress Ann-Marie Brodersen, was entireing a period of turmoil, brought about by the revelation of his infidelities; and on 30th May 1914 he resigned his position as assistant conductor at the Royal Opera in Copenhagen, thereby becoming a freelance musician for more or less the first time in over twenty years. For all these reasons Nielsen felt compelled to re-examine his values as a composer and human being, and in this respect 'The Inextinguishable' is a classic mid-life-crisis piece.

"On 3rd May 1914, Carl Nielsen wrote in a state of high agitation to his wife: 'I have an idea for a new work, which has no programme but which is meant to express what we understand by the life-urge or life-manifestation; that's to say: everything that moves, that craves life, that can be called neither good nor evil, neither high nor low, neither great nor small, but simply: 'That which is life' or 'That which craves life' - I mean, no definite idea about anything 'grandiose' or 'fine and delicate' or about warm or cold (powerful maybe) but simply Life and Movement, but varied, very varied, but holding together, and as though always flowing in one large movement, in a single stream. I need a word or a short title to say it all.'

"The word he was looking for was 'Inextinguishable'. But he was not to find it until he had completed the symphony nearly two years after that semi-coherent outburst of enthusiasm. His thoughts crystallised in a short preface to the score: 'With the title 'The Inextinguishable' the composer has sought to indicate in one word what only music has the power to express in full: 'The Elemental Will of Life'. Music -is- Life and, like it, inextinguishable.' And in 1920 Nielsen sent his Dutch composer-conductor friend Julius Röntgen an explanatory note that further clarified his intentions: 'If the whole world was destroyed, Nature would once again begin to beget new life and push forward with the strong and fine forces that are to be found in the very stuff of existence... These 'inextinguishable' forces are what I have tried to represent.'

"In Danish 'Det Uudslukkelige' is a neuter noun, non an adjectival description. So we should think of this not as a hubristic Inextinguishable Symphony, but rather as one whose subject matter is That which is Inextinguishable. Nielsen might almost as well have named it the Life Force, as Bernard Shaw put it, or 'élan vital', in a formulation popularised around the time of its composition by the philosopher Henri Bergson.

"The turbulence of the opening bars immediately suggests how much is at stake, as the strings and woodwin view with one another and brass and timpani strive to maintain law and order. When this tumult subsides, a long-drawn clarinet theme in winding Sibelian thirds seems to come from another world ('not quite like me', as once Nielsen remarked). Rather than remaining merely a haven for escapist reverie, this theme will prove highly adaptable, marking out its Darwinian fitness for eventual survival.

"In the pastoral-idyllic slow movement the woodwind behave as an idealised village band, charmingly not quite sure whether they should be playing two or three beats to the bar. Here, one senses, are the values of simplicity and openness the symphony needs to defend. The tensely dramatic third movement then begins with a passionate accompanied recitative for the violins, soaring over timpani and lower strings, 'like an eagle on the wind' according to the composer; succeeding contrasts between passionate declamation and hymn-like serenity are eventually swallowed up in a radiant climax. In the finale, launched by a torrent of string scales in the manner of Beethoven's third 'Leonora' Overture, the element of antagonism resurfaces. Two sets of timpani, spatially separated, battle it out with the rest of the orchestra, before the triumphant return of the first movement's Sibelian clarinet theme, no blazened across the entire orchestra in searing affirmation.

"After its enthusiastically received première on 1st February 1916, 'The Inextinguishable' rapidly established itself as a milestone in the Nordic symphonic repertoire, one that was frequently called upon to conduct. During these years he was living an itinerant life, hoping to re-cement his marriage but for the time being excluded from the family home in Copenhagen. In between major symphonic projects, much of his energy was devoted to a lavish staging of 'Aladdin', which demanded some 90 minutes of incidental music, and his representation of its polarities of Good and Evil, as well as its oriental setting, gave him new impetus for symphonic explorations (witness the music for 'The Market at Ispahan', which he composed for four discrete mini-orchestras in four different keys).

"For the 'Fifth Symphony' we have no preliminary statements of the kind Nielsen wrestly with apropos 'The Inextinguishable'. But he did reflect with hindsight on its content. Interviews for a Copenhagen newspaper just before the première on 24th January 1922, he was asked about the meaning of his new work. Using terms echoed by composers down the ages, he responded cagily: 'Long explanations and indications as to what music 'represents' are just evil; they distract the listener.' Pressed as to whether the Great War had affected his composition, he again deflected the question, replying that although he was not conscious of any such influence, 'One thing is certain: not one of us is the same as we were before the war. So maybe so!'

"As so many composers have discovered, these evasive tactics left the Fifth Symphony defenceless against critics eager to supply their own interpretations. Some related the extraordinarily vivid drama of the piece to his music for 'Aladdin', hearing pastoral dream-world and Arabian marches in the first movement of the symphony. And one of Nielsen's staunchest supporters found himself thoroughly repelled, calling the work a 'Sinfonie filmatique', this dirty trenches-music [...] this clenched first in the face of a defenceless, novelty snobbish, titillation-sick public [...] who lovingly lick the hand stained with the blood of their own noses!' Two years later in Stockholm, a large section of the audience walked out, in protest at the cacophony of the first movement, while a proportion of the remainder tried to hiss down the performance.

"Few among those early listeners could have guessed that Nielsen's Fifth Symphony would one day mark his posthumous international breakthrough - which can be dated quite precisely to the 1950 Edinburgh Festival - and go on to be hailed as one of the greatest symphonies of the twentieth century (not least by the celebrated Mahler scholar and broadcaster Deryck Cooke).

"Nielsen did in fact leave a few more sporadic clues as to his preoccupations while composing the work. These all have to do with primordial oppositions. At the end of his pencil draft score he wrote the motto: 'Dark, resting forces - Awakened forces', which could apply equally well to the contrast between the two main sections of the first movement and to that between the two movements themselves. He told a confidant that it was 'something very primitive I wanted to express: the division of dark and light, the battle between evil and good. A title such as 'Dreams and Deeds' could maybe sum up the inner picture I had in front of my eyes when composing.' And to his newspaper interviewer he explained that the symphony was ultimately concerned with the same elemental opposition as in his previous three, namely 'resting forces in contrast to active ones'.

"If 'The Inextinguishable' enshrined a conflict between Nielsen's essentially positive outlook on life and fearsome odds stacked against it, the Fifth Symphony revisits this arena with an even more comprehensive symphonic mastery.

"The first movement falls into two large sections. Nielsen's 'resting forces' express themselves initially as a kind of wandering indifference. He once described this state as 'Vegetative Nature', and the title 'Vegetative' actually stands at the head of his pencil draft score. Pairs of bassoons, and later horns, flutes and clarinets, drift aimlessly around an oscillating viola line that waits at first passively, then more anxiously, for something to happen. That line reacts to shivers on the cymbal as the wandering melody transfers to strings. An increasing sense of foreboding is registered by harsh accents in the cellos, and a kind of paralysis gradually steals over the music. The stage is set for the entrance of the side drum. From this point the struggle between conflicting forces ebbs and flows, eventually reaching stalemate and dying away under stabbing repeated notes on violins and celesta.

"As if waking from a bad dream, a warm G major tune breaks in on violas and cellos, supported by bassoons and horns. This unfolds in two glorious waves of increasingly contrapuntal activity, reaching an ecstatic climax. However, what promises to be a similarly positive third wave is soon clutched by fearful reminisces, and a mounting sense of alarm takes over. Woodwind and strings hurl what Nielsen called the 'evil motif' - a transformation of the violas' wave line - at one another, and at the high point the side drum returns at an unrelated faster tempo, with the instruction to disturb the orchestra at all costs. Pandemonium ensues, until a tidal wave of G major engulfs all the combatants and a battle-scarred tranquility concludes the first movement.

"The second movement begins with what the pioneering Nielsen scholar Robert Simpson aptly called 'a fount of regenerative energy'. At first this music seems to be irresistable in its onward sweep, but eventually it too succumbs to a terrifying loss of energy. That this has happened without the presence of the first movement's obvious tokens of ill-will - such as the percussion, the skirling clarinet and the dinning side drum - is all the more disheartening. The implication is that an even greater effort of will-power than in the first movement will be needed in order to regain a positive frame of mind.

"Nielsen's strategy is first of all to let evil forces rip, which he does in a fugue from hell that starts quietly on the violins but soon develops a nightmarish momentum and eventually blows itself to smithereens. The air having finally been cleared, another fugue begins, again on the violins but this time slowly and calmly transofrming the opening theme of the second movement and thinking its way through to enlightenment. It only remains for the 'fount of energy' to return and to find a way to avoid its previous path to ruin. This having been achieved, along with the revelation of the key of E flat major (also the key of the magnificent conclusion to the recent Fifth Symphony by Nielsen's Finnish neighbour, Sibelius) the final pages hold the banner of the Life Force triumphantly aloft. (David Fanning, 2013. From the liner notes.)

Performers: Kungliga Filharmonikerna, Sakari Oramo

1. Symphony No. 4, Op. 29, FS 76 'Det Uudslukkelige': I. Allegro –

2. Symphony No. 4, Op. 29, FS 76 'Det Uudslukkelige': II. Poco Allegretto –

3. Symphony No. 4, Op. 29, FS 76 'Det Uudslukkelige': III. Poco Adagio Quasi Andante –

4. Symphony No. 4, Op. 29, FS 76 'Det Uudslukkelige': IV. Allegro

5. Symphony No. 5, Op. 50 FS 97: I. Tempo Giusto –

6. Symphony No. 5, Op. 50 FS 97: II. Allegro – Presto – Andante Un Poco Tranquillo – Allegro

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Carl Nielsen - Symphonies Nos. 2 & 6

"Nielsen was one of life's people watchers. From the time of his rustic upbringing on the island of Funen he was a talented mimic (a gift he seems to have inherited from his father), and he became known as a marvellous conversationalist and raconteur. His compulsive interest in all that was robust and healthy in human nature, no matter if that meant rough edges or strongly differing views from his own, also inspired him to some of his finest music.

"No single work exemplifies Nielsen's gift for musical empathy morte thrillingly than his 'Second Symphony'. It dates from 1902-02, a time when he was earning his living mainly as a somewhat frustrated second violinist in the orchestra of the Royal Opera in Copenhagen. The origins of the work, as he explained in a programme note near the end of his life, were in an allegorical picture he came across in a country inn, illustrating the Four Temperaments - the moods determined by the mixture of fluids in the body, at least according to medical theory with roots in the Ancient Greeks and Romans and still commonly believed up to the early 1800s. Imbalance between these fluids could supposedly create a disposition towards anger (choler), apathy (phlegm), sadness (melancholy) or carefree abandon (sanguinity). The comically exaggerated visual images of those characteristics apparently stayed with Nielsen and he soon saw their potential to map on the four movements of the traditional symphony.

"In the painting the Choleric temperament was apparently shown as a swash-buckling horse-rider: 'his eyes were bulging out of his head, his hair streamed wildly around his face, so distorted with rage and diabolical hatred that I could not help bursting out laughing'. Nielsen's symphonic equivalent is no laughing matter, however. A fiery Berliozian 'allegro', marked from the outset by slashing off-beat accents and rushing scale passages, its lyrical contrasts are like episodes in which the main character regrets his wildness without being able to prevent its return. Something close to this scenario would serve Nielsen again a quarter of a century later as the basis for his Clarinet Concerto.

"In complete contrast, the second movement, the Phlegmatic, is so easy-paced that it nearly falls asleep: 'I visualized a young fellow whose real inclination was to lie where the birds sing, where the fish glide noiselessly through the water, where the sun warms and the wind strokes mildly round one's curls.' Anyone who knows Nielsen's genial autobiography, 'My Childhood on Funen', will realise how close such an image was to his own nature, or at least to one part of it. In this movement, especially in the lazy undulating triads of the middle section, is contained the seed for the kind of inertia that would eventually take on a very different aspect: as a life-threatening - indeed life-on-earth-threatening - force in Nielsen's later symphonies.

"Next comes the Melancholic temperament, which like the Phlegmatic has little by way of contrast in its personality, other than a gravely beautiful, resigned episode in the middle. Again like its Phlegmatic counterpart, the movement becomes increasingly static, until, in the composer's words 'the parts intertwine like the threads of a net'. Even so, Nielsen was incapable of drawing anything other than a rounded character-portrait, and he give his 'heavy, melancholy man' a mitigating quality of stoical nobility from the outset. Eventually the music find its way to a calm and touching self-knowledge.

"Psychological progress of some such kind also underpins the Sanguine finale. This begins as the sketch of a man who 'storms thoughtlessly on in the belief that the whole world belongs to him, and that roast pigeons will fly into his mouth without work or bother'. However, 'Just once it seems that he has encountered something really serious; at least he meditates over something that is alien to his own nature, and it seems to affect him, so that while the final march may be happy and bright, it is still more dignified and not as silly and smug as some his previous bursts of activity.' In musical terms this is where Nielsen's famous 'progressive tonality' kicks in, as the movement - and indeed the entire symphony - ends in a brighter key than the one in which it began, as if to symbolise that adventure and self-transformation may be even higher values than empathy.

"In the post-Great War era, Nielsen's Fourth and Fifth Symphonies brought him the greatest measure of professional recognition he ever enjoyed in his lifetime. Critics in Scandinavia who had been troubled by what they saw as a veil of wilful experimentation in his earlier works were now, paradoxically, bowled over by these far more challenging masterpieces. Perhaps they got the point - and perhaps Nielsen himself made it easier for them to get the point - that what they had been bothered about was actually a deliberate negative polarity in an abstract human drama, rather than any kind of weakness or 'Schadenfreude'. Music of tough-minded, recalcitrant, even rebarbative kind was simply Nielsen's way of enshrining the struggles he perceived to be at the core of existence. Given what the First World War had done for the moral climate in Europe, that message was no hard to mistake.

"However, for the composer himself, the edge was taken off his creative triumphs by the realisation that he was not making the international headway he felt he deserved. He found little to admire in the European musical scene in the 1920s, with its extremes of hedonism and self-abnegation. And to make matters worse, his health was being undermined by heart problems that first manifested themselves seriously after his intense work on the Fifth Symphony. In any case, his abiding instinct for adventure dictated that his next symphony would have to move to a different arena. But where to, precisely, given that he had so recently scaled such mighty peaks?

"His first thought was, in effect, to take his cue from the work he had been doing for more than a decade in the area of folk-popular song. Accordingly, as he wrote to one of his daughters in August 1924, he envisaged a work that would be 'quite idyllic in character, beyond all time-bound taste and fashion... like the old 'a cappella' musicians'. But Nielsen was never one for planning out the precise route in advance, and this time his journey took him to regions far removed from the opening bars, with their tinkling glockenspiel, genial woodwind scales and childlike violins over tick-tock oboes and bassoons.

"In an intervew published two days before the first performance on 11th December 1925, he was asked about the title of the symphony. 'I've named it 'Sinfonia semplice',' he replied, 'because the main character is in a lighter vein than my other symphonies - there are merry things in it.' The interviewer pressed him further, no doubt because the composer had been in the news that year: at the time of the national celebrations for his 60th birthday, he had made unexpectedly cynical pronouncements on the career of a composer. Nielsen was adamant: 'The symphony has nothing whatsoever to do with my states of mind. What I experience in life never directly affects my music.' But he went on to give what may be an important clue to the tone of the symphony: 'It's natural for us to long for what we don't have.' In other words, the 'Sinfonia semplice' is not so much a simple symphony - far from it - but rather one that longs for a state of simplicity, more particularly for a return to the state of its opening bars.

"The symphony's final movement is, in fact, one of Nielsen's most tragic and full-worked out musical dramas, for all that it is expressed in a twelve-minute time-span and in highly economical texture. Each of its half-dozen main ideas is beguilingly innocent on initial presentation, but each is brutalised in the central phase of the movement, culminating in a full-scale panic attack and an agonisingly prolonged dissonance on horns and woodwin. This is, in effect, as anti-heroic a symphonic movement as anything in Shostakovich - who was composing his First Symphony at precisely the same time, but who almost certainly did not know Nielsen's music until much later in life.

"If this first movement is disturbing, what follows is even more so. A self-styled Humoresque, the second movement's prevailing tone is sardonic, yet not so obviously so that Nielsen felt it could speak for itself. In one and the same interview, two days before the premier in December 1925, he stressed that the symphony protrayed 'purely musical problems', yet then immediately contradicted himself, describing the percussion waking up the other instrumnts, which proceed to play 'modern music', arousing their distaste and later the contempt of the trombone, which plays yawning glissandi, as if to say 'Baa, baby food!', before the all fall peacefully asleep again. What is alarming about this satirical picture is a sense that the composer's own voice is virtually absent, having been so integral to the drama of the first movement.

"Then it seems that the slow movement may redress the balance. Nielsen's 'serious proposition' is an intense Bartókian fugue in the strings - the opening repeated notes harking right back to the first bar of the symphony. This is the sort of writing he had deployed so inspiringly in the second movement of the Fifth Symphony, to absorb negativity and to prepare the ground for a final burst of life-affirmation. This time, however, everything collapses and the music becomes entangled in a mesh of its own fevered anxiety - like the Melancholic Temperament but at a higher, existential level. The best it can hope for is a pale reconciliation to the status quo, blearily expressed in the closing bars.

"Before composing the finale Nielsen declared it would be a 'a variations work, a cosmic chasos, who atoms [...] clarify and unite to form a globe'. Yet again, however, the concept darkened as he worked on it. The variations are certainly there, and in the middle of the movement something very much like cosmic chaos indeed comes across the music. But the envisaged gathering into wholeness encounters obstacles that for once in his symphonic career prove insuperable. As the composer confided to a friend, the bizarre variation with tuba and percussion represents 'death knocking at the door', and the concluding fanfares therefore cannot be other than a death-defying gesture. Finally the two bassoons are left honking out their lowest note with all their might. Thus the greatest life-affirmer in the 20th-century symphonic tradition ends his last symphony by symbolically giving death the finger." (David Fanning, 2014. From the liner notes.) 

Performers: Kungliga Filharmonikerna, Sakari Oramo

1. Symphony No. 2, Op. 16, FS 29 'De Fire Temperamenter': I. Allegro Colleric

2. Symphony No. 2, Op. 16, FS 29 'De Fire Temperamenter': II. Allegro Comodo E Flemmatico

3. Symphony No. 2, Op. 16, FS 29 'De Fire Temperamenter': III. Andante Malincolico

4. Symphony No. 2, Op. 16, FS 29 'De Fire Temperamenter': IV. Allegro Sanguineo

5. Symphony No. 6, FS 116 'Sinfonia Semplice': I. Tempo Giusto

6. Symphony No. 6, FS 116 'Sinfonia Semplice': II. Humoresque. Allegretto

7. Symphony No. 6, FS 116 'Sinfonia Semplice': III. Proposta Seria. Adagio

8. Symphony No. 6, FS 116 'Sinfonia Semplice': IV. Theme And Variations. Allegro

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