Search - Edward C. Bairstow :: Organist, Composer, Conductor

Opening a window in time

Mark Swinton | 06/27/2003

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Sir Edward Cuthbert Bairstow was a British musician of considerable distinction in the early part of the twentieth century. He is best remembered for having been Organist and Master of the Music at York Minster for the last years of his life (he died in 1946) and for his contribution to the repertoire of church and cathedral choirs - a contribution that can still be heard abundantly at services in Anglican churches today.This CD presents (as far as is known) the complete recordings made by Bairstow. There are not many, but they provide a remarkable insight not only into his music-making but into the sound world of the 1920s. Four tracks of Renaissance polyphony (two by William Byrd, one by Orlando Gibbons and one formerly attributed to Gibbons but now believed to be by his contemporary Henry Loosemore) sung by York Minster Choir in 1927 reveal much of the sound made by cathedral choirs in those days: boys were taught to sing in a somewhat different manner, producing a lighter and 'hootier' sound which tends to be drowned out by the men's voices (some of them very rich and almost operatic in tone) but the ensemble is generally good and the tuning admirable. All the works are now well known as examples of Latin polyphony, but are sung here in English. It may very well come as a shock to listeners used to the sound of modern choirs of this type!Another sample of Bairstow's choral conducting is excerpted from a performance of Bach's "Mass in B minor" given at the Royal Albert Hall in 1926. The tracks only feature selected chorus numbers: the fanfare-like opening of the "Gloria," the more contrite "Qui tollis peccata mundi," the ethereal "Crucifixus," the buoyant "Hosannas." Again, in an age replete with specialist early music ensembles and exponents of Baroque performance practice, it comes as a shock to hear this music performed at modern pitch with massed choir, full symphony orchestra and greatly 'romanticised' tempi, but there are some magical moments, particularly the "Crucifixus" which is hushed almost to the point of inaudibility - although inevitably there is quite a lot of tape hiss on these old recordings, despite their having been 'CEDARised' which masks out some of the more expressive playing and singing.Four more tracks feature Bairstow playing the organ of York Minster. His interpretation of two Bach works (a Prelude and Fugue and a chorale prelude) would make purists shudder - plenty of stop changes, with a quasi-orchestral build-up of tone colours as the texture of the music builds up. It is almost like hearing Bach transcribed for orchestra by someone such as Wagner. The opening and closing tracks of the disc show Bairstow on later repertoire: his brisk "Prelude in C" (with a rich tuba solo on the pedals) offers a tantalising glimpse of his work as composer-performer, whilst the Fantasia and Fugue in E minor by the little-known Dutch composer Edouard Silas shows Bairstow's treatment of the music of his near-contemporaries. (This track is taken from an acetate disc of his last radio broadcast in 1945 and is incomplete; the Fugue was recorded specially for this CD in 1996 by Bairstow's famous pupil and successor Dr Francis Jackson - now in his eighties.) Francis Jackson closes the disc off with a speech commemorating Bairstow and communicating an impression of Bairstow's character and personal life - which the recordings obviously cannot do on their own.This is perhaps only worth a look if you are interested in the music of Edward Bairstow, or in 'historical' recordings. Amphion's engineer Martin Monkman has done his best to clean up these old recordings, but as mentioned there is still a considerable amount of hissing. It should also be noted that the recording technology of the early century was incapable of picking up subtle instrumental nuances or vast acoustics: this point becomes clear in the Silas piece, when Jackson's pristine modern recording supplants the grainy sound of Bairstow's old one.Still, this is an admirable package and a wonderful testimony to the music-making of long ago."