Search - Pamela Harrison, Francis Chagrin, Percy Fletcher :: English String Miniatures 5

England in (mostly) Triple Time

J Scott Morrison | Middlebury VT, USA | 07/18/2006

(5 out of 5 stars)

"What do composers John Rutter, C. W. Orr, George Melachrino, Peter Dodd, Cecil Armstrong Gibbs, Frank Cordell, David Lyon, Roy Douglas, Philip Lane, Frank Bridge, Edward Elgar, Haydn Wood, Ralph Vaughan Williams, John Ireland, Frederick Delius, Peter Warlock, Geoffrey Bush, Carlo Martelli, Gerald Finzi, Gustav Holst, William Blezard, Michael Hurd, Bruce Montgomery, Peter Hope, Adam Carse and Ernest Tominson have in common? They are all English composers whose music has previously been featured in four issues of an ongoing series -- English String Miniatures -- from Naxos. (For the specific contents of Vols. 1-4 see their product pages here at Amazon.com.) Now, in Volume 5 we add music by Pamela Harrison (1915-1990), Francis Chagrin (1905-1972), Percy Fletcher (1879-1932), Paul Lewis (again) (b.1942), Albert Cazabon (1883-1979), Thomas Roseingrave (1690-1766), and again John Ireland (1876-1962). If there was ever any doubt that the English have been masters of writing for the string orchestra, there shouldn't be any now. These miniatures (and those in preceding issues) have been impeccably performed by a number of British string ensembles. Featured here is the excellent Royal Ballet Sinfonia conducted by Gavin Sutherland.



With the exception of Ireland's 'A Downland Suite', I was not familiar with any of this music. And yet there is not a weak work amongst them. Pamela Harrison's 'Suite for Timothy,' a delightfully light-hearted five movement work was written for the first birthday of her son Timothy. It makes use of divisi strings in French renaissance-y rhythms overlaid with modern French harmonies. Chagrin's 'Renaissance Suite' sounds much more of the Renaissance if only because the harmonies are more consonant with that period. I was particularly struck by the irregular meters of the Rondo giocoso and kept seeing mental images of a dancing Henry VIII. Percy Fletcher, best known for the music for 'Chu Chin Chow,' a long-running West End musical from 1916, contributes the two movement 'Folksong and Fiddle Dance' which are exactly as titled. By now a listener will have become aware of how often these pieces are in 6/8 or 3/4, so typical of English folksong and dance rhythms.



Paul Lewis's 'Suite Navarraise' was written after a holiday in the French Basque region and features dance rhythms associated with the area. The music, like that of Chagrin's, is redolent of both French and English Renaissance forms. Albert Cazabon is represented by one movement, 'Giocoso', written in the 1950s and arranged for strings at the request of Billy Mayerl.



The oldster in this list of English composers is the Georgian organist Thomas Roseingrave. His 'Three Pieces' were arranged for string orchestra from a set of organ voluntaries by a modern master, Humphrey Searle. It consists of Fugue, Voluntary IV, and Fugue III. Searle's modernist tendencies -- he was a student of Webern -- timidly peak through occasionally. The CD ends with the familiar 'A Downland Suite' by John Ireland whose music, praise be, is enjoying a mini-boom of late. The Suite was originally scored for brass band -- indeed, it was composed as a test piece for wind band competitions -- but a few years later Ireland completed an arrangement for strings of the two inner movements before having to flee his home in the Channel Isles ahead of invading Germans. He never got back to the arrangement and it was finished by his student Geoffrey Bush, himself represented by his 'Consort Music' in Volume 2 of this fine series.



I have enjoyed this issue for some weeks now and find myself whistling or humming Chagrin's Rondo giocoso repeatedly trying to master its tricky metrics to the (pun intended) chagrin of my poor wife.



Scott Morrison"