Boult Ireland

SRCD.240 STEREO ADD JOHN IRELAND (1879-1962) Scherzo & Cortège (Julius Caesar) OULT Mai-Dun, symphonic rhapsody 1 (c1905) * (10’29”) B Tritons, symphonic prelude B conducts The Forgotten Rite, prelude 2 The Forgotten Rite, prelude (1918) (7’07”) Tritons, symphonic prelude 3 Mai-Dun, symphonic rhapsody (1920-21) (11’23”) Suite ‘The Overlanders’ 4 A London Overture (1936) (11’57”) A London Overture 5 Epic March (1942) (8’12”) RELAND Epic March (arr. Geoffrey Bush) (1942) * I Themes from Julius Caesar I 6 1. Scherzo (2’47”) 7 2. Cortège (3’58”) Suite ‘The Overlanders’ (1946-47) (ed. Charles Mackerras) * 8 1. March: Scorched Earth (4’39”) 9 2. Romance: Mary & Sailor (3’55”) 10 3. Intermezzo: Open Country (3’20”) 11 4. Scherzo: The Brumbies (4’22”) 12 5. Finale: Night Stampede (3’51”) (76’04”) London Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Sir Adrian Boult The above individual timings will normally each include two pauses. One before the beginning of each movement or work, and one after the end. ൿ 1966 *ൿ 1971 The copyright in these sound recordings is owned by Lyrita Recorded Edition, England. This compilation and the digital remastering ൿ 2007 Lyrita Recorded Edition, England. © 2007 Lyrita Recorded Edition, England. Lyrita is a registered trade mark. Made in the UK LYRITA RECORDED EDITION. Produced under an exclusive license from Lyrita by Wyastone Estate Ltd, PO Box 87, Monmouth, NP25 3WX, UK London Philharmonic Orchestra movement; Romance). The Suite begins with the title music, which recurs with overwhelming effect at the end of the film when the herdsmen, against all odds, reach their destination. n his orchestral music John Ireland was often concerned with the evocation of I places and of the people who had lived in them. In particular he had the power At the time John Ireland was writing the Overlanders music in Chelsea, I was to evoke such places and people from a prehistoric past. Some of us may have felt organist of the Parish Church (my first job, obtained at his instigation). In writing when visiting a place for the first time that we have been there before, and some these notes I have drawn on my memory of what the composer told me then; but I places more than others seem to emanate their historical background. Ireland first am also indebted to valuable information supplied by Christopher Slater and Ernest realised that he was peculiarly sensitive to such influences when in his early thirties Chapman (by courtesy of Boosey and Hawkes), and to the help and encouragement he bought by chance a copy of Arthur Machen’s ‘The House of Souls’ from a railway of Norah Kirby and the John Ireland Trust. bookstall, attracted both by the cover and the title. The book was to prove a GEOFFREY BUSH revelation to him, and its description of ‘the world beyond the walls’ found an immediate response in his own subconscious thought. Many years later Ireland himself was to write of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring “I always feel that the musical sounds Stravinsky makes in this work- the musical ideas themselves – seem to have the power of calling up something from the subconscious mind: some racial memory, perhaps, of things long hidden and belonging to a remote and forgotten past.”That description might equally be applied to Ireland’s own The Forgotten Rite, composed, incidentally, in the same year as Stravinsky’s work was produced in Paris. It has often been stated that the inspiration for this music was a holiday spent in www.lyrita.co.uk Jersey.This is hardly even a half-truth, for the fact is that throughout his life Ireland Note © 1966, 1971 Lyrita Recorded Edition, England was attracted to the Channel Islands, and it was through his absorbing their Digital Remastering Engineer: Simon Gibson atmosphere and the still existent vestiges of their remote and prehistoric past that The original recordings of Tritons,‘The Overlanders’ suite, Scherzo & Cortège,The Forgotten Rite & Mai-Dun were made in association with the JOHN IRELAND TRUST. the music came to be written. It was possibly at Le Fauvic in Jersey that both The Forgotten Rite and Island Spell (the first movement of the piano suite Decorations) Cover Design by KEITH HENSBY based upon an old engraving of Wren Churches. were first conceived. The opening of the orchestral work, marked Poco lento e mistico, is begun by the strings after two soft drum rolls. There is a suggestion of WARNING Copyright subsists in all Lyrita Recordings. Any unauthorised broadcasting. public modal harmony and a phrase on a solo horn provides a second germinal motive. A performance, copying, rental or re-recording thereof in any manner whatsoever will constitute an broadly expressive melody begun by the horns against a rich string background infringement of such copyright. In the United Kingdom licences for the use of recordings for public performance may be obtained from Phonographic Performance Ltd., 1 Upper James Street, London, completes the material and provides the first climax, after which a lyrical flowering W1F 9DE 2 7 composer, since it was a favourite of his; he was less pleased with the ration of time on the oboe of the solo horn motive builds up to another ecstatic moment. Here a allowed for its composition- a fortnight. “I stick at it all day and every day and a good sharp glissando returns the music to its original atmosphere, and the broadly part of the night as well”, he wrote to me at the time. “Compared with writing the expressive horn melody is heard Lontano possible. As the music dissolves into music for Julius Caesar, penal servitude would have been a recreation.” When I silence the solo horn motive is heard, ‘soft, but distinctly marked’, on the celesta. looked at the score for the first time in January 1970 and discovered that it consisted of eighteen instrumental fragments, none of them longer than three lines, it seemed While there may be some doubt about the particular place that inspired The impossible to create a concert piece from it. But as soon as I realised that several Forgotten Rite, there is no similar doubt regarding Mai-Dun. This was Thomas sections had key, mood and themes in common, the Scherzo & Cortége evolved very Hardy’s name for the prehistoric fort and earthworks near Dorchester known as rapidly. The Scherzo is in ABA form, A consisting of the jubilant music celebrating Maiden Castle. Ireland greatly admired Hardy, possibly because both believed in a the Feast of the Lupercal (Act 1, Scene 2), B being developed from a short motif harshly indifferent force that governed mankind, and as a result Ireland spent some employed in various crowd scenes.The Cortége presents the themes associated with considerable time in Hardy’s Dorset. The Symphonic Rhapsody Mai-Dun was Brutus and Cassius and in its later stages makes use of music from the two funeral composed in 1920-21, some 15 years before Mortimer Wheeler had excavated the processions (Act 3, Scene 2, and Act 5, Scene 5). The whole piece opens and closes site of this prehistoric fortified township and made his remarkable discoveries. with the fanfare symbolising Caesar himself, and is scored for wind, brass, double Ireland seems almost to have foreseen them, for while his earlier orchestral work is basses and percussion. concerned with an ageless ritual, Mai-Dun epitomises the strenuous life and struggles of a primitive community.The inhabitants of this early town-fortress must The film The Overlanders (1946-7), directed by Harry Watt and starring Chips many times have had to repulse invasion before they finally succumbed to the Rafferty, describes how a group of North American herdsmen, finding themselves Roman legions. The music, marked Allegro energico, begins aggressively, though and their cattle threatened during the second world war by the prospect of a there is relief and contrast in the middle section, begun by a solo horn. However, it Japanese invasion, trekked across mountains, rivers and deserts to safety hundreds is the opening theme that finally prevails, bringing the music to a close in a climax of miles further south.This epic feat demanded music of comparable stature, and it marked fff in the brass. was Ernest Irving who was responsible for the imaginative and successful choice of JULIAN HERBAGE John Ireland to supply it. Conductor and composer occasionally found their ideas in conflict with those of the director; because Harry Watt objected to anything that sounded to him “like a Sunday afternoon chamber-music concert”, they had to John Ireland was born at Bowdon, near Manchester, and he died in West Sussex. But devise a counter-melody for violins pizzicato to disguise the jagged clarinet solo London was his home for some fifty-five years; and since he was keenly sensitive to which so vividly illustrates the taming of the brumbies, or wild horses (Overlanders the ‘spirit of place’, it is not surprising that he should have reflected in his music Suite, 4th movement; Scherzo). The least satisfactory feature of an otherwise various facets of the city he knew so well. During the years 1917-1920 he wrote three splendid film is the rather out-of-place and conventional love interest, but it drew London Pieces for piano: Chelsea Reach, Ragamuffin and Soho Forenoons. About from Ireland a touching and characteristic inspiration (Overlanders Suite,2nd ten years later he composed Ballade of London Nights for piano, the manuscript of 6 3 which was discovered posthumously. In 1936 came A London Overture for orchestra, be played, at the opening concert of the season of Promenade Concerts that year, which was based on material used in A Comedy Overture, commissioned for the when it was conducted by Sir Henry Wood.The score is prefaced by the definition of National Brass Band Contest at the Crystal Palace in 1934.

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