James Macmillan 29

premiere recordings a scotch bestiary piano concerto no. 2 wayne marshall bbc philharmonic CHAN 10377 james macmillan 29 CCHANHAN 1103770377 BBOOK.inddOOK.indd 228-298-29 114/8/064/8/06 114:55:414:55:41 James MacMillan (b. 1959) premiere recordings Andrew Farrington Andrew A Scotch Bestiary (2003– 04)* 33:35 Enigmatic variations on a zoological carnival at a Caledonian exhibition for organ and orchestra Dedicated to Gillian Moore MBE I. The menagerie, caged 21:01 1 The book is opened. Andante – 1:28 2 1 Ode to a cro-magnon hyena. Adagio – 2:33 3 A page is turned. Tempo I – 0:42 4 2 Reptiles and Big Fish (in a small pond). Largo – Andante – Largo – Andante – Tempo di valse (Allegro) – Andante – Largo – 1:57 5 3 Her Serene and Ubiquitous Majesty, Queen Bee. Senza misura. Prestissimo possibile, sempre legatissimo – [ ] – Adagio – 2:10 6 Another page is turned. Tempo I – 0:57 7 4 The red-handed, no-surrender, howler monkey. [ ] – Tempo di marcia – 1:36 8 5 Uncle Tom Cat and his Chickens. Adagio – 2:00 9 Yet another page is turned. Tempo I – 0:41 James MacMillan 3 CCHANHAN 1103770377 BBOOK.inddOOK.indd 22-3-3 114/8/064/8/06 114:55:294:55:29 10 6 Scottish Patriots. [ ] – [ ] – Maestoso – 2:11 MacMillan: Piano Concerto No. 2/A Scotch Bestiary 11 7 The Reverend Cuckoo and his Parroting Chorus. [ ] – 1:34 12 8 Jackass Hackass. Prestissimo possibile (moto perpetuo) – 1:41 2004 was the year when Cumnock Fair came to were both having their cake and eating it 13 The book is closed. Tempo I – 1:29 New York, and a grand Caledonian bestiary ran at the New York City Ballet premiere, giving wild in Los Angeles before crossing the Atlantic the audience its fi ll of Scots-wha-hae while 14 II. The menagerie, uncaged 12:28 to Manchester. It was clear then that James affecting to maintain an ironic distance. Andante – [ ] – Meno mosso – [ ] – Largamente – [ ] – MacMillan had neither sacrifi ced his Scottish Whatever the truth about the references to jigs Adagio – [ ] – Adagio – Moderato – Andante – Fast – roots for American glitz nor traded on them and sword-dances by Wheeldon, the concept of Presto – [ ] – Presto – [ ] – Presto – Largamente con rubato – for special status. From The Berserking, his spirited tradition that turns malign has always Presto – [ ] – Ritmico e marcato – [ ] – Presto – Adagio – fi rst piano concerto (CHAN 10092), and Veni, been part of MacMillan’s armoury. In fact, back Presto – Adagio – Presto – Adagio – Presto veni Emmanuel in the late 1980s and early in 1999, before Wheeldon approached him for 1990s, his works for soloist and orchestra have a full-scale work, MacMillan had composed the Piano Concerto No. 2 (1999; 2003)† 29:56 always been too multi-faceted to be labelled fi rst movement, ‘cumnock fair’, for the Golden for piano and string orchestra either showpieces or pure programme Jubilee of that Ayrshire town’s music society, In memoriam Edwin Muir music, maintaining a canny balance between when it was performed as a piano sextet at the personal expression, grateful writing for the Cumnock Academy by members of the Scottish 15 I cumnock fair. Fast 12:08 instrumentalist in the spotlight, and an ability Chamber Orchestra. MacMillan then outlined 16 II shambards. = c. 60 7:59 rare among composers of MacMillan’s the different elements of this fantasy: starting 17 III shamnation. Allegro (Tempo di Reel) 9:49 generation to communicate to a wide with a ‘fast, unison chromatic melody which, TT 63:46 audience. Although the satire of A Scotch when repeated and harmonised, sounds like Bestiary is very different from the treatment of an imaginary folk dance’, it proceeds with the native dances in Piano Concerto No. 2 – galumphing treatment by lower strings and Wayne Marshall organ* • piano† based, like The Berserking, on destructive, piano of ‘Mr James Boswell’s Jig’, one of three BBC Philharmonic or self-destructive, elements in Scottish dance tunes by Cumnock’s most distinguished history – neither work is fl ippant or fl ashy son, John French, who knew Robert Burns. † Yuri Torchinsky* • Fionula Hunt leaders just for the sheer hell of it. Another tune by French, ‘Mrs Auchinleck’s James MacMillan There were, perhaps inevitably, critical Reel’, is heard more obliquely and a third, the accusations that MacMillan and the strathspey ‘Cumnock Fair’, fi nally emerges on choreographer who had commissioned the upper strings after the increasingly tortured Second Piano Concerto, Christopher Wheeldon, central meditation for the pianist. 4 5 CCHANHAN 1103770377 BBOOK.inddOOK.indd 44-5-5 114/8/064/8/06 114:55:314:55:31 The composer did not at the time explain And so, once the three-note question Bartók’s Music for Strings, Percussion and by human archetypes and personalities why the jig becomes more desperate in its hanging in the air after ‘cumnock fair’ Celesta; except in a few variations in which the encountered in Scottish life over the years. attempt to reassert itself, nor why ‘Cumnock has launched a sad meditation against a soloist takes the fl oor, there is always some Other acknowledged models were the very Fair’ turns ‘brutal, grotesque’ and fortissimo melancholy wash of muted strings, Burns-like malign force working against the tune. Finally human world of Elgar’s Enigma Variations, before the opening dance sequence returns folksongs wanly drift and the soloist makes the whole thing implodes with the soloist’s hinted at in the subtitle (‘Enigmatic variations and the movement burns itself out with a discreet, Chopin-waltz references to mad mad, cadenza-like reminiscences of previous on a zoological carnival at a Caledonian hesitant memory of the strathspey from Lucy of Lammermoor, the Scott heroine movements – including the waltz from Lucia exhibition’), and Mussorgsky’s Pictures from double-basses, the inconclusive striking-up immortalised in the opera by Donizetti that di Lammermoor – persuading the jig to give an Exhibition, whose very Russian theme of of a ceilidh band, and a three-note question is quoted here. After a central sequence up until all that remains is a free soloistic the composer as spectator, alternating bars from the soloist that is left hanging in the air. in which the strings take over to elaborate improvisation on random chord clusters, which of 5/4 and 6/4 (11/4 as MacMillan lays it In 2004, however, he wrote that on the Celtic material, Lucia’s Mad-Scene comes to an abrupt and shattering stop. out), is unequivocally aped in ‘The menagerie, Cumnock Fair’s original title was ‘Hoodicraw waltz builds up courage, only to collapse Just before it does, listeners may detect caged’. Like Mussorgsky, MacMillan interposes Peden’ who was Scotland’s seventeenth- (echoes, perhaps, of Ravel’s La Valse, one of Saint-Saëns’s kangaroos in the padded cell his physiognomy in further interludes – the century talibanesque covenanting ‘hero’ Wheeldon’s biggest choreographic triumphs). with Lucia. The Frenchman’s Le Carnaval des three here respectively scored for woodwind, referred to in Edwin Muir’s excoriating poem The piano rumblings which end the animaux was one of several sources which strings, and percussion with harp and electric ‘Scotland 1941’. Peden was infamous for his movement then start up, drum-like, as MacMillan acknowledged in the creation of piano – but as one who leafs through a book black crow’s appearance as he went about ominous accompaniment to a reel for solo A Scotch Bestiary, composed back to back of zoological specimens rather than as a his zealotry in Cumnock and elsewhere violin in the fi nale. ‘shamnation’, the title, with the last two movements of the Second spectator at a gallery. The ‘pictures’ are best in south-west Scotland. The allegory of contains two meanings – again that derived Piano Concerto. Like Saint-Saëns in select introduced by their maker, though something a carrion crow scavenging on the corpse from splitting it into two words, and the other numbers of his ‘grand zoological fantasy’, of the enigma remains in what he leaves out of a once-beautiful culture is apt indeed. a further reference from Muir, the work’s late MacMillan targets his satire at the human as of his descriptions: I decided to revisit the Muir poem for dedicatee: much as the animal world, and the fact that the Ode to a cro-magnon hyena. Duetting inspiration for the two new movements. Courage beyond the point and obdurate world premiere took place in the new, Gehry- melodic lines on organ, violas, and cellos ‘shambards’, the title of the second movement pride designed Walt Disney Hall in Los Angeles – the are accompanied by laughing trumpets, and of Wheeldon’s ballet as a whole, takes its Made us a nation, robbed us of a nation. work showcases a fl amboyant role for the hall’s lolloping trombones, howling clarinets, and cue from two of Muir’s lines in Scotland 1941, Defi ance absolute and myriad-eyed spectacular organ, and is equally well-served in little ticking rhythmic fi gures on percussion which place among the worn-out gewgaws to That could not pluck the palm plucked our this recording by the instrument’s Mancunian and horns. which an outwardly prosperous nation clings damnation. equivalent – led MacMillan, in his own words, Reptiles and Big Fish (in a small pond). …mummied housegods in their musty The reel whirls ever insanely onwards, like to be Large, slithering, and lumbering melodies niches, the tavern music of Berg’s Wozzeck, in a motivated by the great American cartoon are presented on the organ pedals, tuba, Burns and Scott, sham bards of a sham moto perpetuo which lacks the healthy vitality makers who represented human characters and double-basses, which lead to an nation.

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