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Home , Graham Fitkin, Piano, Salsa Celtica

After the Tryst New for and mckenzie sawers duo After the Tryst 1 Sally Beamish (b. 1956) Caliban (2014) [4:16] 2 James MacMillan (b. 1959) After the Tryst (1988, arr. 1995)** [2:47] New music for saxophone and piano arr. Gerard McChrystal Weir (b. 1954) Sketches from Bagpiper’s Album (1984)** 3 1. Salute [3:31] mckenzie sawers duo 4 2. Nocturne [1:39] 5 3. Lament, over the sea [2:37]

6 Michael Nyman (b. 1944) Miserere Paraphrase (1989/94) [6:45]

7 Alasdair Nicolson (b. 1961) Slow Airs and March (1994)* [12:45]

Sue McKenzie soprano saxophone (tracks 1–7, 9–12), 8 Joe Duddell (b. 1972) Fracture (1999)* [4:36] (track 8) 9 Ian Wilson (b. 1964) Drive (1992)* [6:13]

Ingrid Sawers piano 10 Cecilia McDowall (b. 1951) Mein blaues Klavier (2006)* [10:56]

11 Michael Nyman Shaping the Curve (1990) [8:39]

12 (b. 1963) Bob (1996)** [2:14]

Total playing time [67:06]

* premiere recording ** first recording of this version

Sue McKenzie would like to thank Kerry Long at Recorded on 11-13 July 2017 Cover image: Sorrow is Kissing Me, Join the Delphian mailing list: Yanagisawa , Tom Bacon and Jean- at Broughton St Mary’s Parish Berlin, Germany, 2010; black and white www.delphianrecords.co.uk/join Church, photograph © Ronny Behnert / François Bescond at D’Addario Woodwinds, Ruth Like us on Facebook: Producer/Engineer: Paul Baxter Bridgeman Images www.facebook.com/delphianrecords Prowse and Malcolm Kirkpatrick at The Wind 24-bit digital editing: Matthew Swan Artist photography © Marc Marnie Section, Judith Walsh, Mike Brogan, all the Philps 24-bit digital mastering: Paul Baxter Design: John Christ Follow us on Twitter: and especially Mackinnon and Emily Green. Piano: Steinway model D, Booklet editor: John Fallas @delphianrecords 2016, serial no 600443 Delphian Records Ltd – Edinburgh – UK Piano technician: Norman Motion www.delphianrecords.co.uk Notes on the music

Latecomers to , the members combination of simple piano with a in bare outline after an opening flurry but more prominent in the work’s second half: of the saxophone family are still rarely heard skipping, searching melody that seems on the threaded throughout the piece) ‘that John once the expansive release after the energy rush. within orchestral contexts; the soprano cusp of peeling away altogether. overheard me playing and which he expressed saxophone (despite appearances in Richard a particular liking for’, as the has put Gerard McChrystal, arranger of MacMillan’s Strauss’s domestica and Ravel’s By necessity, comprise a it. Despite its restriction, Nyman’s After the Tryst, is also the dedicatee of Ian Bolero) perhaps even more so. Yet its significant portion of the soprano saxophone’s inventive changes in texture and figuration Wilson’s Drive. Wilson’s first work distinctive, reedy tone and snapping agility repertory. MacMillan’s piece is most familiar mean it sounds nothing like a study in restraint. for saxophone, and he has since gone on to have found it a place within contemporary in its original version for and piano; the There is a Greenaway connection here, too: become one of the instrument’s most prolific solo and chamber settings. Intriguingly, recorded here was made by the Shaping the Curve served as a study for the : his output includes more than those qualities put it in similar territory to the Northern Irish saxophonist Gerard McChrystal soprano saxophone Where the two dozen works featuring solo saxophone very un-classical world of the – a in 1995. Michael Nyman’s Miserere Bee Dances, which Harle premiered with or saxophone , in chamber scores, connection made explicit in two of the works Paraphrase has similar origins. the Bournemouth at the 1991 multimedia performances and . on this recording, by and Alasdair written to be performed by Nyman and Cheltenham Festival. The title of that piece Drive is a relatively modest exploration of Nicolson (although Weir’s piece was originally Alexander Balanescu – violinist of the Michael alludes to Ariel’s song ‘Where the bee sucks’, different regions of the soprano’s range. After composed for ). A third piece, James Nyman Band – as part of the score to Peter of which Nyman had recently composed a a short introduction, three sections exploit the MacMillan’s After the Tryst, from which the Greenaway’s 1989 The Cook, the Thief, setting for Prospero’s Books, Greenaway’s film instrument’s registers in turn – medium-high, album takes its name, also has its origins in his Wife and her Lover, it was arranged by the version of Shakespeare’s The Tempest. low, then high – the last with a soaring melody Scottish . composer in 1994 for John Harle, another supported by a rippling piano, released suddenly member of the band. In Greenaway’s film, Joe Duddell also uses compositional from its chordal bonds. A brief glance back to In 1984, MacMillan made a ballad setting of the Miserere (sung by the scullery boy, Pup) restrictions as prompts for the imagination the first section serves as an enigmatic coda. ‘The Tryst’, by the early twentieth-century accompanies scenes inside the restaurant in his piece Fracture. It is one of three duos, Perth-born poet William Soutar. After kitchen, including a spectacular tracking shot all dating from 1999 (the others are Parallel If Shaping the Curve established a remote performing it frequently with his folk group near the film’s beginning. In keeping with Lines for percussion and piano, and Shiver connection to The Tempest, a much closer one Broadstone, MacMillan found the song had the film’s themes of gourmanderie, sex and and Shake for and piano), in which is made with Sally Beamish’s Caliban. It too is sunk deep into his musical subconscious. brutality, Nyman’s music combines the composer set out to achieve complete a preparatory work, this time a character study It resurfaced in several works of the poise, an ecstatic melody and a half-glimpsed equality between two players. for Beamish’s 2014 score for choreographer 1980s, among them the music-theatre piece threat of menace. Fracture – the only piece on this album written David Bintley’s adaptation of the play at Búsqueda (1988) and Tryst (1989) for chamber for alto rather than soprano saxophone – is Royal Ballet. (Around this time . The poignant miniature heard In contrast, Shaping the Curve is an openly made up of two alternating materials, both Beamish also composed Ariel, for solo , here – which elongates and ornaments the joyful expression of vitality and renewal. syncopated and involving wide melodic leaps, and Miranda Dreaming, for ; the latter original tune, while retaining its basic harmonic Written a year after the release of The Cook but one running at a quarter the speed of the work can be heard on another recent Delphian outline – is the best known, however, proving …, it was again composed for Harle – based other. For the most part the faster music leads, album, Robert Irvine’s collection Songs irresistible to performers and listeners in its strictly on a sequence of four chords (heard but the slower, more lyrical type becomes and Lullabies [DCD34173].) Caliban’s half- Notes on the music human, half-spirit nature – cruel, capricious, atmosphere of Lasker-Schüler’s poem; but who marched in Prince Charles Stuart’s Like Wilson’s Drive, each section of Sketches but capable of great wisdom and poetry – is it is the opening four notes of the piece – a Jacobite army at the Battle of Culloden in from a Bagpiper’s Album focuses on a different manifested in jagged lines that can equally swift, widening zip – that are its structural 1745; this ill-fated enterprise ended the hopes part of the soloist’s register, this time in the become lyrical cascades: erratic stamps foundation, initiating rapidly crossing streams of ‘Bonnie’ Prince Charlie and initiated the order medium, high, low. (In Weir’s own mixed with sudden introspection. In its central of notes between saxophone and piano that English repression of the Highland culture trio arrangement of the work, where section this short caprice slows to recall are tightly integrated but always evolving. from which Reid had come. Placed on trial in it is retitled A Bagpiper’s String Trio, the solo Caliban’s most artful moment, his speech York, alongside seventy other prisoners of line is given to a different instrument for each ‘The isle is full of noises’. If there is an affinity between soprano war, Reid attempted to defend himself on the movement.) The melody is built from the basic saxophone and Highland bagpipes, it was basis that he had not carried a sword or rifle intervals of Scottish pipe tunes, accompanied The poetry that inspired Cecilia McDowall’s presumably in Graham Fitkin’s mind when into battle – only his pipes. Nevertheless, the with remarkable thriftiness by a piano that Mein blaues Klavier is more recent, written he composed his short duo Bob in 1996. It presiding judge ruled that since a Highland shadows it closely, harmonising or altering by the German poet Else Lasker-Schüler was, he says, ‘my first piece to use Scottish regiment never went to war without a its tone without acting out a part of its own. (1869–1945). The piano of the title lies in a snap grace notes’; he used them again later piper, the pipes themselves constituted an (In its economy of writing, the piece recalls faraway land, neglected and ruined. It stands the same year in the saxophone quartet Hurl, instrument of war. (This was the first recorded Weir’s similarly compressed miniature in for the losses of war – the Jewish Lasker- and has done so frequently since, including in occasion of an instrument being described as King Harald’s Saga (1979) for soprano solo.) Schüler left Germany in the early 1930s and (2008) for orchestra. The different types such, and until the First World War bagpipes Melodic figurations recurring throughout settled in Jerusalem; ‘Mein blaues Klavier’ is of melodic ornamentation used in Highland would continue to be listed alongside guns resemble more complex pipe ornaments, such the title poem of a collection she published bagpipe music are highly formalised, with and munitions among the items captured in as shakes, doublings and birls. In their original there in 1943. The loss is not only material the single-grace-note type used by Fitkin the combat.) Reid was hanged. forms these would be based on the limited but also spiritual: the piano’s music has faded simplest of them. Its main role is to create number of finger movements possible on the (‘Now only rats dance to the clanks / The separation between notes: a pipe chanter is Weir’s piece outlines this remarkable story -hole chanter; Weir is able to take more keyboard is in bits’), as has Lasker-Schüler’s essentially a legato instrument (the air from in three short movements: a ‘Salute’, a romantic flights of fancy, yet in sticking to the sense of legitimacy (‘Push open / The door of the bag comes in an unbroken stream), so ‘Nocturne’ (in fact a nervous, febrile march, same underlying sets of notes she maintains heaven. For me, for now – / Although I am still grace notes help break up that flow. In Fitkin’s perhaps into battle?) and a valedictory a link with traditional Highland music. alive – / Although it is not allowed’). piece they perform a similar function, adding ‘Lament’. The subtitle of this last, ‘over the contrast to its simple melody, culminating in a sea’, conjures echoes of the traditional song In that repertory – whose traditions are McDowall cautions against reading her piece brief flourish of their own just before the end. ‘My Bonnie lies over the ocean’ – believed fiercely maintained at competitions and too literally – ‘the composition is essentially to have been sung by Jacobite supporters between players – a march must be played abstract’, she says – but it is nevertheless The works by Nicolson and Weir explore this in the wake of their defeat and Charles’s in strict tempo; a slow air is given much infused with ‘the fractured, tilted world of repertory more thoroughly. Judith Weir’s retreat to the Isle of Skye, and then to France more flexibility of timing, and is related to the the poem’. A central lament, constructed ‘very short instrumental opera’ Sketches – and through its rapturous glow one might highly ornamented Irish sean nós style of around descending, ethereal piano chords, from a Bagpiper’s Album is based on the imagine Reid picturing a sun-dappled exile unaccompanied singing. In Alasdair Nicolson’s is the piece’s emotional core and close to the life of James Reid, one of several pipers with his king. piece (another work written for Gerard Notes on the music Biographies

McChrystal), four airs are heard in sequence, Nicolson was born in Inverness and brought As ’s leading saxophone and appeared at St Albans International Organ with a fifth at the end combining elements up on Skye and the Black Isle, where his piano duo, McKenzie Sawers Duo have Festival, , WOMAD, the of all of them. In between each come faster father urged him to become a piper. He chose performed live on BBC Radio Scotland and , Celebr8 with Scottish march sections, except between airs one and piano instead, and then composition studies toured widely throughout the UK, as well as Ballet, as a soloist with both the National two, which run into each other (or is this one at Edinburgh University. In Slow Airs and being invited performers in Strasbourg at the Saxophone of Great Britain and BBC air containing two contrasting characters?). March, he has translated two quintessential World Saxophone Congress. Their repertoire Scottish Orchestra, and with her The soloist’s airs are long, keening melodies, forms for an ancient traditional instrument into encompasses classical, , world and folk band Dark Grooves at the Edinburgh Jazz and encrusted with Highland-style ornaments; like an ideal showcase for one of its most modern music and their mission to take it to new and Festival. Weir, Nicolson draws from a limited gamut of descendants. wider audiences has led to performances notes in echo of the bagpipes’ non-chromatic in diverse venues. Equally committed to Ingrid Sawers was educated at Edinburgh nature. The piano’s are freer, © 2018 Tim Rutherford-Johnson established repertoire and new composition, University, with subsequent tuition undertaken but also more sparing, leaving plenty of room they have given UK and Scottish premieres privately and in masterclasses and seminars with for the saxophonist to make the most of her Tim Rutherford-Johnson is the author of by composers including , Graham Roger Vignoles, Imogen Cooper (IMS Prussia instrument’s rich sustained tone; indeed, in the Music after the Fall: Modern Composition Fitkin and Gabriel Jackson. They were invited Cove), Paul Hamburger and Malcolm Martineau. penultimate air, apart from three big chords, and Culture since 1989 (University of artists in Enterprise Music Scotland’s Creative Her special interests lie in which are left to ring, the soloist is on her own. California Press, 2017) and blogs about Exchange and International Music Matters and , and she has performed contemporary music at The Rambler Conference. Their debut CD The Coral Sea throughout the UK – including at Oxford Lieder A slight shortening of the third aside, the (johnsonsrambler.wordpress.com). (Delphian DCD34121) was released in 2013 to Festival – as well as in Ireland, Canada, Austria, three marches are identical, and a complete critical acclaim. Recent performances include Malta, Italy and Denmark. Her commitment to contrast to the airs. The two instruments Edinburgh Festival Fringe, An Tobar (Mull) new music has resulted in Scottish premieres work in rhythmic unison, chopping highly and The Forge (London). Their last Edinburgh by composers including Thomas Adès, Martin syncopated chords out of the air (this is not concert was highlighted by The Scotsman as Butler, Richard Causton and Graham Fitkin. a march in any practical sense of the word) among ‘the best classical music in the Fringe’. She has broadcast on BBC Radio Scotland, and – a chance for that snapping agility to come performed live on BBC Arts channel as part of to the fore. Sue McKenzie is a Yanagisawa UK Artist, a the Edinburgh International Festival. D’Addario Woodwinds Artist, leader of the Scottish Saxophone Ensemble and director of Additionally Ingrid has a thriving practice the Scottish Saxophone Academy. A graduate as a teacher and coach, is a vocal coach at the of the Royal College of Music, she also studied Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, has given in Japan and USA, and has performed under masterclasses and workshops at a number the auspices of the Live Music Now scheme. of British universities, and travels worldwide She performs regularly with and as an examiner for the Associated Board of the the Improvisers Orchestra, and has Royal Schools of Music. Also available on Delphian

The Coral Sea: new music for soprano saxophone and piano James MacMillan: Since it was the day of Preparation … Jackson / Iles / Turnage / Fitkin / Bryars Brindley Sherratt , Synergy Vocals, Ensemble McKenzie Sawers Duo DCD34168 DCD34121 The first disc in a new recording partnership between Hebrides A photograph by Robert Mapplethorpe and the playing style of Busoni’s Ensemble and Delphian Records presents Sir James MacMillan’s favourite clarinettist are just two of the diverse inspirations behind these extraordinary setting – by turns intimate and dramatic – of the six recent British works. From the pounding muscularity of Graham Resurrection story as told in St John’s Gospel. As at the work’s premiere Fitkin to the blues-drenched melancholy of Mark-Anthony Turnage, at the 2012 Edinburgh International Festival, the Ensemble and its Edinburgh duo Sue McKenzie and Ingrid Sawers bring stylistic authority director William Conway (the work’s dedicatee) are joined by bass and idiomatic flair to everything they play on this, their debut recording. Brindley Sherratt in the role of Christ, and by a pristine quartet of singers from Synergy Vocals. ‘A varied, enjoyable CD … The instrument’s jazz heritage is ever present, from the bluesy rhetoric of Gabriel Jackson’s title piece to the sad poetry ‘extraordinarily affecting … It broaches enduring universal issues and, of Turnage’s Two Memorials’ in this wonderfully committed recording, already feels like a modern — The Observer, February 2013 masterpiece’ — BBC Music Magazine, July 2016

The Piano Tuner: contemporary piano trios from Scotland Set upon the Rood: new music for choir and ancient instruments Beamish / Osborne / Weir MacMillan / Kenny / MacRae / Grier / Wishart / Bick Fidelio Trio; Alexander McCall Smith narrator soloists; Choir of Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge / Geoffrey Webber DCD34084 DCD34154 Storytelling takes centre stage in the Fidelio Trio’s second Delphian Four members of the European Music Archaeology Project – piper recording, in which they are joined by Alexander McCall Smith, Barnaby Brown, lyre player Bill Taylor and ancient brass specialists John who narrates Sally Beamish’s evocative The Seafarer Trio with a and Patrick Kenny – join the ever-innovative Choir of Gonville & Caius mingled intimacy and plangency. The comparatively abstract sounds College, Cambridge in seven richly conceived new pieces. A world of ’s The Piano Tuner track a journey into the dark heart premiere commission by Sir James MacMillan sets up the Celtic theme. of nineteenth-century Burma, while the stories told in Judith Weir’s ‘Suddenly sound and music exist in a single sonic continuum and the Zen‑inspired Two include that of ‘How grass and trees effect is exhilarating – both ancient and fundamental but undeniably become enlightened’. modern … This is a disc that will leave you bewildered in the best ‘as bracing as a splash of water from a Highland stream … The Fidelio possible way, assaulted and seduced by deeply unfamiliar sounds’ Trio gives sure-footed, rhythmically alive, directly communicative — Gramophone, September 2017 performances of all three works’ — BBC Music Magazine, October 2015 DCD34201