THE LOVERS' ROBIN WELL HOLLOWAY Clare Lloyd-Griffiths soprano Kate Symonds-Joy mezzo-soprano James Robinson tenor Simon Wallfisch baritone Edward Rushton, William Vann piano ROBIN THE LOVERS' HOLLOWAY (b. 1943) WELL Souvenirs de Monsalvat (1984) Clare Lloyd-Griffiths soprano (tracks 1 & 19) 10 Introduction: Lento solenne – [2:16] Kate Symonds-Joy mezzo-soprano (tracks 1–9 & 19) 11 Sin, Guilt & Suffering [2:54] James Robinson tenor (tracks 1 & 19) 12 Parsifal & Herzeleide [2:26] Simon Wallfisch baritone (tracks 1, 18 & 19) 13 Flowermaidens – [3:47] 14 Kundry, Kiss, Mystic Marriage [5:42] Edward Rushton piano (tracks 2–18) 0:00 Kundry lies in sultry splendour. 0:13 Enter Parsifal. 0:25 She perceives him. William Vann piano (tracks 1, 10–17 & 19) 0:32 Parsifal gazes in wondering astonishment … 0:41 … and perceives Kundry. 0:55 She dances for him. 1:45 Parsifal is puzzled … 1:51 … and pained. 1:55 She bids him relax, and make himself at home. 2:01 She tells him the tale of Herzeleide. 2:22 She dances for him again. 2:57 Thoughts of Herzeleide mingle with his growing desire for Kundry. 1 The Zodiac Song (2017) [5:47] 3:30 A passionate quivering … 3:39 a dark passage … 4:12 they emerge from the obscurity 4:26 … and dance together. 5:11 The marriage, in the Chapel of the Grail at Monsalvat, Three Songs to poems by Edmund Waller (2007) of Parsifal and Kundry. 2 On a Girdle [2:00] 15 Pastorale [4:32] 3 Go, lovely Rose [3:25] 16 Intermezzo – [0:58] 4 Old Age [2:54] 17 Pentecost Sarabande [4:35] A Medley of Nursery Rhymes and Conundrums (1986) 18 The Lovers’ Well (1981) [16:07] 5 Overture & Dialogue [2:56] 19 The Food of Love (1996) [4:04] 6 Ballad [5:08] 7 First Riddle [1:27] Total playing time [74:30] 8 Conundrums [1:54] 9 Finale [1:27] All tracks are premiere recordings Robin Holloway: The Lovers’ Well Introduction: Holloway’s way with words This portrait CD on the occasion of Robin Holloway’s 75th birthday was made possible Hidden in plain sight or shining out from round material intimacy with his own abundant – by the generous support of the following: some dark allegorical corner, Robin Holloway’s but less widely disseminated – output of music music has always been surrounded by, indebted for voice. The gap between the composition James Altham Joe Herbert Howard Skempton to, complicit with words: the composer’s of the opera Clarissa, in 1976, and its premiere, Stephen Bann Mary Horan Malcolm C. Smith own – often seductively compelling – words of in 1990, surely contributed to obscuring the Raphael Blumenfeld James Howell Tom Sutcliffe explanation and justification, the poets’ words extent to which the private codings of the Morris Brown Christopher Hum Humphrey Thompson that give rise to its melodies and rhythms, Second Concerto for Orchestra (1978–79) Simon Carrington Andrew Hunter Johnston Guy Turner the literary words that underlie its complex drew on self-quotations from the opera. Few John Casey William Lacey Benjamin Walton metaphorical schemes and allegories. listeners to the Proms premiere of Holloway’s Tim Coleman John Latimer Chris Walton massive Symphony (1999–2000), similarly, will David Collins Richard Le Page Geoffrey Webber The notion of words remaining even in the have been in a position to recognise the role in Helen Daniels Nathaniel Lew Judith Weir absence of the voice has been central to that work’s turning-of-the-seasons narrative of Jonathan Dove Simon Maddrell John Williams Holloway’s compositional thought processes a recurring quotation from the composer’s own Richard Duncan-Jones Peter Mandler Nicholas Williams for what is now fifty years and more. The setting of Shelley’s Lament, as can now be Martin Ennis Nicholas Marston Michael Wood secondary quotations – from Schoenberg’s heard on the present album. Alan Fersht Clare, Graeme and Terence Tom Young Pierrot lunaire, Debussy’s Images (‘Rondes Paul Fincham Mitchison de printemps’), Wagner’s Siegfried, etc. – that Tipping the balance in favour of vocal music James Fitzsimons John Mollon With thanks also to the adorn Scenes from Schumann (1970), a set while also registering some of the complexities Michael Foad Stephen Ralls Master and Fellows of of instrumental paraphrases of Schumann of this composer’s approach to questions of Cheryl Frances-Hoad John Robson Gonville & Caius College, songs, are prompted by those songs’ no longer medium (the silent-movie aspect of ‘Kundry, Helen Garrison Philippa Rogerson Cambridge, Claire Wheeler present texts. The Violin Concerto (1987–90) Kiss, Mystic Marriage’, for example, which Gordon Gledhill Paul Rooke and Naomi Clarke for is punctuated by a series of ‘windows’ which perhaps adumbrated another too-long- Michael Zev Gordon Patrick Routley practical assistance. are in fact wordless settings of Rilke’s cycle unheard project, the multimedia epic Peer Gynt James Halliday Julian Rushton of French poems Les fenêtres, presented (1984–97)), this seventy-fifth-birthday tribute Norman Harper Julian Sale in a complex gesture of homage to and at the suggests that Holloway is not done with words Charles Hart Robert Saxton same time avoidance of the words of the poet – nor they with him – yet. John Ashbery. (A similar engagement/dodge is described in Holloway’s own comments © 2018 John Fallas Recorded on 8 & 9 July 2018 at Piano: Steinway D grand, serial no 592087 @delphianrecords in this booklet on the Geoffrey Hill setting Potton Hall, Saxmundham, Suffolk Piano technician: David Beccles Executive producers: Chris Walton Cover image & design: John Christ The Lovers’ Well.) John Fallas studied music at the University @delphianrecords & Geoffrey Webber Booklet editor: John Fallas of Cambridge between 1998 and 2001; Robin Producer/Engineer: Paul Baxter Delphian Records Ltd – Edinburgh – UK @delphian_records 24-bit digital editing: Matthew Swan www.delphianrecords.co.uk At the same time, the popularity of his Holloway was among his teachers there. He is 24-bit digital mastering: Paul Baxter instrumental works has disguised their now a freelance writer and editor. Notes by the composer The Food of Love, setting Shelley’s famous centrepiece is a rapt setting of Waller’s most ever more impossible tasks and conditions models; one which, unlike them, adheres stanzas in praise of music for four voices and celebrated lyric, much imitated in its day. This from his Girl, ending in happy resolution: true to the plot and characters and attempts to piano, was written for the seventieth birthday is preceded by a more conventional piece of love for ever after. follow their destinies, however burlesqued or in 1996 of Eric Sams, the celebrated writer courtly gallantry, ‘On a Girdle’, and followed even travestied. With the characters and plot on the German Lied. The mood of voluptuous by another poem that cuts deeper – ‘Old Age’ Souvenirs de Monsalvat, a ‘waltz- as too with the music, the mockery is born amorous luxury is broken for a ‘middle eight’ (subtitled by the poet ‘of the last verses in the synthesis on favourite themes from Richard of devotion absolute and indissoluble for a which sets for the tenor alone the same poet’s book’), with its visionary closing quatrain. Wagner’s Parsifal’ for two players at one supreme summit of music and drama: I hope equally famous Lament – ‘O world! O life! piano, was eventually written in January this will always shine out. O time!’ – lines of bitter reproach and regret, A Medley of Nursery Rhymes and 1984. ‘Eventually’, because I’d had the idea before the comforts of roses, music, love Conundrums is a selection from a much longer in mind for years, after absorption in the great There are six waltzes/valses. No 1 is preceded return to assuage the thorns of life. original for soprano and wind quintet which I original since my late teens, then studying by a solemn prelude introducing the opera’s composed in the summer of 1977 as cheerful it closely for my doctoral thesis. And with germinal motif, and also its hero and heroine, The Zodiac Song is a sort of follow-on, diatonic complement to a complex tortuous the other hand was also very fond of the late Parsifal and Kundry. More of them later; composed for the same forces just over modernistic thing entitled The Rivers of Hell. nineteenth- and early twentieth-century meanwhile, a strenuous work-out in waltz twenty-one years later. Its text is as little This latter was extremely difficult to write and French Wagner send-ups (wholly compatible idiom of the harsh words of the title (‘sin’, ‘guilt’, known as Shelley’s is familiar: couplets by tied me up in knots; its companion virtually with fervent idolatry) for piano duet – by ‘suffering’), with, after a coruscating climax, John Ruskin characterising the twelve zodiac wrote itself, with almost mindless fluency. Faure and Messager on motifs from The Ring a long gentle fade-away linking into No 2, signs and creatures. Their original purpose Knots came back a couple of years later in a (‘Souvenirs de Bayreuth’) and by Chabrier on ‘Parsifal & Herzeleide’ – the strapping young is uncertain – perhaps to decorate a dinner briefer sequel for the same line-up, setting favourite moments in Tristan (‘Souvenirs de hero, as yet callous and ignorant, enclosing service or a piece of furniture? I enjoyed trying only conundrums and tongue-twisters. Then Munich’, where he first heard it and said he the tender-aching music for the Mother he has to find fitting matches for these mordant, in 1986 I made the present mix of the two, was ‘ready to die after that A on the cellos’); abandoned. No 3 links on: ‘Flowermaidens’, lyrical,