John Wilson Lebrecht Music & Arts Photo Library / © George Newson

VOL. 1 MARIMBA CONCERTO · SYMPHONY NO. 3 · CELEBRATION · SUMMER MUSIC · SINFONIETTA COLIN CURRIE MARIMBA BBC SCOTTISH SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA JOHN WILSON Richard Rodney Bennett, London, July 1984 © George Newson / Lebrecht Music & Arts Photo Library Sir Richard Rodney Bennett (1936 – 2012) Orchestral Works, Volume 1 1 Celebration (1991) 4:30 for Orchestra Dedicated to the founders, subscribers, and musicians of the Maryland Symphony Orchestra Molto vivo Concerto for Marimba and Chamber Orchestra (1987 – 88)* 16:19 2 I Con moto – A tempo, grazioso – A tempo, tranquillo – [Cadenza.] Pochissimo meno, poco rubato – Tempo I, animato – Scherzando – Non troppo allegro – A tempo con moto – Cadenza. Lento – Scherzando – Sostenuto – Come prima, poco sostenuto – Molto tranquillo – A tempo [sostenuto] 9:44 3 II Con brio (molto ritmico) – Cadenza, con gran energia, molto ritmico – Stesso tempo, ma tranquillo – A tempo, molto vivo 6:31 3 Symphony No. 3 (1987) 21:24 for Orchestra To Edward Downes 4 I Andante – Vivo – Andante maestoso – Vivo – Andante – A tempo, pochissimo meno – A tempo, molto tranquillo 7:32 5 II Allegretto 5:14 6 III Adagio – Con moto – Sempre con moto – A tempo, largamente – A tempo, sostenuto e semplice 8:35 premiere recording Summer Music (1982) 10:14 for Flute and Piano Arranged 1984 for Small Orchestra by the Composer To Angela and Chris 7 I Allegro tranquillo 3:16 8 II Siesta. Lento e dolce 3:35 9 III Games. Vivo – Sempre con molto moto 3:21 4 10 Sinfonietta (1984) 9:17 for Orchestra Vivo – Agitato – Lento e dolce – Con brio – Come prima – Molto vivo TT 62:24 Colin Currie marimba* BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra Laura Samuel leader John Wilson 5 John Wilson Sim Canetty-Clarke Bennett: Orchestral Works, Volume 1 Introduction miniature by Boulez, melody – and emotional Sir Richard Rodney Bennett (1936 – 2012) honesty – was always central, and never more is sometimes said to have led a double-life so than after he moved to New York, in 1979. The in music. In fact, triple or quadruple would works recorded here date from 1982 to 1991, a barely cover the sheer range and scope of period in his life when, as Bennett later put it, his achievement. Audiences around the world the walls fell down and I realised there knew him as the composer of some fifty-odd wasn’t really a barrier between the two. film and TV scores, including Far from the Madding Crowd (1967), Murder on the Orient Summer Music Express (1974), and Four Weddings and a Bennett recognised that his creativity thrived Funeral (1994). To jazz aficionados, he was one on restrictions. of his generation’s most stylish and inventive I’ve always responded well to commissions pianists, and a supreme advocate of the Great and films, where one is limited in all kinds American Songbook. of ways, But this disc is concerned with what he commented. Summer Music began life in Bennett called his ‘concert music’ (‘I’m always 1982 as a suite for flute and piano, written a bit nervous of using the word “serious”’, he with a quite specific purpose in mind: to help told the American critic Bruce Duffie in 1988): beginner flautists make the transition between the work of one of the most brilliant natural ‘starting to learn an instrument and playing talents to emerge in post-war British music, “real” music’. Dedicated to Angela Morley, the who studied with Pierre Boulez in Paris before composer of the music of Watership Down, and finding a voice of his own in four full-length her wife, Christine Parker, it was arranged by operas, three symphonies, and works in Bennett for chamber orchestra in 1984 – almost every major classical genre. Serialism in which form it became a fresh, brightly was the basis of his musical language, but tinted tribute to Bennett’s beloved French for a composer who prized the perfection of a impressionists. Lively outer movements – by Harold Arlen song as much as an avant-garde turns graceful and brisk – frame the central 7 ‘Siesta’, in which muted strings heighten the by the Three Choirs Festival. Begun in bluesy mood. New York but completed in London, it was premiered at Worcester Cathedral on Sinfonietta 24 August 1987 by the BBC Philharmonic, Commissioned by the National Federation conducted by its dedicatee, Edward of Music Societies in the UK to celebrate its Downes – an old friend, whom Bennett fiftieth anniversary, Bennett’s Sinfonietta described as ‘the least effusive person in was conceived for chamber orchestra the world’. And while the symphony itself is with amateur performers in mind – though modest in length and scoring, it represents without any compromise in inspiration or a creative and emotional breakthrough that formal mastery. Written in New York between would set the direction for all Bennett’s later 10 March and 11 April 1984, the Sinfonietta music. contains all four movements of a symphony in My first two symphonies, commissioned slightly less than ten minutes of music. respectively for the London Symphony and The first section, Vivo, lays out the musical New York Philharmonic Orchestras, were material: a brusque fanfare introduced by the written in the late Sixties and are primarily horns alternates with a soaring melody for extravert, display pieces, strings. It moves without break into the Lento explained Bennett, in his programme note for e dolce slow movement, in which languorous the premiere. He continued: woodwind solos sway and twine above a haze The new [Third] symphony, composed of strings, then hint at a miniature scherzo twenty years after the second, is a very before the full orchestra glances passionately different proposition. The orchestra is back at the lyricism of the first movement. The moderate – only nine winds and modest music moves almost imperceptibly into the percussion in addition to the usual strings, finale: a jig, Con brio, that gathers in brilliance plus piano and harp. The music is mostly and momentum before – following a last rally thoughtful and lyrical in nature, more from the opening fanfares – rushing to an or less monothematic and has a strong exuberant finish. feeling of tonality, particularly at the opening and closing of the score. Symphony No. 3 That journey towards tonality is central to the Bennett’s final symphony was commissioned symphony’s narrative, though it is handled 8 with such clarity, economy, and melodic orchestra to have been the main subject of generosity that it never feels like anything the symphony, in yet another disguise. other than a natural blossoming. The It is now, as the finale seems to wind down, opening theme is a case in point, a melody that Bennett finds his way to a resolution. centred on the symphony’s basic key of After a short reflection for solo cello, the F sharp, which, from a melancholy beginning, music moves unambiguously into tonality – unfolds at rapturous length – ‘surely one C minor, moving towards a tranquil F sharp of the great rhapsodic moments in English as, to a single stroke of a bell, the symphony music’, according to Bennett’s biographers settles onto its final unison: QED. Paul Harris and Anthony Meredith. In the ‘It just seemed the right thing to do at the composer’s own words, time’, Bennett remarked later, continuing: This theme passes from violin and harp to Within my concert music I’d always been cor anglais and oboe, followed by a brief very strict with myself, not wanting the textured Scherzo [Vivo], threaded through film music or jazz to influence it. So it was with the main theme in various guises. fascinating to me that I’d come to a place The scherzo builds gradually until, at the where a new door was open to me, that climax, the opening tempo returns with a I could find a C minor chord at a moment broad re-statement of the principal theme. of crisis. What seems like a warm, quiet reprise of Bennett told Harris and Meredith that the scherzo is, in fact, the beginning of an My Third Symphony is my favourite piece extended coda, and the movement ends I ever wrote. It wasn’t written with any with the return of the oboe and cor anglais. huge difficulty; it was somehow saying The gentle Allegretto is perhaps too spontaneously what I wanted to say; and lyrical to be called a second scherzo; the I loved it. strings are muted throughout, and the wind and string families alternate in quiet Marimba Concerto interplay... In 1984, Bennett had explored the poetic The third movement is a continuous possibilities of the solo marimba in succession of free-flowing variations [...] After Syrinx II, written for the American and at the climax, what may at first appear percussionist William Moersch and to be a new theme is revealed by the full inspired in equal measure by Debussy and 9 Greek myth. Four years later, a full-scale what motivated him to write music. ‘I want concerto for Moersch and the Lehigh Valley to bring some people something beautiful, Chamber Orchestra presented new technical which will stimulate their imaginations’, he challenges – as ever, a powerful spur to replied – adding that ‘I want to give players Bennett’s imagination. ‘Naturally, I hadn’t done something which is a joy to play’. Celebration, a marimba concerto before’, he told Bruce a commission from 1991, dedicated to ‘the Duffie shortly after completing the score, founders, subscribers, and musicians of It was very hard to do. I screamed and carried the Maryland Symphony Orchestra’ on the on, but it took me somewhere I hadn’t gone occasion of its tenth anniversary, does before, so it was interesting. exactly that.

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