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Saturday 15th May 2021, 7.00pm BRAVE NEW WORLD Jack McNeill, Clarinet Roderick Williams, Baritone Corona Strings (Leader, Catherine Leech) Conductor, Janet Lincé PROGRAMME GERALD FINZI (1901-1956) landscape and rural life-style. He married his beloved Romance, opus 11 wife Joy in 1933 and six years later they built their home at Ashmansworth on the downland south of Gerald Finzi first studied music privately with Edward Newbury. With two teenage sons (Kiffer and Nigel) to Bairstow, organist of York Minster, and in 1926 he distract him, Gerald was grateful for the large, low moved to London where he received more formal house whose long south-facing façade had Gerald’s tuition in counterpoint under R.O. Morris. In April book-room and music-room at the west end, 1928 he was admitted to a sanatorium near Midhurst, separated from the children and domestics by a big having been diagnosed with pleurisy, and the sitting-room. Romance may well have been conceived during the two-and-a-half months he spent at this establishment Finzi was invited to compose a work for the 1949 in the peaceful Sussex countryside. Three Choirs Festival at Hereford and since the clarinettist Stephen Trier had recently begun to play The melody of the first section of this delightful work with Finzi’s Newbury String Players, his mind turned was certainly sketched in 1928 along with material for to that instrument. (His first work for the clarinet, The a proposed Serenade which was never completed. It Five Bagatelles, had been a huge success). He made displays some of Finzi’s most characteristic inflections slow progress on the piece during the early part of the whilst the melody of the middle section, introduced year and, come the summer holidays, Joy took the by violin solo, shows the influence of Elgar and boys on holiday to Cornwall to give Gerald some probably dates from 1940/1. peace at home. A beautifully poised and transparent introduction In the concert programme for Hereford, Finzi progresses to the broad, central climax. From here on explained that the mood for the Concerto grew out of the music gradually subsides to a reprise of the main ‘the warm and romantic qualities...and natural theme and a return of the opening melody. The fluidity’ of the instrument. The opening, however, is texture is constantly varied with fluid part-writing and anything but warm and romantic - bold octaves in exquisite melodic clarity. canon creating grating dissonance, with a nod towards the 4th symphony of Vaughan-Williams The Romance was dedicated to John Russell who was whom Finzi much admired. These octaves reappear the conductor of Newbury Choral Society and who throughout the movement, sometimes warmly legato, regularly promoted and performed Finzi’s work. at other times lightly complementing a murmuring figure in the strings whilst the soloist freely develops the themes, providing a wealth of sinuous melodies. GERALD FINZI (1901-1956) The fierce octaves return towards the end of the Clarinet Concerto, Opus 31 movement and a solo cadenza signals the final Clarinet, Jack McNeill pounding chords re-establishing the home key. I. Allegro vigoroso II. Adagio III. Rondo The Adagio opens with a whispered, ghostly three- note figure that solidifies into the main theme played Finzi was of Italian and Jewish heritage, a self- by the strings. The theme’s gentle mood is gradually confessed Anglophile and a lover of England’s intensified and transformed as both the clarinet and 1 the orchestra begin to explore a more extensive sometimes caused me to think of a musical reference, palette of sounds. All this builds passionately to a again directly from own performance experience, searing discord, reminiscent of a moment from Elgar’s whether that be the aria Betrachte, meine Seele from Dream of Gerontius, followed by the climax of the Bach’s St John Passion, or Now winter comes slowly movement where the soloist comes to the fore with a from Purcell’s Fairy Queen, both of which I have display of virtuosity. The movement ends with a performed in semi-staged versions fairly recently. wistful echo of the main theme. Sometimes the inspiration is more oblique, such as Dawn from Haydn’s Creation, and sometimes I am Following an angular introduction, the Rondo sets off only referencing a style of music, like the Blues. Once with an easy-going, song-like theme from the clarinet or twice I might make a specific reference to a well- which is then handed over to the orchestra, further known work in order to illustrate just one word, as a care-free melodies being introduced by both clarinet madrigalist might; but to spell out every such instance and orchestra. A grand return of the Rondo tune would be to deprive the audience of the fun of leads to a brief echo of the opening theme of the spotting full or half quotations, as well as divining the work before the Concerto comes to its brilliant close. reason for their intrusion in my music. Who knows, such is the unconscious mind that they may be several After the premiere of the work on 9 September, references of which I myself am unaware. Ursula Wood (Vaughan Williams’s second wife) recalled: ‘it was a shining afternoon, apples glistening The première of Corona was to have been in May of on the trees, the country quiet and fulfilled, summer 2020 but for obvious reasons this was postponed and, moving into autumn’ - a fitting reflection on the by then, the title had taken on a significance that pastorale scenery that so much inspired Finzi. none of us could have predicted. The pandemic remains one corona reference that was certainly not explored in this piece or its poetry. I am indebted to RODERICK WILLIAMS Janet and Corona Strings for commissioning this piece Corona [World Premiere] and to all the poets whose words I have used. Baritone, Roderick Williams EDWARD ELGAR (1857-1934) Composer’s Note Introduction and Allegro, op. 47 A few years ago, when Janet Lincé invited me to write a piece for this string ensemble, very few people were SOLO QUARTET familiar with the term Coronavirus. It was a different Violin 1, Catherine Leech Violin 2, Miranda Walton world then. With carte blanche to write a piece for Viola, Kate Fawcett Cello, Spike Wilson baritone soloist and strings, I decided it would be appropriate to celebrate the specific name of the In October 1904 August Jaeger, Elgar’s close associate ensemble, so I began to search for texts based around and friend, floated the idea of a work to showcase the the idea of ‘ crowns'. While I was initially searching virtuosity of the newly-formed London Symphony for more classic poetry, I chanced on a website that Orchestra. ‘Why not a brilliant String Scherzo, or allows poets from across the world to upload their something for those fine strings only? A real ‘bring work, and I began to collect examples of texts that down the House’ torrent of a thing such as Bach could consider the idea of 'the crown' from various angles. write.’ When I had assembled my own crown of poems, I This suggestion led to the composition of the made contact with the various authors, many of Introduction and Allegro which is undoubtedly one of whom had published under pseudonyms, and asked if the crowning masterpieces of English string music they would agree to their words becoming part of my representing Elgar at the height of his creativity. project. Premiered in March 1905, the work demonstrates a relationship with the musical forms of the early 18th Several of my most recent compositions have been century. Elgar’s use of a string quartet contrasting based on vocal or choral works that I have come to with the main body of strings is reminiscent of the know through my years as a performer. Rather than Baroque concerto grosso although with much greater try to hide such influences, I decided it was more variation and subtlety. honest and interesting to acknowledge my sources from the outset (hence, for example, my choral work The work begins with a majestic opening statement Ave Verum Corpus Re-imagined after William Byrd’s followed by a fluent exchange of ideas between the masterpiece). In the case of Corona, the poems have two string groups and then we hear the first 2 statement of a beautiful, Welsh-inspired melody the Hilliard Ensemble and BCMG. He is a member of played by solo viola. This melody was first sketched Decibel, the Le Page Ensemble, Loki, Drawlight by Elgar in 1901 while on holiday in Cardiganshire. It quartet and a guest musician with Joe Acheson’s includes the haunting interval of a falling third which Hidden Orchestra. in this context symbolizes a sense of loss and yearning. Passionate about music education, Jack is a tutor and The Allegro begins with the main orchestra and grows coach at University of Birmingham, directed the organically out of material that has already made an chamber music strand of Aldeburgh Young Musicians appearance in the introduction. A second theme for two years and has set up a new programme of consisting of energetic semiquavers launched by the performance and composition in Cumbria called solo quartet is passed back and forth between the Pulse. quartet and orchestra through sweeping scales and brilliant virtuosic passages building to a climax. An improviser and passionate contemporary musician, This is not the anticipated jubilant ending however Jack has given complete performances of Henze's Le because a new section begins - the ‘devil of a Fugue’ Miracle de la Rose and Stockhausen’s Harlekin; a as Elgar described it – introduced by the main substantial work performed from memory where the orchestra.

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