ANATIOMAROS Orchestral Music by ARWEL HUGHES ROYAL PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA • OWAIN ARWEL HUGHES
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
ANATIOMAROS orchestral music by ARWEL HUGHES ROYAL PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA • OWAIN ARWEL HUGHES ARWEL and OWAIN ARWEL HUGHES BIS-CD-1674 BIS-CD-1674_f-b.indd 1 11-05-11 11.49.54 HUGHES, Arwel (1909–88) 1 Prelude for orchestra (1945) 13'26 2 Owain Glyndwr, legend (1979) 12'43 3 Serch yw’r Doctor (Love’s the Doctor) 4'57 Overture to the opera (1960) Suite for Orchestra (1947) 22'30 4 Movement I 7'22 5 Movement II 4'58 6 Movement III 9'58 7 Anatiomaros (1943) 11'09 8 Menna, prelude to the opera (1954) 8'06 TT: 74'22 Royal Philharmonic Orchestra Owain Arwel Hughes conductor All works published by Oriana Publications 2 ou have only to mention Arwel Hughes to any cultured person of a certain age in Wales to be rewarded with an immediate smile of warm recognition. YFor the best part of half a century Arwel was a popular em bodiment of Welsh Music – not just as a distinguished composer but as con ductor, broadcaster, adjudicator, organist and much else besides. In public terms he was for many years head of music at the BBC in Wales and thus a familiar voice on radio and face on television. He was also closely involved throughout his career with the National Eisteddfod of Wales and the celebrated Llangollen International Eisteddfod. It has, indeed, been argued that Arwel Hughes’s single-minded devotion to the general improvement of musical standards through out Wales was to some extent achieved at the expense of his own com posi tional development. More specifically, he gave his practical support quite self lessly to the burgeoning careers of many of his con - tem poraries – notably Grace Williams and Daniel Jones – as well as to those of the next generation like Alun Hoddinott and William Mathias. Totally devoid of any jeal ousy or egomania, Arwel seems to have inherited many of the personal char ac - teristics of his great teacher Ralph Vaughan Williams and saw the need for such a be nign influence in post-war Wales. And he would have rejoiced that his name and legacy are both sustained in the untiring work of his evangelising son Owain. Arwel Hughes was born in Rhosllanerchrugog – a large village in Denbigh shire not far from Wrexham, famous throughout Wales for its proud sense of musical identity and cultural independence – on 25th August 1909, the tenth and youngest child of a mining family. He was especially fortunate in the exam ple, guidance and practical assistance of his musical older brother John, who helped him find his way to London and the Royal College of Music where he came into contact not only with Vaughan Williams but also with Gustav Holst, Gordon Jacob and Sir Walter Alcock as teachers (and the young Benjamin Britten as a contemporary) and also found time to be assistant organist at St Mar garet’s, Westminster (Parliament’s ‘parish church’ right next to the Abbey). His first post on graduating was as organ ist at the ‘High- 3 Anglican’ Church of St Philip and St James in Oxford where, once again, he rubbed shoulders with the great and good of the English musical estab lishment. But a career in church music (or for that matter in academia) was not to be once he had responded in 1935 to an advertisement for staff back home in Wales at a new BBC centre in Cardiff. His fate thus sealed, he was to remain within the BBC fold until his formal retire ment in 1971 and then lived a musically active old age until his death in Cardiff on 23rd September 1988, just into his eightieth year. This disc brings together virtually all of Arwel Hughes’s mature orchestral out put, apart from the Fantasia for strings of 1936 and Symphony of 1971. The Fan tasia, based on an old Welsh church melody, was his first big success and happily wore its allegiance to Vaughan Williams’s Tallis Fantasia on its sleeve, but with a determined Welsh accent! The outbreak of World War II in 1939 saw the BBC evacuated from both London and Cardiff to far-flung corners of the kingdom and Arwel spent time variously in Bristol, Evesham and Bangor – but working always with music at close quarters and gaining valuable first-hand experience with orch es tras and choirs, often under difficult and bizarre condi tions. The earliest work in this CD anthology – Anatio maros of 1943 – was com posed during these dark but often exciting war years and its subject matter arguably reflects this duality. It was inspired by a poem of the same title by T. Gwynn Jones, the greatest Welsh poet of his generation and pro - fessor of Welsh at Aberystwyth. Anatiomaros was written in 1925 and featured in the definitive collection of Jones’s poems, Caniadau, pub lished in 1934, where he ex - plained that ‘Anatiomaros’ is a name from the old Brythonic language (an ancient Celtic precursor of ‘modern’ Welsh, itself now the oldest European language still spoken) which the composer himself translated as ‘Great Soul’, or in Welsh ‘Enaid Mawr’ (where by the derivation of ‘Anatiomaros’ be comes clear). The poem evokes a scene of pre-Christian religious ritual into which the mythic fig ure of Anatio maros – the revered Elder who embodies wisdom and eternity – final ly arrives to await Death itself, symbolised as a dazzling white swan; having died, the body is mysteriously 4 carried in an oaken barge shaped like a swan across the sea towards the setting sun, while the soul itself flies free. The music movingly captures a sense of elegiac nos- talgia in a slow introduction (featuring a poignant oboe solo) which soon evaporates into a fast main section revelling in the energy of eternal youth. The presiding musical spirit in this piece is not so much Vaughan Williams himself as his younger, more Celtically-inclined col leagues Bax, Ire land and Moeran, sharing with them something of the ele mental shadow of the Kalevala-inspired Sibelius. With the war at an end in 1945 Arwel Hughes embarked on a quarter-century when he steadily rose through the BBC ranks, spending much of his time con duct - ing the BBC Welsh Orchestra (now BBC National Orchestra of Wales) in the studio. This was generally a period of musical re-awakening and culture-building in Wales – the National Youth Orchestra of Wales, Welsh National Opera, Llan gollen Eisteddfod and Swansea Festival were all founded in 1945–46. The orch estral Pre - lude of 1945 was therefore dedicated ‘To the Youth of Wales’ as part of this spirit of regenerative hope and optimism, and combines music of typically Welsh lyrical warmth and ardour with energetic pages full of buoyant exuberance. Many of the same characteristics are present in the more extended three-move ment Suite of 1947 which presents a showcase of Arwel’s abilities as a melodist, colourful orch - es trator and musical teller-of-tales. There is even a gentle tinge of jazz and night- club exotica in the delightful central slow movement, which pro vides a hint that had he remained in England he could have found a profitable niche in the film in - dustry, an outlet sadly not avail able to him in Wales! This was to be Hughes’s last purely orchestral work for over 20 years – years, nevertheless, which were also his most productive in that he composed four large-scale ora torios (of which Dewi Sant and Pantycelyn are most often heard today) and two operas, Menna and Serch yw’r Doctor, whose overtures are included on this disc. For a country renowned the world over for its great opera singers Wales has pre - cious little operatic legacy to speak of. The first Welsh opera, Blodwen, was com - 5 posed by Joseph Parry in 1878 and immediately became something of a melo- dramatic Victorian hit. But the first professional production of a Welsh opera had to wait until 1954 when Welsh National Opera performed the specially-composed Menna by Arwel Hughes. His first involvement with the company came in the spring of 1950 when he conducted a revival of Gounod’s Faust and then started almost immediately on the planning of a new opera. He chose a traditional Welsh folk tale as the subject, and the libretto (in English) by Wyn Griffith shifts inex or - ably from village celebrations for the marriage of Gwyn and Menna to an inevitable tragic dénouement. Premièred in Cardiff in Novem ber 1953, the opera transferred for one night to London’s Sadler’s Wells in July 1955, where Hughes was surely grat ified to hear that the 83-year old Vaughan Williams was spotted in the audience applauding enthusiastically. The dramatic prelude to Menna was added for a perfor - mance at the National Eisteddfod of 1954 in Ystradgynlais and it was for the Car - diff National Eisteddfod of 1960 that Hughes wrote his second opera, Serch yw’r Doctor, also for Welsh National Opera. This time he turned to comedy and took a play by Molière – L’amour medecin – as the basis for a libretto in Welsh by the greatest Welsh playwright of the twentieth century, Saunders Lewis. The overture is a sparkling curtain-raiser and the occasional jazzy echo of Walton’s Portsmouth Point seems hardly out of place in such a spirited context. For the Welsh, the very name Owain Glyndwr is synonymous with a call to arms! Here was an aristocratic self-styled Prince of Wales taking on the estab lished might of the English throne well over a century following the conquest of Wales in 1282.