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Home , Michael Tippett, Sinfonietta (Britten)

SRCD.257 STEREO ADD

MICHAEL TIPPETT (1905-1998) (1913-1976) Divertimentos Divertimento for Chamber Orchestra , Sinfonietta Op. 1 (1932) (14’46”) 9 1st movement: ‘Sellinger ’s Round ’ (1953) (19’36”) Sinfoniettas 1 1st movement: Allegro (2’57”) Poco presto ed agitato (3’52”) 2 2nd movement: 10 - 2 nd movement: Variations (6’44”) A Lament ( Andante Espressivo) (6’42”) 11 - 3 rd movement: Tarantella (4’09”) 3 3rd movement: Presto (2’13”) Tippett 4 4th movement: Adagio (3’40”) LENNOX BERKELEY (1903-1976) 5 5th movement: Allegro assai (4’04”) Sinfonietta Op. 34 (1950) (12’36”) 12 1st movement: Allegro (4’01”) Britten 13 2nd movement: ALAN RAWSTHORNE (1905-1971) Lento – Allegro non troppo (8’35”) Divertimento for Chamber Arnold MALCOLM ARNOLD (1921-2006) Orchestra (1961-2) (11’35”) Sinfonietta No. 1 Op. 48 (1955) * (9’53”) 6 1st movement: Rondo (5’08”) 14 1st movement: Allegro commodo (2’48”) 7 2nd movement: Lullaby (3’02”) 15 2nd movement: Allegretto (4’29”) Berkeley 8 3rd movement: Jig (3’25”) 16 3rd movement: Allegro con brio (2’36”) (68’31”) Rawsthorne English Chamber Orchestra conducted by Norman Del Mar * London Symphony Orchestra (Leader Irvine Arditti) English Chamber conducted by Nicholas Braithwaite Orchestra

The above individual timings will normally each include two pauses. One before the beginning of each movement or work, and one after the end. Norman Del Mar ൿ 1982 The copyright in these sound recordings is owned by Lyrita Recorded Edition, England This compilation and digital remastering ൿ 2007 Lyrita Recorded Edition, England London Symphony © 2007 Lyrita Recorded Edition, England. Made in the UK Orchestra LYRITA RECORDED EDITION. Produced under an exclusive license from Lyrita by Wyastone Estate Ltd, PO Box 87, Monmouth, NP25 3WX, UK Nicholas Braithwaite n considering these works for chamber orchestra by twentieth-century British Icomposers, it is worth noting that the Elgar-Vaughan Williams generation wrote nothing in these forms. There is a practical reason for this. The growth of the virtuoso chamber Other works by LENNOX BERKELEY available on Lyrita: , Serenade for Strings, Divertimento in B flat, Partita for Chamber Orchestra orchestra in Britain is a comparatively recent occurrence. Elgar ’s so-called salon music was Canzonetta (Sinfonia Concertante), Symphony No. 3 in one movement written for amateur groups, in most cases, or for the theatre orchestras which then London Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Sir Lennox Berkeley…………………………SRCD.2 26 abounded, but there were no high-standard professional ensembles in the area between such bodies as Ivan Caryll ’s Orchestra and the big symphony orchestras. In our time, with Symphonies 1* & 2** the existence of the English Chamber Orchestra, the Northern Sinfonia, the London Mozart *London Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Norman Del Mar Players, the Manchester Camerata and many more, works such as are here recorded receive ** London Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Nicholas Braithwaite……………………SRCD.2 49 the accomplished, polished perfor mances which are their due. Piano in B flat, Concerto for Two Pianos While Britten burst upon the pre-1939 English musical scene with the virtuosity of David Wilde, Garth Beckett & Boyd McDonald, New Philharmonia Orchestra / London his Frank Bridge Variations and , Michael Tippett, eight years his Philharmonic Orchestra senior, was scarcely known at all until 1940. When Britten and Pears returned to England in conducted by Nicholas Braithwaite / Norman Del Mar……………….…………………………SRCD.250 1942, they befriendedTippett, whose first major song-cycle Boyhood ’s End was dedicated to and first performed by them in June 1943. The friendship endured, and Tippett was one of Other works by MALCOLM ARNOLD available on Lyrita: the composers Britten invited in CoronationYear, 1953, to contribute a movement to a work Symphony No. 4 Op. 71 London Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Malcolm Arnold………………………...……SRCD. 200 for the . This was the Variations on an Elizabethan Theme, the theme being the traditional tune known as ‘Sellinger ’s Round ’. Tippett ’s was the second variation. English Dances – Set 1 Op. 27, Set 2 Op. 33, Solitaire, Sarabande & Polka, Later that year he made the theme the subject of a Divertimento commissioned by Paul Irish Dances Op. 126, Scottish Dances Op. 59, Cornish Dances Op. 91 Sacher for his famous orchestra the Collegium Musicum Zurich. The work was first played London Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Malcolm Arnold…………………………...…SRCD. 201 in Zurich in November 1954. The Aldeburgh variation, scored for strings only, is the second movement (A Lament) of this Divertimento, one of those wonderful Tippett ecstasies, with a solo violin weaving its melismata over the other instruments.The ‘Sellinger ’ tune appears in each movement, with a version by Byrd in the first. Scored for flute, clarinet, horn, oboe, bassoon, trumpet and strings, this Divertimento lives up to its name and is also characteristic of its composer - the mixture of baroque, madrigalian and folk influences in the opening allegro, for example, the rhythmically intriguing presto, the sinuous adagio and the witty finale, with its muted clarinet quotation of ‘I have a song to sing-o ’ from Sullivan ’s TheYeomen of the Guard. Other quotations are embedded in the work; a Gibbons fantasia, Dido ’s first song in Purcell ’s opera, ‘Preach me not your musky rules ’ (a nice touch, this) from Arne ’s Comus and John Field ’s in D minor. The other Divertimento on this record was composed by Rawsthorne in 1961-2 for WARNING Copyright subsists in all Lyrita Recordings. Any unauthorised broadcasting. public the London Mozart Players, to whose conductor, Harry Blech, it is dedicated. (Rawsthorne performance, copying, rental or re-recording thereof in any manner whatsoever will constitute an and Blech had been students together at the Royal Manchester College of Music over thirty- infringement of such copyright. In the United Kingdom licences for the use of recordings for public two years earlier). It is scored for flute, two oboes, two bassoons, two horns and strings. Like performance may be obtained from Phonographic Performance Ltd., 1 Upper James Street, London, W1F 9DE 2 7 www.lyrita.co.uk all Rawsthorne ’s music, it says much with economy and brevity. The craftsmanship is exemplary, the individual tone of voice wry and distinctive. The clarity of the writing is Notes © 1982 Lyrita Recorded Edition, England apparent from even a glance at the score, each instrument written for with under standing and love. The exquisite central Lullaby is a superb example of a vein of tenderness which Cover: Based on an original design by Keith Hensby from photographs by courtesy of Erich Auberbach (Tippett & Britten), G.MacDominic (Berkeley) and Oxford University Press Rawsthorne tended to suppress for fear (unjustified) of sentimentality, while the final Jig (Rawsthorne). securely avoids that forced jollity which can be the bane of this kind of music. Benjamin Britten ’s Sinfonietta is his published Opus 1, composed in the summer of The original recordings of the works by Tippett, Rawsthorne, Britten & Berkeley were made in 1932 when he was eighteen and still a student at the . It is dedicated association with the BRITISH COUNCIL. to Frank Bridge, with whom Britten had been studying for the previous four years; its assured craftsmanship need no longer surprise us, now that some of Britten ’s juvenilia, such Tippet, Rawsthorne, Britten, Berkeley Recording location and date: March 1977, Kingsway Hall, London. as the beautiful Four French Songs of 1928, have been performed. ‘Opus 1’ in the catalogue Recording Producer: James Walker of his published works, yes; in the creative sense, it has little relevance. Yet it is salutary to Recording Engineer: Kenneth E. Wilkinson remember that this was the only music by the prolific young composer to be performed at the RCM while he was there, and even then its first performance was given outside the Arnold college, on 31 January 1933 at a Macnaghten-Lemare concert at the Ballet Club Theatre, Recording location and date: 6 September 1978, Watford Town Hall . London. An RCM performance under followed a few weeks later. The college Recording Producer: Tom Mowrey Recording Engineer: John Dunkerley authorities were alarmed by Britten ’s inventive ness, which they designated mere ‘cleverness ’, and even more by his interest in the music of Schoenberg and Berg, names Digital Remastering Engineer: Simon Gibson which struck terror into the hearts of most British academics in the 1930s. Today, when we hear this eclectic Sinfonietta, it is hard to repress a smile at the thought of its being regarded Other works by ALAN RAWSTHORNE available on Lyrita: as in any way ‘revolutionary ’ music. No doubt the ambiguous use of tonality disturbed Symphonies 1, 2 & 3 Britten ’s mentors; and it is true that the work owes something to the example of London Philharmonic Orchestra / BBC Symphonic Orchestra Schoenberg ’s Chamber Symphony No.1 (1906), mainly the unity obtainable from an conducted by Sir John Pritchard / Nicholas Braithwaite / Norman Del Mar ………………… SRCD.2 91 intricate network of thematic cross-references which derive from one principal ‘cell ’. But Overture Street Corner, Piano 1 & 2, Symphonic Studies there are dramatic key conflicts in the exposition of the first movement, Poco presto ed Malcolm Binns, piano, London Philharmonic Orchestra / London Symphony Orchestra agitato, which should have been regarded as reassurance that Britten was firmly committed conducted by Sir John Pritchard / Nicholas Braithwaite…………………………………………SRCD .255 to principles of tonality - and remained so. The Sinfonietta is scored for flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, horn and string quintet or small (not the same instrumentation as the Schoenberg). The opening of the first movement contains the thematic material for the whole work, with woodwind making individual contributions to the first subject and the strings providing a harmonic background of sevenths. There is an important horn fanfare (pentatonic) which is followed by a descending (Mixolydian) scale. In place of a conventional recapitulation, there is what amounts to a new development section, a prophetic example of Britten ’s use of sonata- form. The Variations slow movement is proof that, in spite of youthful inclinations to belong

6 3 to other nations, Britten remained an heir to the English pastoral tradition which had been Malcolm Arnold enjoys a wide popular following on account of his extravert spirits, adorned by the early works of his teacher Frank Bridge, and by one of his first RCM rumbustious sense of humour and above all, the ready accessibility of his melodic ideas. teachers, John Ireland. The theme of the variations is the second subject of the first Indeed, for some listeners the very facility of his melodic gift poses problems. As Donald movement, now transformed into the English composer ’s favourite kind of rhapsodic Mitchell once put it, ‘the very emphasis on the melodic dimension in Arnold ’s art itself gives warble, but Britten again shows individuality by his skilful re-amalgamation of the work ’s rise to suspicions that we are being seduced by something vaguely improper: that we are principal motifs, with ninths now the governing interval. In a curiously Sibelian passage, succumbing to the blandishments of the popular, while the composer is somehow violas lead into the finale, Tarantella. This is a moto perpetuo, a form of which Britten grew abandoning the pedestal of high art and is wanting in seriousness ’. There is indeed a increasingly fond. First-movement motifs are again the material; in the recapitulation the hedonistic streak in Malcolm Arnold ’s music which rouses the mistrust of the puritan spirit, first subject of that movement returns to become the background to a fugal pizzicato section a suspicion further compounded by the fact that he was actually successful . in which all the threads are drawn together, with the horn-call as the clinching factor. The After youthful studies at the Royal College of Music, Malcolm Arnold joined the work ’s chief importance in Britten ’s output is in the evidence it supplies of his command of London Philharmonic Orchestra as a trumpeter in 1941 returning to them after having structural matters, but the assured handling of the instruments, particularly their poetic been called up in 1944 and subsequently spending a brief period with the BBC Symphony. blending, provides many a forecast of later and greater inventions. The war years produced his high-spirited overture, Beckus the Dandipratt (1943) and he Sir Lennox Berkeley ’s Sinfonietta dates from 1950 and is dedicated to Anthony was soon much in demand as a composer of film music. His score for the film, Bridge over Bernard, another pioneer of the chamber orchestra. It is scored for two each of flutes, oboes, the River Kwai brought him an Oscar, and his output ranges widely over all sorts of media clarinets, bassoons and horns, with timpani and strings. At one time it was scarcely possible and includes symphonies, concertos for a variety of instruments and a good deal of other to read about Berkeley without coming across a reference to his “Gallic elegance ”, a music. The Guitar Concerto, Op.67, leaves no doubt that under the light-hearted mask, description which became a cliché. Yet there is truth in it. At a time when British music had there is a sensibility of genuine depth and a capacity to touch the listener ’s feelings as well its protean, straggly-branched oaktree in Vaughan Williams, its rapier wit in Walton and its as lighten his spirits. One of the delights that his music offers is that it calls for no exegesis, poet of the brilliant and the dark in Britten, it seemed that only a few ears were trained to no elaborate analyses or programmatic outlines. The Sinfonietta No.1, Op.48 appeared in catch the civilised, deft and polished epigrams of Berkeley. With the perspective which the 1955 and is scored for two oboes, two horns and string orchestra. Its textures are clear, its years bring, he can now be seen as firmly within a developing tradition of our music, but, melodic invention is written gratefully for the instruments, and its layout could hardly be like the Britten of the Sinfonietta, with an awareness of wider implications, in this case clearer. Two quick movements flank a slower middle movement of a reflective character, and Stravinsky. This delightful Sinfonietta is a well-nigh perfect example of his craftsmanship tinged with flashes of melancholy rapidly dispelled by the scatter-brained finale. and his flair for unusual and charming melodies. It is in two parts. The first subject of Part 1, Allegro, is a spiky, Stravinskyan theme first heard on horns and bassoons; the second ROBERT LAYTON subject - for solo flute and bassoons - has a Spanish flavour, suggesting Falla or perhaps a reminiscence of the Catalan tunes which are the basis of the suite Mont Juic which Berkeley and Britten wrote together. Part 2, Lento, is a gentle meditation for the solo wind instruments over an accompaniment of muted strings. But the tranquillity is deceptive: mysterious string harmonies hint at profundities but these are swiftly swept aside by an allegro non troppo section which seems to be taking the work to a conventional rondo-like close. Berkeley is never conventional, though, and a broadened cantabile version of the theme ends the work. MICHAEL KENNEDY

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TIPPETT • RAWSTHORNE • BRITTEN ECO / DEL MAR LYRITA BERKELEY • ARNOLD LSO / BRAITHWAITE SRCD.257