SRCD.252 STEREO ADD †DDD

GEOFFREY BUSH (1920 - 1998) GEOFFREY 1 Overture, Yorick (1949) * (8’32”) 2 Music (1967) for Orchestra ** (16’08”) BUSH 1 Prologue 2 Scherzo (3’40”) Overture, Yorick 3 Lento (8’51”)4 Epilogue (13’10”) Symphony No.1 (1954) *** (27’38”) Music for Orchestra 3 1st Movement: Molto moderato - Allegro deciso (10’18”) Symphonies 1 & 2 4 2nd Movement: Poco lento e con malinconia (9’01”) 5 3rd Movement: Molto moderato - Allegro di molto (8’19”) New Philharmonia Orchestra 6 Symphony No.2 (The Guildford) (1957) † (26’48”) 1 Maestoso - Allegro2 Non troppo lento (7’28”) London Philharmonic Orchestra 3 Vivo (15’15”)4 Allegro moderato (21’15”) London Symphony Orchestra (79’07”) Royal Philharmonic Orchestra * New Philharmonia Orchestra ** London Philharmonic Orchestra *** London Symphony Orchestra † Royal Philharmonic Orchestra * ** *** Nicholas Braithwaite † Barry Wordsworth Vernon Handley Nicholas Braithwaite The above individual timings will normally each include two pauses. One before the beginning of each movement or work, and one after the end. Barry Wordsworth * ൿ 1979 ** ൿ 1972 *** ൿ 1982 † ൿ 1995 The copyright in these recordings is owned by Lyrita Recorded Edition, England This compilation and digital remastering ൿ 1995 Lyrita Recorded Edition, England © 1995 Lyrita Recorded Edition, England. Lyrita is a registered trade mark. Made in the UK LYRITA RECORDED EDITION. Produced under an exclusive license from Lyrita by Wyastone Estate Ltd, PO Box 87, Monmouth, NP25 3WX, UK eoffrey Bush was born in London, March 23rd 1920. He began to learn the piano Gat the age of seven; the following year he was accepted as a (probationary) chorister at Salisbury Cathedral. At the age of ten, he made his first attempt at composition; three years later he had made sufficient progress to be asked to write a www.lyrita.co.uk short ballet for his aunt’s dancing pupils to perform at their annual display. He was lucky enough to have as his music master at his next school () a former Notes © 1995 Lyrita Recorded Edition, England student of Vaughan Williams, Jasper Rooper, who inspired his pupils with his own passionate interest in contemporary music and encouraged them to learn orchestral Copyright Lyrita photograph of Geoffrey Bush by Reg Wilson instruments, to conduct and to compose. He was even luckier to be introduced by the Design by KEITH HENSBY assistant chaplain to . Ireland gave him unofficial lessons during the school Digital remastering by SIMON GIBSON holidays in which kindness and ruthless criticism were combined, and which led - Overture, Yorick despite the disparity in ages - to a lifelong friendship. (Geoffrey Bush was Musical Recording location and date: Kingsway Hall, London August 25 1976 Adviser to the John Ireland Trust.) On Ireland’s advice he entered for, and was awarded, Recording Producer: James Walker the Nettleship Scholarship in musical composition and in classics at Balliol College, Recording Engineer: John Dunkerley Oxford; he emerged in 1946 with degrees in both subjects and the award of the Masefield Memorial Studentship (commemorating the Poet Laureate’s son who was killed in Music for Orchestra Recording location and date:Walthamstow Assembly Hall, January 4 1972 World War II).The war years were spent at the Hostel of the Good Shepherd, Tredegar, Recording producer: David Harvey helping to look after children evacuated from the London blitz. Recording Engineer: James Lock

After that (apart from a brief interlude as organist at John Ireland’s former Symphony No.1 church, St. Luke’s Chelsea) his life was divided between teaching and composing. He Recording location and date: Kingsway Hall, London August 2 & 3 1978 lectured for the Adult Education departments of Oxford and London universities Recording Producer: Andrew Cornall Recording Engineer: James Lock successively, and also taught many undergraduates during a twenty year stint as Visiting Professor at King’s College, London. As a composer he wrote in all forms including songs Symphony No.2 and operas (two of the latter to his own libretti, The Equation and Lord Arthur Savile’s Recording location and date:Watford Town Hall, January 13 1994 Crime, have had BBC productions.) Of his choral music In Praise of Mary and A Recording Producer: Andrew Keener Summer Serenade are available on CD, while his Christmas Cantata has been sung by Recording Engineer:Trygg Tryggvason amateur and professional choirs throughout the English-speaking world. WARNING Copyright subsists in all Lyrita Recordings. Any unauthorised broadcasting. public Geoffrey Bush was a frequent broadcaster, both as a speaker on musical topics and performance, copying, rental or re-recording thereof in any manner whatsoever will constitute an infringement of such copyright. In the United Kingdom licences for the use of recordings for public as pianist in his own compositions. His firm belief in the strength and continuity of our performance may be obtained from Phonographic Performance Ltd., 1 Upper James Street, London, W1F 9DE 2 7 follows the traditional symphonic exposition of two contrasting subjects, the first of musical tradition resulted in several scholarly editions of British music, notably the five which shares a sharpened fourth with the ritornello theme of the first movement. Less volumes published by Musica Britannica which include works by neglected British traditionally - though there is a precedent in late Beethoven - the development section composers of the romantic era such as Sterndale Bennett (most of whose concertante expected at this point is ousted by a third theme consisting of a series of rising scales music for piano and orchestra can now be heard on Lyrita SRCD.204 & 205.) Outside which culminate in fanfares for the brass. A last reference to the molto moderato occurs music his interests included the theatre, sport and detective fiction. The latter is not just before the recapitulation: first and second subjects rush headlong towards the coda, surprising as his father was Christopher Bush, novelist (under the pseudonym Michael where the climactic fanfares of the third theme bring the symphony to an end in a blaze Home) and detective story writer. He himself collaborated with the composer Bruce of D major. Montgomery - better known as Edmund Crispin - in writing Who killed Baker? a short detective story which has been printed in five anthologies. He also wrote a number of Symphony No.2 was commissioned to celebrate the 700th anniversary of the critical and autobiographical essays, which were issued by Thames Publishing in two granting of a Royal Charter to the city of Guildford. (One commentator has suggested collections: Left, Right and Centre (1983) and An Unsentimental Education (1990). that this accounts for the prevalence of the interval of a seventh, but this certainly was Geoffrey Bush died in February 1998. not consciously planned.) It was first performed in November 1957 by the Guildford Municipal Orchestra conducted by the composer; it then had to wait thirty years for its Geoffrey Bush writes: first broadcast performance, a lapse of time which did not encourage the production of a successor. Early in 1949 I had begun to gather ideas for a concert overture, because my friend the conductor Trevor Harvey had told me that here was a gap in the British orchestral The design of the second symphony is more complex than that of the first. There repertory that needed filling. It was fortunate that I did so, because one day I was are four clearly defined sections, played without a break. The first consists of a festive suddenly telephoned with a commission to write just such a piece at short notice for a chorale (played in turn by sidedrum, by woodwind, and by wind and strings) followed by concert sponsored by the National Association of Boys’ Clubs in memory of their late an allegro on two contrasting subjects. Next come a slow movement and - overlapping it patron Tommy Handley (star of the wartime radio comedy show ITMA.) The parallel slightly - a scherzo with two trios. (Both these central sections use transformations of with the dead jester in Hamlet had no sooner occurred to me than all my ideas fell into previously heard material.) Finally the first movement is recapitulated but in reverse place, enabling me to complete the overture within the very short time available. The order: second subject, first subject and chorale.There is a sense in which all four sections familiar quotation stands at the head of the score: ‘Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, could be considered as parts of a single unified sonata structure; but the listener is more Horatio; a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy’.The first and last sections, which likely to enjoy the work if he abandons analysis and allows him or herself to be caught up share between them the customary statement, development and recapitulation of two in the prevailing atmosphere of jubilation. themes, recall- as Hamlet said of Yorick - Handley’s ‘flashes of merriment that were wont GEOFFREY BUSH to set the table on a roar’. Between them comes a brief funeral elegy, featuring solos by the wind instruments (the flutes using a technique known as flutter-tonguing) and the leader of the violins. The first performance took place at the Royal Albert Hall on 19 March, 1949. Under-rehearsed and ill-attended, the event attracted little attention; but

6 3 the overture came into its own when it was played by the Hallé Orchestra conducted by If Yor ick has a speedy birth, that of my first symphony was slow and laborious: two Sir John Barbirolli at the 1954 Cheltenham Festival and at the 1955 Proms. years were spent in writing and re-writing before the work was finally completed in April 1954 - twelve hours before the birth of my elder son. Only the slow middle movement, Music for Orchestra was also commissioned by a youth organisation - the inspired by a radio announcement of the death of my teenage musical hero, Constant Shropshire Schools’ Symphony Orchestra. I had two aims when writing it; first, to Lambert, came at all spontaneously. I have described in my book, An Unsentimental present a fully worked out musical argument within the fourteen minutes specified for Education, the traumatic experience of playing the sketches through to Rudolf Schwarz its duration - a miniature symphony, in fact - and second, to write a show-piece for in a deserted Birmingham Town Hall on an icy day in January. I returned home orchestra which would give solo opportunities to the leaders of each instrumental group convinced that the audition had been an utter failure; imagine my surprise (and delight) and disguise the limitations of the rank-and-file (hence the restricted tessitura of, when I heard that the symphony was to be played by the CBSO at the 1954 Cheltenham especially, the string parts). So as to involve as many young performers as possible I Festival. From then on Rudolf was the symphony’s most enthusiastic advocate - though included parts for five percussion players and two pianists. (The one-piano version it was Maurice Miles who introduced it to Prom audiences in September 1958 with the designed for professional orchestras is used in this recording.) The work falls into four BBC Symphony Orchestra. continuous sections. The first, a prologue, introduces three themes: an expanding motif in seconds for the woodwind, a dialogue between the first trumpet and strings, and a The opening, marked molto moderato, is quiet and tentative. Dissonant chords march. Next comes a scherzo which turns the spotlight on the pianists. Much use is are heard low on divided strings, answered by a descending figure on the woodwind - the made of additive rhythms (beats made up of unequal numbers of quavers) and a theme latter foreshadowing the prevailing rhythm of the allegro deciso. Another important which might lead the unsuspecting listener to believe that he or she was listening to a element of this prologue is a four-note figure (E/F/C/B) on basses and cellos punctuated tribute to J.S. Bach. Actually the theme in question is a musical transcription of the by a horn chord. This expands from the lowest register of the orchestra to the highest, name of the family cottage in mid-Wales - Cae Bach, or ‘dear little meadow’. Instead of accelerating as it goes. A sudden eruption of trumpets and trombones launches the the ‘trios’ traditionally found in a scherzo movement there are two cadenzas: the first orchestra into the first movement proper: this is in ritornello form, beloved by disturbs the flow of the music by breaking it up into a series of short, dislocated phrases, composers of the baroque. (A single theme appears and re-appears in different keys and the second presents a combination of six different rhythmic patterns played by throughout the movement, separated by independent, contrasting episodes.) At the percussion and timpani. The third, slow, movement is a ternary structure, the outer climax, just before the last re-statement of the ritornello theme, motifs from the molto sections of which feature a solo flute, the middle one the leaders of the string section moderato return, re-scored. playing as a quartet. The threads of the musical argument are drawn together in the fourth and final movement; previously heard themes are recapitulated in close The slow movement is an elegaic blues, such as Constant Lambert himself had juxtaposition, E major emerges as the key of the work, and C-A-E-B-A-C-H is given the written in memory of Florence Mills. In the coda the theme entrusted to the chorus on last word. The work received its first performances (two in one evening) at the their first entrance in The Rio Grande can be briefly heard, lovingly played by the cellos. Shrewsbury Festival in March 1968, having been completed the previous year. The composer conducted. The finale, imbued - in intention at least - with the spirit of Italian comedy, is prefaced by a condensed recall of material from the opening molto moderato. There

4 5 GEOFFREY BUSH: SYMPHONIES 1 & 2 NPO / LPO / LSO / RPO LYRITA YORICK • MUSIC FOR ORCHESTRA HANDLEY /BRAITHWAITE /WORDSWORTHSRCD.252 DDD † (8’32”) (16’08”) after the end. (27’38”) (26’48”) (79’07”) STEREO SRCD.252 ADD Barry Wordsworth Barry Wordsworth † (1920 - 1998) Royal Philharmonic Orchestra Royal (1957) † † 2 4 2 4 * *** 1995 Lyrita Recorded Edition, England Recorded 1995 Lyrita (1949) (1954) ൿ 1995 The copyright in these recordings is owned 1995 The copyright in these recordings ൿ for Orchestra ** for Orchestra † GEOFFREY BUSH BUSH GEOFFREY 1982 (1967) ൿ Prologue Scherzo (3’40”) Scherzo Prologue Lento (8’51”)(13’10”) Epilogue Vivo (15’15”) Allegro moderato (21’15”) moderato Maestoso - AllegroVivo (15’15”) Allegro lento troppo Non (7’28”) 1 3 1 3 1972 *** Symphony No.2 (The Guildford) Guildford) Symphony No.2 (The Overture, Yorick Yorick Overture, Music Symphony No.1 1st Movement: Molto moderato - Allegro deciso moderato - Allegro 1st Movement: Molto lento e con malinconia 2nd Movement: Poco di molto Movement: Molto moderato - Allegro 3rd (10’18”) (8’19”) (9’01”) ൿ 3 4 5 6 1 2 *** London Symphony Orchestra *** London Symphony * ** Vernon Handley *** Nicholas Braithwaite Handley *** Nicholas Braithwaite Vernon * ** * New Philharmonia Orchestra ** London Philharmonic Orchestra 1979 ** 1995 Lyrita Recorded Edition, England. Lyrita is a registered trade mark. Made in the UK is a registered Edition, England. Lyrita Recorded 1995 Lyrita ൿ * © The above individual timings will normally each include two pauses. One before the beginning of each movement or work, and one before The above individual timings will normally each include two pauses. One LYRITA RECORDED EDITION. Produced under an exclusive license from Lyrita Lyrita under an exclusive license from RECORDED EDITION. Produced LYRITA UK by Wyastone Estate Ltd, PO Box 87, Monmouth, NP25 3WX, by Lyrita Recorded Edition, England Edition, Recorded by Lyrita This compilation and digital remastering

GEOFFREY BUSH: SYMPHONIES 1 & 2 NPO / LPO / LSO / RPO LYRITA YORICK • MUSIC FOR ORCHESTRA HANDLEY /BRAITHWAITE /WORDSWORTHSRCD.252