Cello Concerto Symphony No.3 ‘Laudes Musicae’
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CHAN 10307 Front.qxd 14/9/06 3:12 pm Page 1 CHAN 10307X Kenneth Leighton Cello Concerto Symphony No.3 ‘Laudes musicae’ Neil Mackie TENOR Bryden Thomson Raphael Wallfisch CELLO Scottish National Orchestra Bryden Thomson CHAN 10307 BOOK.qxd 14/9/06 3:16 pm Page 2 Kenneth Leighton (1929–1988) Concerto for Cello and Orchestra, Op. 31* 32:22 1 I Allegro con moto – Meno mosso – 12:34 2 II Scherzo and Trio. Allegro molto e ritmico (il più presto possibile) – Lebrecht Music &Lebrecht Arts Photo Library Moderato e dolce 9:34 3 III Lentissimo: molto sostenuto 10:11 Symphony No. 3 ‘Laudes musicae’, Op. 90† 27:10 for Tenor Solo and Orchestra 4 I Adagio molto – Allegro con moto 9:20 5 II Scherzo. Allegro molto e scherzoso 7:07 John Grant flute solo 6 III Finale: Adagio molto e sostenuto 10:39 TT 59:44 Neil Mackie tenor† Raphael Wallfisch cello* Scottish National Orchestra Edwin Paling leader Bryden Thomson Kenneth Leighton 3 CHAN 10307 BOOK.qxd 14/9/06 3:16 pm Page 4 orchestral palette, tending to write for The music runs straight into the central Leighton: Cello Concerto/Symphony No. 3 contrasting blocks of colour and merging them Scherzo, as the strings, now without mutes, for his climaxes. He is not afraid to write simple underline the rhythm, pizzicato. The cello harmonies, or even octaves and unisons where enters molto ritmico with an effect that is Kenneth Leighton emerged as a composer of best seen in his choral works which are very they are effective. The second movement follows exuberant and light-hearted and quickly the real distinction at a comparatively early age, much of the English tradition. Petrassi's the first without a break, and ideas from the orchestra takes over, driving the music on. A the Cello Concerto being first performed at neoclassicism and personal brand of serialism first movement inform those in the last. climax on the brass then cuts off to leave the the Cheltenham Festival when he was only was also a liberating influence which helped The cello launches into the passionate first soloist very lightly accompanied, until again twenty-six. His earlier suite for cello, oboe and Leighton forge a powerful and personal style. theme in the second bar and it is sustained the orchestra regains momentum. orchestra, Veris gratia, had been first He returned to England to a fellowship in over twenty-four bars. The opening phrase The soloist has introduced two principal performed when he was still only twenty-one. composition at Leeds University. ‘During my should be noted as it assumes some ideas, with a subsidiary one on the brass soon Leighton has generally been regarded as a thirties,’ he wrote, importance later. The orchestra answers after the movement began. Now we reach an Scottish composer, and certainly the last I was very worried about being up-to-date, using rhythmically, and the soloist returns with a extended brooding lyrical Trio, signalled by a twenty-five years of his life were largely spent serial techniques and anything else that was scampering passage of running semiquavers. solo flute, in which the cello’s line includes a in Edinburgh, first as university lecturer in going, but this does not bother me now. A lyrical slower theme now follows, though semiquaver cell proclaiming its kinship with music and from 1970 as Reid Professor. He was also well-known as a pianist of recognisably from the same world as the first, the first movement. Eventually the headlong However, he was actually born in Wakefield character. His music encompasses a varied its treatment coloured by an opening major tempo returns, though not without contrasted and was very much the Yorkshireman. At output of orchestral, chamber, piano and seventh. These two ideas are developed and episodes, the big orchestral tuttis developed Oxford he studied Classics before music, and organ music. There is also a large corpus of build to an orchestral climax after which the without the soloist. Finally the orchestra stops later remarked, church music and a number of substantial solo cello, soaring through almost two octaves in full flow for the soloist’s mini-cadenza I think I'm a better musician for having done choral works as well as a remarkable opera, in the treble clef, reaches a cadenza and is before a vigorous gesture of dismissal from Classics. For a musician who has a real talent, the Columba, inspired by the atmosphere of the gradually joined by the orchestra. The the orchestra. more varied his culture has been, the better: I Scottish island of Iona and very approachable recapitulation is rhythmic and incisive, The full emotional weight of the music, don’t believe in all this specialist stuff. in its direct lyricism. Leighton died at the featuring the first idea, and rising to an however, is saved for the slow finale. The After Oxford, Leighton won a Mendelssohn height of his powers, in full flow of imposing climax with the strings playing an cello’s expressive, quietly questing opening Scholarship and elected to study with Goffredo composition, on 24 August 1988. inversion of the first two bars of the second theme is at first unaccompanied, but it is soon Petrassi in Rome. Influenced by things Italian, subject in octaves. The climax subsides, and intensified with ghostly muted violins soaring he responded to the serialism of Dallapicolla Cello Concerto towards the end the solo cello’s inward reverie behind as pulsing timpani set up an insistent as well as Berg, though with a lyricism owing The Cello Concerto, Leighton’s seventh is hauntingly coloured by the sul ponticello (on tread. Romantic half-lit horns mark the end of much to the England of Vaughan Wilhams and concertante work, was begun in Naples during the bridge) string tremolandi which underpins the soloist's reverie, and the second subject, a Gerald Finzi (who first recognised his talent) the summer of 1955 and was completed the it. Ultimately the movement dies away to close cousin of the first, follows on the oboe. and particularly to Walton – a rapprochement following spring. Leighton uses a brilliant nothing, the strings muted. The nocturnal mood is emphasised by muted 4 5 CHAN 10307 BOOK.qxd 14/9/06 3:16 pm Page 6 horns, flute and string tremolandi. An of the first of them ‘a profound contemplation is of a reflective interlude which articulates the Born into a family of professional musicians, imposing climax follows, but is again cut off to of the first composer’. This beginning music’s sense amid a turbulent and heaven- Raphael Wallfisch discovered the cello at the leave the soloist playing in a twilight movement has a slow introduction for the storming discourse. The music quietens and age of eight. While studying with Gregor landscape underpinned by a pedal G sharp on orchestra alone which is quite remarkable for its closing section is reflective and elegiac, an Piatigorsky in California he was chosen to timpani and basses. Unison strings march on the luminosity of its textures and the expressive oboe solo reminding us of Pan’s perform chamber music with Jascha Heifetz in in an eerie procession, until the music fades sensation of light it conveys. The text here is sweet song, as if commenting on those the informal recitals that Piatigorsky held in his like dusk darkening to night, and closes on the preceeded by a short verse from the composer deeper things suddenly released by the home. At the age of twenty-four he won the cello’s open C string. himself, in which the words ‘sing’: ‘singing’ composer’s metaphor of the god and his Gaspar Cassadó International Cello Competition and ‘praise’ are notably highlighted primeval piping in the middle movement. in Florence. Since then he has performed Symphony No. 3 by extended melismatic phrases, giving it the continually worldwide. His extensive Leighton was commissioned to write Veris force of a credo. The first paragraph, from © Lewis Foreman discography features works by a wide range of gratia after the composer Gerald Finzi had Sir Thomas Browne’s Religio Medici of 1642, British composers, including concertos by Bax, been shown a symphony for strings by the is set in contemplative mood, but for the Born in Aberdeen, Neil Mackie won a Bliss, Delius, Finzi, Leighton, Moeran and twenty-year-old by his tutor Bernard Rose. In second paragraph we move into an extended, Foundation Scholarship to the Royal College Walton, besides Britten’s Cello Symphony. He 1958 his Three Choirs Festival commission, dancing, fast middle section which only slows of Music, London. He studied in Munich with has also recorded rarer works by Barber, The Light Invisible, was designated a ‘Sinfonia for the ‘contemplation of the first Swiss tenor Ernst Haefliger, but his greatest Dohnányi, Grieg, Kabalevsky, Menotti, Prokofiev, sacra’. But it was 1965 before his true First composer’. This first movement ends with a influence was Sir Peter Pears. He has sung Respighi and Richard Strauss. Many of Britain’s Symphony won first prize in the City of Trieste variant of the composer’s own opening verse. throughout the world with many leading leading composers have written works for him, international competition for a new symphonic In contrast the music takes wing in the central conductors and orchestras and has premiered including Sir Richard Rodney Bennett, James work. That was an orchestral work, but when hymn to Pan as described in Elizabeth Barrett works by Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, Benjamin MacMillan, Paul Patterson, Robert Saxton, he came to write the Second Symphony nearly Browning’s poem A Musical Instrument, with Britten, Kenneth Leighton and Hans Werner Robert Simpson, Giles Swayne, Sir John a decade later, it was for soprano, chorus and pizzicato strings and gossamer textures, Henze, as well as countless works by Scottish Tavener and Adrian Williams.