SRCD.206 STEREO DDD WILLIAM STERNDALE BENNETT (1816-1875) 1 Overture, The May Queen (6’27”) William Sterndale Bennett 2 Overture, The Wood Nymphs (13’42”) Symphony in G minor Op. 43 (23’41”) 3 1st movement: Allegro moderato (8’09”) OVERTURES 4 2nd movement: Introduzione Maestoso – (4’44”) PARISINA • THE NAIADES - Minuetto I & II Moderato con grazia – Trio Pomposo THE WOOD NYMPHS 5 3rd movement: Romanza Larghetto cantabile (5’55”) THE MAY QUEEN 6 4th movement: Intermezzo, Tempo di Minuetto Grave - Presto (4’57”) SYMPHONY IN G MINOR 7 Overture, The Naiades * (12’32”) 8 Overture, Parisina (8’05”) London Philharmonic Orchestra (64’35”) Philharmonia Orchestra London Philharmonic Orchestra Nicholas Braithwaite * Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by 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. ൿ 2007 The copyright in these sound recordings is owned by Lyrita Recorded Edition, England © 2007 Lyrita Recorded Edition, England. 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 illiam Sterndale Bennett (1816-1875) was born in Sheffield. His father, the organist Unfortunately Lucas showed Costa the note asking him to “take my Overture a Wof Sheffield Parish Church, died when young William was three and he was little faster … the middle parts especially, with the syncopations, want keeping up to brought up by his paternal grandparents in Cambridge. When he was seven, Bennett time.” Costa was furious and Lucas had to conduct the overture in his place. Bennett took became a chorister at King’s, where his grandfather was in the choir, and two years later Costa’s refusal to conduct his overture very badly; even more so, the lack of a subsequent he was admitted to the Royal Academy of Music in London. He studied violin and piano, explanation or apology. He resigned from the Philharmonic Society, depriving himself of and, later, composition with William Crotch. However, it was only when Crotch was performance opportunities, both as a soloist and composer. He also tore up the final succeeded by Cipriani Potter in 1832 that Bennett, already a star pianist, began to revision of his Parasina overture. His health collapsed and once he recovered he blossom as a composer. Mendelssohn heard him play his First Piano Concerto at the concentrated on his punishing schedule of teaching. It would be ten years before The May Academy in 1833 and invited him to Germany as a friend rather than a pupil. Queen brought him back to public attention. For the next eight or nine years there was a prolific outpouring of music, clearly David Byers encouraged by recognition at home and, more importantly, the encouragement of the Mendelssohn-Schumann circle in Leipzig where he enjoyed three lengthy stays – October 1836 to July 1837, October 1838 to March 1839 and the first three months of 1842. After this time, Bennett’s considerable teaching commitments, allied to the lack of home-grown support and opportunities for new music, meant that his compositional output declined to a trickle of mainly songs and piano pieces. Mendelssohn’s death in 1847 affected Bennett greatly. The opportunities for new works and for his appearances as a solo pianist were reduced after a falling-out with the Philharmonic Society in 1848 and he www.lyrita.co.uk suffered for a time from serious stress-induced ill-health. He’d married one of his pupils in 1844 and, with a young family to support, lots of teaching was essential to provide a Note © 2007 Lyrita Recorded Edition, England steady income – between 1,650 and 1,700 hours of lessons in 1851 alone! But he was still highly thought of in Germany. In 1853 he was invited to become conductor of the Leipzig Cover: Sir William Sterndale Bennett, reproduced by courtesy of THE BRITISH LIBRARY. Gewandhaus concerts, a position he had to decline because of his commitments at home. Other works by WILLIAM STERNDALE BENNETT available on Lyrita: These lean compositional years were marked by great industry in other areas. He Piano Concertos Nos. 1 & 3, Caprice founded the Bach Society (1849) and conducted the first English performance of the St Malcolm Binns, London Philharmonic Orchestra Matthew Passion; he was appointed Conductor of the Philharmonic Society concerts conducted by Nicholas Braithwaite ………………………………………………………SRCD.204 (1855); and he was elected Professor of Music at Cambridge (1856). Such public Piano Concertos Nos. 2 & 5, Adagio recognition seems to have restored his muse and led to another wave of works from the Malcolm Binns, Philharmonia Orchestra late 1850s onwards, including his G minor Symphony and the oratorio The Woman of conducted by Nicholas Braithwaite ………………………………………………………SRCD.205 Samaria. In 1866 he was appointed Principal of the RAM and he was knighted in 1871. Schumann, with whom Bennett would often “drink a bottle of porter”, noted the WARNING Copyright subsists in all Lyrita Recordings. Any unauthorised broadcasting. public “remarkable family resemblance” in Bennett’s music to that of Mendelssohn’s – “the performance, copying, rental or re-recording thereof in any manner whatsoever will constitute an same beauty of form, poetic depth yet clearness, and ideal purity, the same outwardly infringement of such copyright. In the United Kingdom licences for the use of recordings for public satisfying impression, – but with a difference.”Where Mendelssohn produced “the whole performance may be obtained from Phonographic Performance Ltd., 1 Upper James Street, London, W1F 9DE 2 7 Cambridge in January that year. He completed it back in England that summer and it was wild faërie of a Summer Night’s Dream, Bennett in his music evokes the charming figures performed in January 1837 when Moscheles conducted it at a Philharmonic Society trial. of the Merry Wives of Windsor [Bennett’s overture was written in 1834]; one spreads out At that time, Bennett was back in Leipzig and he wrote in his diary for 20 January 1837: before us the broad, deep, slumbering surface of the sea, the other lingers beside a balmy “Tonight I believe they play my Overture “Naides” [sic] at the Philharmonic in London. lake, on which the beams of the moon are trembling.” Trial night for the new compositions. Well, good luck to it. I like it better than anything I Stanford too, thought of Bennett as a poet of tranquillity rather than a poet of have written.” feverishness. “To an audience on the prowl for startling effects and for new sensations, Initially the score included parts for three trombones. It was scheduled to be played such music as Bennett’s cannot appeal: but to those who like to sit still, and can forget at the Gewandhaus on 14 February 1837 and Mendelssohn insisted that Bennett should temporarily the rush of trains, motors, telegrams and telephones, it will convey the conduct it himself. After the first rehearsal, Bennett wrote, “It did not please me – too soothing charm which was part and parcel of the man himself.” much noise, so today at the second rehearsal I dispensed with the trombones [meaning the tenor trombones] and like it all the better.” The overture retains the bass trombone Overture: The May Queen along with double woodwind, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, timpani and strings. Ori ginally entitled Marie du Bois, this overture seems to have been one of two Bennett noted in his diary that Mendelssohn “liked it very much”. He made further pieces Bennett had worked on in Leipzig early in 1842 and intended to present to the revisions to the music, and the parts were published in Leipzig in November 1837, with the Directors of the Philharmonic Society in London upon his return. His progress was slower full score published in 1843. The overture became popular in Britain and Germany, than anticipated. In October that year he wrote to Mendelssohn, promising to send him maintaining a place in the repertory for many years. “an Overture which must be for the Gewandhaus and which I hope to send you before the year is out.” The first London performance, promised for the Hanover Square Rooms in Overture: Parisina June 1844, failed to materialise; there was a further revision, and the Overture was finally Bennett wrote Parisina while he was at the RAM during March 1835. In later years premièred in Liverpool in December 1844. There was a London performance in June 1845, he referred to it as “a very early Overture of mine written to Lord Byron’s poem”. On the but Bennett was not at all satisfied with the work. He’d shown it to Mendelssohn in 1844 original manuscript score the words Overture in F# minor, were altered to read Overture and he continued to make some “little alterations”. “I should have written to you and sent to Parisina. you my Overture according to promise”, he wrote to Mendelssohn in 1846, “but I really The first performance was given by Academy students in June 1835 and then at a could not make up my mind to like the Overture and think it good enough for the Leipzig concert of the Society of British Musicians in November. Bennett brought the overture public who have always been so kind to me and are entitled to the best I can do, whatever with him to Leipzig where it was performed at the Gewandhaus in March 1837. that is.” Mendelssohn suggested it was too short and the overture was duly expanded for an 1838 At this stage the overture’s title Marie du Bois was a not-so-veiled reference to his performance at the Society of British Musicians.