CHANDOS SIR GEORGE Lydia Mordkovitch Violin Eric Parkin Piano

CHAN 10337(2)x Booklet cover 8/5/05 3:12 PM Page 1 CHANDOS CLASSICS SIR GEORGE DYSON Violin Concerto Concerto leggiero Concerto da camera Concerto da chiesa Children’s Suite after Walter de la Mare Lydia Mordkovitch violin Eric Parkin piano City of London Sinfonia CHAN 10337(2) x RICHARD HICKOX CHAN 10337 BOOK.qxd 15/9/06 12:59 pm Page 2 Sir George Dyson (1883–1964) COMPACT DISC ONE Violin Concerto* 43:09 1 I Molto moderato 20:15 2 II Vivace 5:07 3 III Poco andante 10:36 4 IV Allegro ma non troppo 6:58 Sir George Dyson Trust Sir George Children’s Suite after Walter de la Mare 19:07 5 I Leggiero 5:44 6 II Pastoral. Tranquillo 4:38 7 III March. Alla marcia 2:13 8 IV Whirligig. Di Ballo 6:17 TT 62:27 COMPACT DISC TWO Concerto leggiero† 24:49 for piano and string orchestra 1 I Allegro – Vivace – Andante sostenuto ed espressivo 10:11 2 II Andante – Largamente sempre – Molto largamente‡ 7:40 3 III Vivace 6:58 Concerto da camera 24:54 for string orchestra Sir George Dyson 4 I Allegro assai 7:38 5 II Andante‡ 9:29 6 III Larghetto – Con brio 7:45 3 CHAN 10337 BOOK.qxd 15/9/06 12:59 pm Page 4 Dyson: Concertos and Children’s Suite Concerto da chiesa‡ 21:19 In a generation when many of the leading Coming to London in 1900, he studied at the for string orchestra British composers came from well-off RCM for four years and then won the 7 I Veni, Emmanuel. Andante 8:36 backgrounds, and not a few had private Mendelssohn scholarship which allowed him incomes, it is good to remember that Sir to travel on the Continent. On Stanford’s 8 II Corde natus. Allegretto – Quasi allegro – Tempo I 5:45 George Dyson, doyen of public school music advice he chose Italy where he encountered 9 6:56 III Laetatus sum. Allegro and the first director of the Royal College of the leading Italian orchestral composers of TT 71:18 Music to have been a student there, in fact their day: Buonamici, Sgambati and Martucci. came from humble, northern, working-class He also spent some time in Vienna, Berlin and Lydia Mordkovitch violin* roots and was entirely a self-made man. Dresden, and met many leading musicians – Eric Parkin piano† It has still not been explained why including Richard Strauss and Joachim – and ‡solo string quartet: Sir Charles Villiers Stanford, during his long later, in London, Nikisch played Dyson’s early Andrew Watkinson (leader) • Edward Roberts violins tenure as professor of composition at the Straussian symphonic poem, Siena. Stephen Tees viola Royal College of Music, should have produced He returned to London in 1907. This Stephen Orton cello so many composers of stature, all with highly working-class boy from industrial Halifax had, City of London Sinfonia personal and individual styles, when his by the age of twenty-four, acquired an method appears to have been one that should enviable musical technique, and a patina of Richard Hickox have produced clones of his own approach. the genteel man-about-Europe. But he needed Perhaps he exacerbated the students’ natural to earn his living, and Sir Hubert Parry rebelliousness! Dyson is no exception to this recommended him to be music master at the generation and his personality is evident in a new Royal Naval College at Osborne; from forthright tunefulness, in certain characteristic there it was but a step to Marlborough twists of harmony and orchestration, and in College, and, after three years, to Rugby. an eschewing of the more advanced Finding himself in the infantry at the tendencies of his day. outbreak of war, he wrote a Manual of In his autobiography Dyson remembered Grenade Fighting, later widely circulated as playing the organ for church services at the Grenade Warfare. Out of action with shell- age of thirteen, and he was a Fellow of the shock in 1916, he needed some time to Royal College of Organists at just sixteen. convalesce. Eventually he found himself 4 5 CHAN 10337 BOOK.qxd 15/9/06 12:59 pm Page 6 working in the Air Ministry where he helped first. After In Honour of the City (1928) came solemn opening tutti, almost tragic in tone, the sweetly before the theme is presented in full establish RAF bands, and he also partly The Canterbury Pilgrims (1930), taking a double-basses play, pizzicato, a phrase of five now by the soloist, and then the meditation composed the RAF March Past that Sir whole evening to perform and undoubtedly notes later to become the first notes of the fades. Walford Davies had sketched in short score. In his masterpiece. These established him as a soloist’s second subject. The violin’s opening The finale is vigorous, one commentator 1920 Dyson’s Three Rhapsodies for string vibrant musical personality of some stature. entry is unlike that of any other concerto, wondering whether it took its origin in quartet were chosen for publication under the Commissions for the Three Choirs Festival quietly musing over a theme which is ‘thoughts of the sunny south’. Certainly the Carnegie Publication Scheme. To crown his followed: St Paul’s Voyage to Melita in 1933 extended over some eighteen bars. A long music’s frequently dance-like character achievement and the return to normality, he and Nebuchadnezzar in 1935. passage of more vigorous music, during which suggests a celebration. With a passing echo of was appointed to Wellington College, and also His Symphony in G (1937) – in spite of the soloist does not play, extends to ten pages the variations theme the music reaches the became a professor at the Royal College of Sir Adrian Boult’s dislike of the work – of score before the violin returns with a short coda, Andante molto moderato, with a Music. It was at this time that he wrote his demonstrated that he was not just a choral cadenza. But the brooding, elegiac character backward glance at the double-bass figure celebrated book The New Music, published in composer. Other choral works followed, of the movement is sustained and it ends with from the first movement, but we leave the 1924 and widely admired in its day for its including the extended Quo Vadis (1937, the soloist presenting the opening theme, work with a feeling of good humour and high learning and apparently commonsense 1948) for the Three Choirs Festival and later accompanied as before by the double-basses, spirits. view. (In a footnote he says: ‘My difficulty is Sweet Thames Run Softly, a mellifluous setting as the mists close. The Violin Concerto was written too early in that I cannot find a logical definition of for baritone, chorus and orchestra of words by The scherzo is launched with the notes of the war to be celebrating optimistic hopes for atonality.’) Spencer. Finally came the brilliant choral the motto motif of Dyson’s Canterbury world events; it is perhaps more a personal The most productive part of Dyson's life as Agincourt and the short A Christmas Garland. Pilgrims (‘Now let us ride’). It is a fast jig or celebration. Between the wars there were few a composer came while he was director of Lesser composers have established themselves reel, the brilliant soloist rushing on in endless British violin concertos, though many for the music at Winchester College, an appointment with fewer works. triplets. Dyson was a master of this sort of piano. During the war, however, Walton’s and he held from 1924 to 1937, only leaving to Dyson’s Violin Concerto was completed in constantly evolving passage work, but Bax’s concertos were first heard in the UK and become director of the Royal College of 1941. Albert Sammons championed the new eventually a second idea arises in the strings, Moeran produced a notably atmospheric essay Music. Here not only was he organist, but he work and recommended it to Sir Adrian Boult. the rhythm now a leaping crotchet–quaver. in the medium. So Dyson was in good had a choir and orchestra for concerts as well Dyson remarked that he ‘had expected to put The soloist soon makes this a wide-spanning company – company he surely shares as an as an adult choral society. If one said that he it in a drawer till better days’; but Boult tune, though the dance continues headlong. equal. composed as a hobby, one would give quite accepted the concerto and Sammons gave its The slow movement calls for only muted Dating from long before this activity is his the wrong idea. Yet this was a spare time first performance with the BBC Symphony strings and is based on the 32-bar 2/4 theme four-movement suite for small orchestra – activity in a busy professional life of teaching, Orchestra conducted by Sir Adrian on played by the strings at the outset. The soloist Children’s Suite after Walter de la Mare – lecturing (later broadcasting) and performing. 16 February 1942. enters in 3/4 and decorates the theme in evoking the nursery atmosphere which also He first achieved his most characteristic voice A modern concerto in four movements is semiquavers, and in a second variation moves coloured Elgar’s Starlight Express, his wartime with choral music of a tuneful, vigorous cast comparatively unusual; here the music has a into a lilting 6/8 followed by a waltz-like incidental music for Algernon Blackwood’s to which choral societies responded from the quasi-symphonic scale.

Load more