A1 Sir Granville BANTOCK (1868-1946) Orchestral Music CD1 [7357] A Celtic Symphony - for string orchestra and six harps (1944) [20'04] The Witch of Atlas - tone poem no. 5 after Shelley (1902) [14'52] The Sea Reivers - Hebridean Sea Poem No. 2 (1917) [353] A Hebridean Symphony (1913) [35'08] CD2 [79'39] Pagan Symphony (Et in Arcadia vixi) (1923-28) [35'45] Fifine at the Fair - A Defence of Inconstancy (1912) [35'35] Cuchullan's Lament - Heroic Ballad No. 1 (1944) [353] Kishmul's Galley - Heroic Ballad No. 2 (1944) [4'26] CD3 [69'25] The Cyprian Goddess - Symphony No. 3 (1938-39) [24'23] The Helena Variations - Original Variations on the theme HFB (1899) [19'25] Dante and Beatrice - Poem for orchestra (1901 rev. 1910) [25'00] CD4 [7024] Sappho - Prelude and Nine Fragments for mezzo and orchestra (1900-07) [60'19] Sapphic Poem for cello and orchestra (1912) [14'57] CD5 [7648] Prelude to The Song of Songs (1923) [11'40] Prelude to Omar Khayyam (1906) [6'36] Camel Caravan from Omar Khayyam (1906) [7'56] Caristiona - Hebridean Sea Poem No. 1 (1920) [9'31] Processional - Orchestral Scene No. 1 (1894) [14'40] Thalaba The Destroyer (1894) [26'05] CD6 [77'56] Overture to a Greek Tragedy (1911) [17'54] The Wilderness and the Solitary Place (1903-7) [6'19] Pierrot of the Minute - Comedy Overture (1908) [1211] The Song of Songs (excerpts): Second Day; Third Day; Fifth Day (1915-1926) [4100] Susan Bickley (mezzo) (Sappho) Julian Lloyd Webber (cello) (Sapphic Poem) Elizabeth Connell (soprano) (Wilderness; Song of Songs) Kim Begley (tenor) (Song of Songs) Royal Philharmonic Orchestra/Vernon Handley rec. All Hallows, Gospel Oak, 21-22 August 1990 (CD1); 6-7 August 1992 (CD2); 16-17 May 1995 (CD3); 10-11 February, 10 May 1997 (CD4); Walthamstow Assembly Halls, 20-21 February 2001 (CD5); Watford Colosseum, 1-2 April 2003 (CD6). DDD Originally issued on individual CDs as: CDA66450 (CD1); CDA66630 (CD2); CDA66810 (CD3); CDA66899 (CD4); CDA67250 (CD5); CDA67395 (CD6). HYPERION CDS44281-6 [6 CDs: 44809] What an achievement this is! Twenty-one lavishly late-romantic works for orchestra in one six CD box at mid-price or better. This is music of one of Britain's most prolific and rewarding yet most neglected of romantic composers. It is only when a company decides to issue a boxed collection such as this that the accumulated value what has been recorded over a decade can be fully appreciated. It serves to hammer home the message that in recent times no one has done as much for Bantock as Hyperion. The only downside is that this probably signals the end of the Bantock Project for Hyperion; I speculate but it certainly seems that way. The CD travels worldwide and makes, breaks and consolidates musical reputations. In the CD age Bantock could hardly have had better advocacy on the world stage than it has had from Handley, the RPO and Hyperion – a top-flight luxury team if ever there was one. Other companies - notably Dutton and Chandos with their Omar Khayyam - have pushed out the Bantock boundaries. Yet none has chalked up anything even halfway matching the Hyperion achievement in that most expensive of media: the full orchestra. Bantock's stars rather unluckily had his centenary year (1968) fall slap-bang in the middle of the most unpropitious cultural period. What would a musical world focused on dissonance, exclusivity and novelty make of this tumultuously productive orchestral writer of tone poems, ballads and songs. The reception was all too predictable. He was ignored by the many; condemned by the few who found time to bother. His music was considered an irrelevance to a new age. He was not alone in this: indifference and spleen greeted the likes of Josef Suk, Adolphe Biarent and Arthur Farwell. There were outposts from which Bantock was saluted but they were not numerous. There were articles in ‘Music and Musiciansʼ and various other music magazines. Harold Truscott and Stephen Lloyd wrote articles and gave broadcast talks. Boult, Del Mar and Handford directed BBC studio broadcasts of Overture to a Greek Tragedy, the Pagan and Hebridean symphonies and extracts from Omar and Sappho. The reel-to-reel tape machines of the era - Philips, Grundig, Ferrograph, Vortexion, Akai, Sony and Sanyo - whirred away as recording angels and we can still enjoy some of that legacy. Commercial recordings were few and far between - the most accessible being Beecham's classic HMV version of Fifine at the Fair with the RPO and Jack Brymer taking the luscious clarinet solo. You might pick up some other recordings if you could find his Paxton 78s of mood music (many now reissued by Dutton) or the hideously rare Paxton 10" LP of the Celtic Symphony or the occasional song perhaps sung by Kenneth McKellar or a choral treat from the Glasgow Orpheus with Kenneth Roberton. It was otherwise a wasteland. Bantock as a person was steadfast, literate, kindly, expansive in his generosity, amorous, fascinated by all aspects of the arts and inclined to fill his house with books and exotic objets d'art from all over the world. His accrual of passions is reflected in his towering work-list. His Scottish works included the two symphonies, Celtic and Hebridean alongside Sea Reivers, Caristiona, the unrecorded opera The Seal Woman, Kishmulʼs Galley and Cuchulain's Lament. The orient and the middle east are reflected in his Omar, Song of Songs, Five Ghazals of Hafiz, songs and choral pictures. He was drawn to classical Arcadia in the Pagan Symphony, Cyprian Goddess, Sappho and Sapphic Poem. So many other avenues. There are three choral symphonies - The Pageant of Human Life, Vanity of Vanities and Atalanta in Calydon - which are notable for using the voices as if they were an orchestra. Bantock's instrument was however the orchestra and his mastery of that instrument was nothing short of genius. A product of the Royal Academy he was not a great hit with the Three Choirs although in his heyday other choral festivals in the great cities did take up his stuff with a will. Before moving on I should also note Bantockʼs chamber music and songs as recorded by Dutton: violin sonatas, cello sonatas and songs. The Third Violin Sonata has been recorded by United and then reissued very cannily by Regis-Portrait. Now that more than sixty years have passed since his death his music enjoys an easier passage on disc and there is a lot more to come. The delicacy of Bantock's orchestral craft can be felt time after time in this magnificent Hyperion set whether in the delicate witty-balletic moonlight of Pierrot of the Minute (once recorded on 78 by Henry Wood) or in The Witch of Atlas. There's delicacy too in the late Celtic Symphony with its subtle Caledonian- tinged pastel-Sibelian canvas which only fully unleashes its string orchestra and six harps at the end. Rather a pity then that the similarly Sibelian-impressionistic Chinese Landscapes could not have been included though you can hear the Paxton original on Dutton which recommend strongly. The Royal Academy greats including Bantock tended to revere Tchaikovsky over Brahms who was doted on by Stanford and Parry. This allegiance is pretty clear in the storming brass cauldron that is The Sea Reivers where salty spume mixes with the gruff-rasp of the explosive final pages of Francesca da Rimini. The poetic-impressionist vein so beloved of Bantock is well to the fore in A Hebridean Symphony - such an original work too. Listen to the silvery dialogue of harp, flute and violin at the start. This is comparable with the slightly warmer denser undergrowth of Bax's Spring Fire Symphony and Sukʼs Summer Tale. One might perhaps question the Symphony designation as the work has the discursive rhapsodic feel of a symphonic suite rather than the full inevitability of a symphony. The Pagan Symphony is weakest when it is at its most melodramatic and at the apex of its strength when Bantock plies us with the finest poetic filigree. It is a work of the late 1920s. Its refulgent romantic Mediterranean manner must have seemed very much of an anachronism when first heard. In a single movement it is here tracked in six sections. The symphony is luminously recorded and in very approximate terms the style moves between Elgar, the Ravel of La Valse and the Mahler of the First Symphony. Fifine will be well enough known to Bantockians from that old Beecham recording. This recording is more lambent and refined than the EMI. It's also given a more vibrant and even virtuoso performance. Fifine Dances has something of the light incidental music of Sibelius about it again. The two Heroic Ballads are struck from the same Celtic cloth as The Hebridean and The Sea Reivers yet date from 1944 having been written for Paxton recording sessions. Kishmul's Galley is almost in Technicolor such is its vibrancy and grip. The Cyprian Goddess symphony is the most obscure of the three. There were not even 1960s radio performances to warm its bones; not until this recording was made in 1995. It has a distinctly Straussian lushness until we get to the Tapiola- style gale at the animando. The Helena Variations are from the same world as the Bizet and Massenet suites - very relaxed and rather lacking the vigorous spark to take the music beyond the confines of charm. The single movement Dante and Beatrice takes us back close to the object of desire of many a young Academy graduate: Tchaikovsky.