SRCD.225 STEREO ADD BlissCONDUCTSBliss SIR ARTHUR BLISS (1891 - 1975) 1 Mêlée Fantasque (1921 rev. 1937 & 1965) (13’06”) Mêlée Fantasque 2 Rout for Orchestra and Soprano (1920) (7’24”) Rout Adam Zero - Suite (1946) Adam Zero (Excerpts) 3 II Dance of Spring (2’49”) 4 IV Bridal Ceremony (2’17”) Hymn to Apollo 5 V Dance of Summer (3’48”) Serenade 6 Hymn to Apollo (1928 rev. 1965) (10’23”) (conducted by Brian Priestman) Serenade for Orchestra and Baritone (1929)† (25’52”) The World is charged 7 I Overture: The Serenader (8’30”) with the grandeur of God 8 II ‘Fair is my Love’ (4’52”) (conducted by Philip Ledger) 9 III Idyll (7’24”) 10 IV ‘Tune on my Pipe the praises of my Love’ (5’06”) London Symphony Orchestra The World is charged with the grandeur of God (1969)* (13’31”) LSO Wind and Brass Ensemble 11 I ‘The World is charged with the grandeur of God’ (5’22”) Ambrosian Singers 12 II ‘I have desired to go’ (3’18”) Rae Woodland 13 III ‘Look at the Stars’ (4’51”) John Shirley-Quirk (79’13”) Rae Woodland, soprano • John Shirley-Quirk, baritone London Symphony Orchestra LSO Wind and Brass Ensemble • Ambrosian Singers* Sir Arthur Bliss • Brian Priestman† • Philip Ledger* 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 1971 The copyright in these sound recordings is owned by Lyrita Recorded Edition, England. This compilation and the digital remastering ൿ 1992 Lyrita Recorded Edition, England. © 1992 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 travinsky’s Rite of Spring (1913) is generally thought of as the principal gateway into 20th Because the Holy Ghost over the bent Scentury (tonal) extremism, but in fact Petrushka (1911) reverberated further, wider and World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings. longer. Hardly any up-and-coming composer in any country remained untouched by it. England was no exception. Diaghilev brought Petrushka to London, first in February 1913 to II I have desired to go Where springs not fail, the Royal Opera House (with Nijinsky dancing the name-part) and again, after the war, in May To fields where flies no sharp and sided hail 1919, to the Alhambra. According to Osbert Sitwell, the first pre-war performance ‘presented And a few lilies blow. the European contemporary generation with a prophetic and dramatised version of the fate And I have asked to be reserved for it . the music, traditional yet original, full of fire and genius, complication and Where no storms come, essential simplicity, held up a mirror in which man could see, not only himself, but the angel Where the green swell is in the havens dumb, and ape equally prisoned within his skin’. And out of the swing of the sea. Vaughan Williams, Holst, Walton, Bax, Ireland, Eugene Goossens, Constant Lambert and Herbert Howells all belong to the Petrushka generation in England; they were not all III Look at the stars! look, look up at the skies! O look at all the fire-folk sitting in the air! marked to the same degree, but many did find the Franco-Russian style of orchestration (as The bright boroughs, the circle-citadels there! represented by Rimsky-Korsakov, Ravel and Stravinsky) a seductively spicy and glittery Down in dim woods the diamond delves! the elves’-eyes! alternative to the Anglo-German tradition which Elgar had been inculcating. It is probably The grey lawns cold where gold, where quickgold lies! hard for us today to appreciate the extraordinary impact on English audiences of these early Wind-beat whitebeam! airy abeles set on a flare! Diaghilev performances. They thrilled and liberated: nothing of their like had ever been Flake-doves sent floating forth at a farmyard scare! – experienced before, nor would it be again. Ah well! it is all a purchase, all is a prize. The young Arthur Bliss, perhaps, fell a more willing victim than anyone inasmuch as his Buy then! bid then!–What?–Prayer, patience, alms, vows. interest in the theatre - particularly in ballet - was passionate from the start. He would not Look, look: A May-mess, like on orchard boughs! produce his first formal ballet-score - Checkmate - for a number of years (1937), but a balletic Look! March-bloom, like on mealed-with-yellow sallows! element (i.e. a Russian-balletic element) is everywhere to be sensed before. The Mêlée These are indeed the barn; withindoors house Fantasque is a case in point. It has no scenario per se, but the implied sequence of the actions The shocks. This piece-bright paling shuts the spouse and episodes, and the characteristic types of musical gesture by which they are articulated and Christ home, Christ and his mother and all his hallows. (Look!) enlivened, all suggest a balletic point de depart, however imaginary. It was composed in memory of Claude Lovat Fraser, ‘a painter passionately devoted to the theatre. Designs for sets www.lyrita.co.uk and costumes, in beautiful colours, poured from his brush.Whenever I visited his studio I found Note © 1992 Lyrita Recorded Edition, England him at work, however many visitors were there, and round the walls were hundreds of his The original recordings of Serenade, Rout, Hymn to Apollo and The World is charged with the grandeur of imaginative sketches. His wife, Grace, was a brilliant and vital personality, overflowing with God were sponsored by The Performing Right Society as a tribute to commemorate the 80th Birthday of exciting ideas and plans for the future, and the possessor of a fine soprano voice…’ (Bliss). He the composer on 2.8.71 when a copy of the LP was presented to Sir Arthur during a Henry Wood was only 32 when he died, the last work for the theatre he designed being a production of Holst’s Promenade Concert at The Royal Albert Hall, London. Savitri which Bliss conducted. Mêlée Fantasque is both a depiction of the theatre Fraser loved Copyright Lyrita photo of Sir Arthur Bliss by DAVID FARRELL - all its brilliance and bustle - and a lament for his loss. Bliss himself conducted the première Design by KEITH HENSBY The poems of Gerald Manley Hopkins are published by Oxford University Press during the 1921 autumn season of Henry Wood’s Queen’s Hall Promenade Concerts. It was Lovat Fraser’s wife, Grace, whose dramatic singing made Rout the success it was; WARNING Copyright subsists in all Lyrita Recordings. Any unauthorised broadcasting. public and Claude himself who provided a striking cover-design (predominantly pink and pale green performance, copying, rental or re-recording thereof in any manner whatsoever will constitute an with black background and occasional streaks and dashes of white) which Faber/Curwen infringement of such copyright. In the United Kingdom licences for the use of recordings for public reproduced in their 1985 reissue of the score. Rout was the last of three ‘experimental’ works performance may be obtained from Phonographic Performance Ltd., 1 Upper James Street, London, W1F 9DE 2 7 When I begin to sing, begin to sound, for voice and chamber orchestra, the others being Madame Noy and Rhapsody. In Rout - the Sounds’ loud and shrill, term is used in the sense of popular revelry - Bliss wanted to evoke the sound of a carnival Do make each note unto the skies rebound, overheard at a distance; he gave the soprano (musically just part of the orchestra) a medley of Skies calm and still, made-up words to sing, scraps of song of the kind that might reach a listener watching from an With Daphnis’ praise. open window. And ‘carnival’, for Bliss, evidently meant Petrushka - what else? - his debt to Her eyes like shining lamps in midst of night, which, from the first bars, he makes no attempt to conceal. Why should he? The idea, the Night dark and dead, Or as the stars that give the seamen light, concept, of Rout is experimental: not the music itself, the language of which is strongly melodic Light for to lead and colourful. Their wandering ships. The Petrushka connection would scarcely have been lost on Diaghilev, at whose invitation Her lips like scarlet of the finest dye, Bliss rescored the piece for symphony orchestra (as opposed to 10 solo instruments) so that it Scarlet blood-red; could be played as an Interlude during performances of the Russian Ballet. Bliss records this Teeth white as snow which on the hills doth lie, revised version here. Hills overspread Adam Zero (1946) was the third of Bliss’ full-length ballet scores, and scenically the most By winter’s force. ambitious. It was an allegory of the cycle of man’s life: his birth, his passage through the spring, Her skin as soft as is the finest silk, summer, autumn and winter of his existence, and his death. The world in which he lives was Silk soft and fine, represented by a stage on which a ballet was being created. Adam was cast for the principal Of colour like unto the whitest milk, dancer’s role; Omnipotence was represented by the Stage Director, and Adam’s Fates by the Milk of the kine Designer,Wardrobe Mistress and Dresser.The Woman in this allegory, under the symbol of the Of Daphnis’ herd. Choreographer, was both the creator and destroyer of Adam: his first love, his wife, his As swift of foot as is the pretty roe, mistress, and finally the figure of beneficent Death.