CHAN 9548 FRONT.qxd 14/1/08 3:36 pm Page 1 Chan 9548 STANFORD CHANDOS Premier Recording Stabat Mater Te Deum • Bible Songs* in B flat Leeds Philharmonic Chorus BBC Philharmonic RICHARD HICKOX RICHARD HICKOX *Stephen Varcoe baritone *Ian Watson organ CHAN 9548 BOOK.qxd 14/1/08 3:40 pm Page 2 Charles Villiers Stanford (1852–1924) Stabat Mater, Op. 96* 43:06 1 I Prelude – 8:47 2 II Quartet and Chorus: ‘Stabat Mater dolorosa…’ 11:10 3 III Intermezzo – 3:17 4 IV Quartet and Chorus: ‘Eja Mater, fons amoris…’ 6:54 5 V Quartet and Chorus: ‘Virgo virginum praeclara…’ 12:48 Bible Songs, Op. 113† 24:57 6 1 A Song of Freedom 3:23 7 2 A Song of Trust 4:58 8 3 A Song of Hope 5:45 Mary Evans Picture Library Picture Mary Evans 9 4 A Song of Peace 3:52 10 5 A Song of Battle 2:19 11 6 A Song of Wisdom 4:22 12 Te Deum laudamus* 5:54 Maestoso e non troppo mosso TT 74:19 Ingrid Attrot soprano* Pamela Helen Stephen mezzo-soprano* Charles Villiers Stanford Nigel Robson tenor* Stephen Varcoe baritone*† Ian Watson organ† Darius Battiwalla organ* Leeds Philharmonic Chorus* BBC Philharmonic* Andrew Orton leader Richard Hickox* 3 CHAN 9548 BOOK.qxd 14/1/08 3:40 pm Page 4 his relationship with his composition familiar in many musical settings. Stanford Stanford: Stabat Mater/Bible Songs/Te Deum students at the Royal College of Music over takes an emotional and dramatic approach, three generations. on a large canvas. He started his setting While ostensibly a classicist, at Cambridge during 1905 and completed it on 15 March The second half of the nineteenth century conductor of the four festivals from 1901 to he quickly established a commanding 1906. It was his seventh commission for was the great period of municipal pride and 1910. At the same time he was the reputation in music. He became organist of Leeds and was first performed at Leeds Town competition, a sensibility which meant that conductor of the Leeds Philharmonic Society, Trinity College and was appointed conductor Hall on 10 October 1907. one city’s Town Hall or railway station had to and so enjoyed a wide influence. While of both the Cambridge Amateur Vocal Guild What did Stanford mean by his unusual be grander than another’s. A valuable Stanford the Dubliner was a man of strongly and the Cambridge University Musical subtitle of ‘Symphonic Cantata’? Is this in expression of this imperative was the great held Protestant persuasion he was also, in his Society when still an undergraduate. His fact a surrogate choral symphony? The triennial choral festivals at Birmingham, day, of wide musical sympathy (only later did orchestral music included seven symphonies opening Prelude has the character of an Cardiff, Leeds, Norwich, Sheffield, and he find himself unable to accept of which the third – The Irish – established overture and by its length and treatment elsewhere. Here, before radio or recordings, impressionism and “modern” harmonic his international reputation, and six Irish underlines Stanford’s ‘symphonic’ concept. was a rare opportunity for music lovers to developments). On Leeds’ rejection of the Rhapsodies of which the first became It could well be the first movement of a hear performances of the highest quality, of Catholic Elgar’s setting of The Dream of enormously popular. symphony. A short slow introduction leads both the classic repertoire and the latest Gerontius in 1902 he argued: He had already produced some half dozen into the Allegro e feroce of the first subject. In novelties. Almost for the last time in the It is the duty of a great choral society in a great works for chorus and orchestra, when at its turbulent drama this is surely an history of British music large audiences came town to let its public form their own Leeds in 1886 he had a great success with evocation of the tragedy of the Saviour’s regularly expressly to hear the new music, judgement… to lead and not to follow. The Revenge (subtitled ‘a Ballad of the Fleet’), Passion, while the glorious flowing second often specially commissioned, by both British Stanford the conductor also attracted warm setting Tennyson’s well-known poem. Its subject tune in F major may perhaps be and foreign composers. Most of the notices for a wide repertoire, which at Leeds in impact and immediacy gave Stanford an identified with Christ’s Mother. At the end it commissions were choral, and choral music 1907 included Glazunov’s Eighth Symphony. enormous and lasting popular success with will return transfigured celebrating the bliss was the main thrust of the repertoire. Thus Stanford had shown a brilliant musical local choral societies. Other popular choral of Paradise. (After the first performances the works by Dvoˇrák, Gounod, Max Bruch and talent from the first. An Irish Protestant, the ballads followed leading to Stanford’s two critic of The Westminster Gazette interpreted Saint-Saëns were first given, as well as son of a Dublin lawyer, Stanford, as his pupil most popular choral works, The Songs of the the two main themes as the excitement and Stanford, Parry, Elgar and a host of lesser John Ireland once remarked, was ‘Irishman Sea (Leeds 1904) and The Songs of the Fleet fury of the mob and the ‘the holy tranquillity British composers. to the marrow’. He had a peppery mercurial (Leeds 1910). of the Sufferer’!) Pre-eminent among these gatherings was temperament which particularly in later years The Stabat Mater dates from the The drama of the Prelude is carried into the Leeds Triennial Festival, of which Sir led him into unwise disputes, often souring thirteenth century and celebrates the sorrows the first movement in which the poignant Charles Villiers Stanford was appointed relations with old friends, and characterized of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and is, of course, soprano soloist sings how ‘the sorrowful 4 5 CHAN 9548 BOOK.qxd 14/1/08 3:40 pm Page 6 mother stood full of tears by the Cross’. whose treatment is gradually more chromatic The Bible Songs Op. 113 were first Canadian soprano Ingrid Attrot received her The first three chords of the Prelude are but without the dramatic contrasts of the published in 1909, and are for the unusual initial training at the University of Toronto’s heard again. Gradually the music builds to a earlier parts of the score. forces of baritone and organ. All except one Opera School before moving to London to great climax, Stanford developing his The finale sets the Virgin’s great hymn to were written for Parry’s son-in-law, the study at the National Opera Studio. In 1987 complex textures of SATB soli and SATB Our Lord and is the longest movement of celebrated Irish baritone Harry Plunket she won the Eckharde-Gramatee chorus, with multiple repetition of the the work, Stanford writing with ringing Greene, while the fourth was dedicated to Competition for Contemporary Music and words. The chorus is given a striking motif conviction. The setting is dramatic and Agnes Nicholls, the wife of another Irish has received awards from the Canada on ‘O quam tristis’ and a second climax celebratory, rising to a succession of sustained composer, Hamilton Harty. Stanford largely Council, the Canadian Aldeburgh builds. The brief coda is announced by the climaxes. The ‘Mary’ theme returns now turns for his words to the Psalms, only Foundation and the Friends of Covent clarinet and then oboe, floating this second triumphant as the mood changes and Mary looking to Isaiah for the familiar words of Garden. Operatic roles include The Countess idea over muted strings and harp, a lovely contemplates the Gates of Heaven. the prophecy of Christ’s coming, and the (Le nozze di Figaro), Donna Anna (Don touch, and the movement ends with the solo Reminiscences of the solo soprano’s opening peace he will bring, in the fourth song, and Giovanni), Gerhilde (Die Walküre), the soprano almost whispering the first notes of motif from the second movement and the to the Apocrypha for ‘I came forth from the Governess and Miss Jessel (The Turn of the her opening phrase. slow introduction to the Prelude recur, and as mouth of the Most High’ from Ecclesiasticus, Screw) and Ellen Orford (Peter Grimes). She There follows a short orchestral Intermezzo the first of these sounds for the last time, the Chapter 24, for the sixth. The words of has performed with English National Opera, developing various themes already heard, and work ends with two ‘Amens’, one for the Isaiah in ‘A Song of Peace’ are constantly at the Teatro San Luiz in Lisbon, the signalling a transition into a more soloists the second for the choir, for the underlined by reminiscences of the hymn O Batignano Festival and in the UK. contemplative phase. Do we here find the choir, which sustains the tone after the come, O come Emmanuel in the organ part. darkness and pathos of Golgotha, seen orchestra ceases. The effect of the infinite Stanford first became celebrated among a Pamela Helen Stephen was born in through the eyes of Mary? There are four throughout the closing pages is remarkable: wider audience for his church music. His Warwickshire and studied at the Royal short sections: a passionate Allegro moderato each time the work appears to be ending we liturgical settings, and particularly the Scottish Academy of Music and Drama with which combines the opening soprano music seem to reach the crest of a hill only to find Te Deum from the Morning and Evening David Kelly and Dr Carolyn Coxon.