- 1 - Letters to Lindbergh Four American Carols (2010) CHORAL MUSIC BY RICHARD RODNEY BENNETT y i. A Child of God [1.45] u ii. I wonder as I wander [2.31] i iii. Away in a manger [2.11] Letters to Lindbergh (1982) o iv. Rise up, shepherd, and follow [2.18] 1 i. Prelude [1.13] 2 ii. The Letter from Scott of the Antarctic [5.04] Over the Hills and Far Away (1991) 3 iii. The Letter from the Titanic [4.21] p i. Bobby Shafto [0.46] 4 iv. The Letter from Pluto [3.01] a ii. Polly Put the Kettle On [1.40] s iii. Rockabye Baby [1.30] 5 The Ballad of Sweet William (2003) [7.42] d iv. Pop Goes the Weasel [1.00] The Aviary (1966) f v. Oh Dear, What Can the Matter be? [1.27] 6 i. The Bird’s Lament [2.04] g vi. Upon Paul’s Steeple [1.02] 7 ii. The Owl [1.08] h vii. Golden Slumbers [1.52] 8 iii. The Early Nightingale [2.17] j viii. Over the Hills and Far Away [1.10] 9 iv. The Widow Bird [1.42] 0 v. The Lark [1.09] Total timings: [60.56] Dream-Songs (1986) q i. The Song of the Wanderer [2.11] w ii. The Song of the Shadows [2.37] NYCoS National Girls Choir e iii. Dream-Song [2.03] Christopher Bell Conductor r iv. The Song of the Mad Prince [2.12] Philip Moore & Andrew West Piano t A Song at Evening (2009) [2.58] www.signumrecords.com Richard Rodney Bennett scene in the Fifties’. By the end of his first year widely together for over 20 years. Other regular A Penny for a Song for Sadler’s Wells, and Victory Choral works for young voices he had written his first three string quartets, performing partners have been the soprano Jane for the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. (There which were enthusiastically reviewed by London Manning and the horn player Barry Tuckwell. was also a highly successful children’s opera, One of the most versatile musicians of his critics for their natural and convincingly All the King’s Men.) These were followed by generation, Richard Rodney Bennett has been expressive use of the 12-note method. And On his return to London, Bennett’s unusual the full-length ballet Isadora, premiered by the at the forefront of British composers for nearly Bennett was still a RAM student when he met mixture of modernist rigour, lyrical warmth and Royal Ballet in 1981. half a century. His original compositions include the film conductor John Hollingsworth, who first-rate craftsmanship soon garnered him numerous orchestral works, chamber, choral gave him his first opportunities to write film significant commissions and laid the ground By this time Bennett had become increasingly and piano works, ballets, songs, madrigals, jazz soundtracks, starting with small-scale scores for international success. He received the acclimatised to life in the USA. He was composer- pieces and many award-winning film scores and for industrial documentaries. (One of his first Arnold Bax Society Prize in 1964 and the Ralph in-residence at the Peabody Institute, Baltimore music for television, from Far from the Madding successful orchestral works, Aubade, was written Vaughan Williams Award for Composer of the in 1969-71 and regularly appeared as a soloist Crowd, Billion Dollar Brain and Murder on the in Hollingsworth’s memory.) Year in 1965. Both by generation and by his at jazz clubs in New York and elsewhere. In Orient Express to Four Weddings and a Funeral, partiality for 12-note serial techniques Bennett 1979 Bennett moved to New York, which remains Doctor Who and Titus Groan. He has appeared as At the same time he was studying informally tended to be grouped with the so-called his home. He has toured the USA as an a soloist in piano concertos, classical recitals, and with the pioneering British serial composer ‘Manchester School’ of Peter Maxwell Davies, accompanist (for example with the singer Marian as accompanist to well-known jazz and cabaret Elisabeth Lutyens, who aroused an interest in Harrison Birtwistle, Alexander Goehr, Nicholas Montgomery) and appeared there many times artists in numbers by Gershwin, Jerome Kern, more avant-garde techniques and idioms that Maw and others who came to prominence in his own works. But he has kept his British Irving Berlin and many other popular composers. led him to visit the Darmstadt summer schools. as Britain’s first significant post-war musical citizenship and is a frequent visitor to his In 1958 a French government grant led Bennett avant-garde in the late 1950s and early 1960s. native country. He was awarded the CBE in Bennett was born on 29th March 1936 into a to Paris, where he underwent two years’ intensive But Bennett’s interests and theirs at most 1977, and was knighted in 1998. musical family in Broadstairs, on the Kent tuition from Pierre Boulez and Olivier Messiaen. occasionally coincided: he was set upon a different coast, and began composing as a child. His They represented a radically different aesthetic creative path, as his highly successful jazz Since he has a gift for memorable, quintessentially mother, who had been a student of Gustav Holst from his RAM teachers, and he continued ballet of 1963, Jazz Calendar, showed: the first English melody and an instinctive lyric at St Paul’s Girls’ School, began teaching him his absorption, begun with Lutyens, of the of a string of jazz-oriented works which take in responsiveness to English poetry, Bennett piano from the age of five. In 1953 a scholarship then exciting tenets of post-Webernian serialism. music written for specific performers such as has been able to produce a distinctive, highly took him to the Royal Academy of Music in London, At the same time however he was establishing Cleo Laine and stretch at least as far as the attractive and varied and consistently imaginative where he studied with Lennox Berkeley and Howard himself as a successful jazz pianist. He also Concerto for Stan Getz of 1990. But his most body of choral work over a period of almost Ferguson. He has been described as ‘the most formed a two-piano duo with his RAM classmate significant major works of the 1960s and 1970s 50 years. Moreover his extensive knowledge spectacular rising star on the British musical and friend Susan Bradshaw, and they performed included three operas: The Mines of Sulphur and of English lyric poetry has enabled Bennett to - 4 - - 5 - choose a wide and often fascinating range of based upon an anonymous 18th-century Scottish 2009, written to mark the retirement of texts for appropriate setting. Renowned for his folk ballad, Sweet William’s Ghost, first printed Christopher Berriman as Director of Music at practicality and ability to adapt to any level or in 1740. Bennett’s vivid setting was first Northbourne Park School (Bennett has since idiom, Bennett has been able to produce many performed by the chorus at the Ethical Culture made a version of this piece for voices and works for children and young performers, as Society on 25th April 2004. small orchestra). Even more recent is the set of the works on this disc eloquently demonstrate. Four American Carols from 2010, for chorus and Though they encompass a wide range of texts The cycle of five poems about birds entitled piano or strings. In exploring these American and approaches, they are all marked by perfect The Aviary, by authors such as John Clare and texts Bennett has produced tenderly melodious, adaptation of words to music, an attractive Alfred, Lord Tennyson, is the earliest work in this rhythmically interesting and harmonically subtle melodic appeal, wit, humour, pathos and notable collection, composed in 1965. It has become one settings that refer to the traditions of both economy of means. of Bennett’s best-established lyric sequences Spiritual and Blues. through its ideally singable, melodically direct One of Bennett’s most immediately attractive idiom, which has made it (and also its companion As a foil to the vocal pieces we hear Bennett’s works in this vein is Letters to Lindbergh, cycle from the same period, Insect World) a delightful suite for piano duet, Over the Hills and composed in 1982 as a cantata for high voices favourite with amateur choirs. Far Away – a characteristically fresh and original and piano duet. The poems by Martin Hall quote take on some very well-known folk tunes and whimsically from a selection of the many letters Perhaps even better known is the short cycle nursery rhymes, served up with affection and supposed to have been received by the first solo of Dream-Songs from 1986 for unison high elegant sense of style. Atlantic aviator, Charles Lindbergh, during his voices (or solo voice) and piano. Bennett seems to non-stop solo flight from New York to Paris in have an imaginative affinity with the atmospheric © 2012 by Malcolm MacDonald 1927. His correspondents include Scott of the verses of Walter de la Mare, which he clothes Antarctic, the rusting hulk of the Titanic and the in this cycle with strikingly appropriate and Walt Disney cartoon dog, Pluto. evocative music. An altogether grimmer piece is The Ballad of The remaining choral works on the programme Sweet William which, like the Lindbergh songs, are comparatively recent creations. A Song at has a demanding accompaniment for piano four Evening, a setting of texts gathered by Walter hands. Dating from 2003, this work was composed de la Mare into a poem titled ‘Before Sleeping’, for the Young People’s Chorus Of New York, and is is a beautifully shaped occasional piece from © Drew Farrell - 6 - - 7 - TEXTS Each night we walked a milky mile, And while I watched, with tearful eye, You surely don’t think that you’ll ever see France? And Penguin taught the moon to smile.