Most helpful customer reviews
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3.0 out of 5 stars
O.K. AT THE PRICE, Aug 12 2003
-- especially if you take music of this particular school more seriously than I do. The disc is almost worth getting for the liner notes, which could have been written by Miss Jean Brodie herself. I learn from them that Moeran suffered a head injury in the war 'an injury that, until his death, had the unfortunate effect of making him appear drunk after even very small quantities of alcohol'. Deeply unfortunate, that. He may have decided that he might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb, because he fell in with Peter Warlock and his boozy crew ('at Eynsham in Kent, then more rural than now'). All until his death, of course. After it the issue presumably ceased to bother anyone. Another insight is that 'the Cambridge composer Patrick Hadley...like Moeran, a railway enthusiast...claimed to hear...sounds of the Great Eastern expresses....Other commentators, however, have, equally persuasively, heard this as sea music.' They could probably have heard the passage in question as an impressive start at Brand's Hatch or as the crowds milling into Oxford Street for the start of the sales or a thousand other possibilities -- the problem is inherent in music that is vaguely representational: you can usually hear it more or less how you like. The purely musical side is surely more significant, and the symphony is (sadly to my ears) rather dependent on folk music, mainly English but also featuring in the finale The Irish Tune (is there more than one?). My heart missed a beat when I read the name Housman on the back of the record box, and unhappily this is not just name-dropping -- it seems that Moeran was 'also' inspired by Shropshire. Apparently Moeran too was among those guilty of inflicting weak-tea musical settings on that marvellous poet along with some I will not name, largely because I cannot remember a single note of their settings. The sinfonietta interests me more because of what I hear as a distinct change in the composer's idiom. I think I detect the healthy influence of Walton who, as Constant Lambert said, got away from the cowpat school of English music. That was really played-out it seems to me (it was a bit of a bore at the best of times) and perhaps Moeran thought so too. This disc might have rated 4 stars but for some iffy orchestral playing in the first movement of the symphony that would have been worth retaking. One can't live on a symphonic diet of Beethoven Brahms Mahler Sibelius Shostakovich etc all the time, and these works are agreeable examples of a minor genre. The liner notes also say of the sinfonietta that 'no deep philosophical issues are addressed'. For that relief much thanks say I. The more music stays true and exclusive to itself and the more it steers clear of all that nonsense the better I tend to like it. Music, pure music, is really a far more significant thing than most issues I can think of.
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5.0 out of 5 stars
A little more about the sinfonietta, Mar 10 2003
I have little to add to the terrific review here by Thomas F. Bertonneau. But he skimped a little bit on the Sinfonietta in his enthusiasm (well-deserved) for this new recording of Jack Moeran's G Minor Symphony. So I wanted to add a word or two about it.The Sinfonietta (1944) is essentially Moeran's Second Symphony and was written quickly in a burst of creativity, in contrast to the fourteen years it took to complete the earlier Symphony. It was commissioned by Sir Arthur Bliss, then director of music for the BBC. Its première was conducted by Sir John Barbirolli (and Moeran expressed his delight that the première was NOT handed over to Adrian Boult, for whom he had some antipathy). It is only a little slighter than the large G minor symphony, and is more lightly scored. It does share with its older brother its musing on nature and the use of folk-tinged materials. It has appeared on recordings at least four times - by Beecham and the Philharmonia (1946 - from a radio broadcast), by Boult (a 1963 BBC recording), by Norman del Mar (1986) with the Bournemouth orchestra also heard here, and by Richard Hickox and the Northern Sinfonia. Only the Hickox is easily available. The present recording need not hang its head in the company of the others. Indeed, it is quite a good recording, beautifully catching the spirit of this work; the size of the string tone, occasionally a problem with the Bournemouth group, is more than adequate, and the CD's sonics are very good, better than any others, although the del Mar is acceptable, if a bit bright. I well recall that my first exposure to the music of Moeran was an execrable recording of his cello concerto played by his wife, Peers Coetmore; and I well remember writing him off on its account. A dear friend convinced me I was wrong and I'll forever be in her debt; fortunately the concerto was later recorded beautifully by Raphael Wallfisch. Moeran's music is special. It's too bad its rarely played outside Britain. I heartily second Mr Bertonneau's endorsement of this recording. And there's the budget price in its favor as well.
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5.0 out of 5 stars
The Pathos and Beauty of E. J. Moeran, Feb 10 2003
Edward John Moeran (1894 - 1950) liked country living, and he lived simply, without ostentation, for his art. He belonged more or less to the folksong school of English composers, but spread his net wider than Vaughan Williams or Holst, collecting tunes not only from the vanishing rural preserves of England just after the First World War - in which he was wounded - but also from Ireland, to which he had a strong paternal attachment. (Moeran's father was an Irish-Anglican minister.) Like Vaughan Williams, Moeran took a cue now and then from Sibelius. He worked steadily but slowly so that the oeuvre he left at the time of his premature death (he drowned in the River Kenmare) is enough to establish his profile but cannot be described as large. Yet almost every opus is a gem, not least the beautiful Symphony in G-Minor that occupied its author for more than a decade, finally appearing in 1937. Despite arguments that it is derivative of Sibelius, Bax, or (believe it or not) Stenhammar, the G-Minor stands apart from all of these and shows many original touches. Leslie Heward and the Hallé Orchestra recorded the Symphony in 1942 (the reading is legendary) and since then three other recordings have appeared: one with Neville Dilkes and the English Sinfonia (EMI), one with Sir Adrian Boult and the London Symphony (Lyrita), and one with Vernon Handley and the Ulster Orchestra (Chandos). Dutton has reissued Heward - it is a remarkable interpretation with gorgeous restored sonics - while both Dilkes and Handley have migrated from LP to CD, but only Handley is currently available. Boult languishes (with so much else, alas) in the Lyrita vaults. A new "reading" of the G Minor will compete, then, with those of Heward and Handley. And how does Hugh Lloyd-Jones do in comparison? The primary test in any performance of Moeran's Symphony comes in the transition from the first to the second subject in the opening movement. Here an impetuous and anxious music involving the full orchestra must make way for a gentler, more sparely scored music (mostly strings, latterly with important additions from flute and horn) in folk-song accents. Both subjects are memorable, but the mood of each is distinct from that of the other. I have not seen the score, but I would guess that it indicates a slight pause (a "minim's rest," maybe) in the transition. Handley manages the juncture well; Heward, at whose recording sessions Moeran was present, strikes me as perfect. While Lloyd-Jones is not perfect, he is at least as good as Handley just at this moment in the score - a vital moment where the movement either holds together or falls apart. In his handling of the developmental section of the movement, furthermore, Lloyd-Jones strikes me as superior to Handley, and the equal of Heward: he is especially good in emphasizing the ruggedness of the development, its rhythmic quality, its occasional ferocity. The notes, by the redoubtable Lewis Foreman, let on that the rhythmically fierce passages in this movement might refer to a locomotive of the Great Eastern Railway chugging its way up the incline known as the Brentwood Bank. Moeran was apparently an enthusiastic train spotter. As Foreman says, once the listener knows this, it is hard to keep the image at bay. In the slow movement, where the adjective "Baxian" is perhaps not unjustified, Lloyd-Jones paints on a broad canvass in subtle colors: commentators often say that this movement took its inspiration from the sea - and as unsophisticated as it is to say so, Lloyd-Jones creates a mood appropriate to deserted tidelands in the late afternoon, of reflection and shadow and desolation. The Scherzo is fleet indeed, aerial where the slow movement is oceanic. In the long, and complicated Finale, with its many contrasting episodes, Lloyd-Jones again sustains a unifying logic in his interpretation. The companion piece on the program is the Sinfonietta of 1940 in three movements. This, too, is beautifully done, the equal of any of the previous (two or three) recorded readings. Naxos allows each of the variations in the middle movement a separate track, which is helpful to listeners. The recording of the Symphony is the best yet of this work, exceeding in its sonics what was achieved (more than a decade ago, after all) by the Chandos engineers for Handley. Strongly recommended.
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