Manchester Camerata
John Andrews conductor
RESONUS RES 10390
The disc opens with its longest work, the Concerto for Piano and Strings by Doreen Carwithen (1952). This is a big piece of 30 minutes duration. It sums up the way British composers especially have been so overlooked. Although, it was known that Carwithen composed film music it’s quite extraordinary that it’s only since her death in 2003 that her concert music has emerged. Why do we do this to our composers?
It is a three-movement work, and I particularly took to the middle movement a Lento which is quite beautiful but not sentimental. True there is a smell of a film score about the first movement and also one feels Finzi may be close at hand. Carwithen was, eventually, married to William Alwyn but she was not, I feel, influenced by his more heart on sleeve romanticism. It is in the finale that the pianist really takes flight and here Alexandra Dariescu is most convincing moving between dreamy moments and moments when power and strength are required.
William Alwyn’s Autumn Legend was a work for which he had particular fondness and caused him much unhappiness by its chilly reception in 1956. It is for cor anglais and small orchestra and has an inbuilt melancholia as the cor anglais often has which is most captivating. Although this is a beautiful performance by all concerned, there is also a rather slower, more reflective version on Chandos (9065) with Nicholas Daniel.
Ruth Gipps was often rather ridiculed in her later lifetime for her conservative views. She had been a pupil of Vaughan Williams, and this student work Jane Grey Op15 reflects her time and training in the early war years. Its English pastoral character, aided by the significant part for the viola, is delightful, but how it relates to the so-called nine-day queen I really can’t say.
Elizabeth Maconchy wrote 13 string quartets, and her Life Story for String orchestra (1985) is typical of her passionate intensity. It is in four movements and lasts about fifteen minutes, and she said is ‘more a reflection about life- my life’. It is a virtuoso work and quite a challenge for the performers who play it with supreme confidence. The work covers many moods but the ardent Andante particularly stands out as does its tough harmonic language.
The Manchester Camerata are a fine orchestra, and under John Andrews help to support and capture the music so superbly played by the three young soloists. This is an ambitious disc, and I recommend that you search it out.
Review by Gary Higginson