"English Rhapsody" = BUTTERWORTH: A Shropshire Lad: Rhapsody for Orchestra; Two English Idylls; The Banks of Green Willow; DELIUS: Irmelin: Prelude; The Walk to the Paradise Garden; Brigg Fair: An English Rhapsody; GRAINGER: Brigg Fair; TRAD.: Brigg Fair – Joseph Taylor, singer (1908, Trad.)/James Gilchrist, tenor (Grainger)/Halle Choir, dir. James Burton/Halle Orchestra/Sir Mark Elder
Halle CD Hill 7503, 62:47 [Distrib. by Allegro] ****:
Not to have entitled this album “Brigg Fair” seems an oversight, but that the disc (rec. 11-12, 17 October 2002) assembles some gorgeous, British music remains undeniable. George Butterworth (1885-1916) stands out as a WW I casualty the music world could ill afford to lose, a natural melodist and delicate orchestrator of the first rank. Inspired by the poetry of A.E. Housman, A Shropshire Lad (1911) looks ahead to the John Barry score for Out of Africa. A solo clarinet takes up the main theme over muted strings. The music reaches a climax and then evolves a series of passionate gestures that “express the home-thoughts of the exiled lad.” The natural color of the piece transcends its being a mere oracle for Delius or Vaughan Williams, and the solo violin part from leader Lyn Fletcher with harp proves most persuasive.
Butterworth composed three English Idylls in all, the Two English Idylls (1910-1911) and The Banks of Green Willow (1913). Based on folk songs Butterworth collected in Sussex, the pieces dance and cavort with sureness of foot and freedom of expression. Woodwinds find a sympathetic sound in Butterworth, especially oboe, bassoon, flute, and harp. The second idyll’s counterpoint, the violin and clarinet in canon, gives us an example of the composer’s mastery of academic forms but without pedantry. A dreamy opening in The Banks leads to a maestoso section to be followed by “Green Bushes” on solo oboe. Flute and harp take up the theme, and idyllic it is, embraced by solo violin and strings, a true paean to a lad who “died in [his] glory and will never be old.”
The Irmelin Prelude (1892) of Delius has attracted musical personalities as divergent as Thomas Beecham and George Szell, its four themes exquisitely balanced as a miniature, symphonic poem. The Walk to the Paradise Garden provides an extended intermezzo for a scene change in Delius’ opera A Village Romeo and Juliet (1907). A tragic opera of rustic love, A Village Romeo finds in this entr’acte a summary of its mood, this music set in a riverside inn for the opera’s final scene that involves his lovers’ drowning in each other’s arms, the music redolent with Tristan. Elder’s brass section achieves some mystical clarity in this superb realization. Brigg Fair (1907) is a set of variations on an English folk tune which Percy Grainger had collected in Lincolnshire in 1905 and shown to Delius. Elder has a chance to demonstrate his enlarged orchestra’s capacity for diaphanous sounds, as a hazy August morning evolves in character from bucolic to passionate, the noise of the approaching fair mixed with pastoral nostalgia. The Interlude betrays the influence of Wagner once more, his Forest Murmurs. The latter variations take their cue from Dvorak’s Op. 78, light and justly pompous, befittng the spirit of the occasion. Percy Grainger set his version of Brigg Fair (1906) for tenor and unaccompanied chorus.James Gilchrist enunciates the haunted lyrics with illumined ardor. But the show-stealer has to be the 1908 recording by 75-year-old Joseph Taylor, a farm bailiff whom Percy Grainger discovered at a music festival in Brigg, Lincolnshire, in 1905. Grainger returned with his own arrangements and a phonograph, the result of which is this 39-second song and a later invitation to Taylor to appear at the Gramophone Company for three sessions in 1908, the first recording of a folk singer for posterity.
–Gary Lemco
