Henry Walford Davies (1869-1941)

[kyjo]

And I seem to recall that someone has even compared the slow movement to Rachmaninov! :o

All the more reason I would like to see it realized and recorded! Sorry, Colin ;D

[britishcomposer]

Please help me: I am confused.  ???
We already have TWO recordings of Bowen's 3rd in our archive. These performances took place before the score and performing materials were lost.
So, if another performance/recording is going to take place we need a person with sharp ears to create a new score after listening to these recordings.

Or do you mean Bowen's 4th of which I read somewhere that it is complete in piano score but not orchestrated? Don't know...

[Clambert]

Wrenching the discussion back to the titular subject for a while, I've been perserving with the Walford Davies symphony for some weeks now...to the extent that I think I'm finally going to (reluctantly) give up on it. I came to it with great goodwill, hoping to find the equivalent of, say, Roothams fine orchestral symphony...but after a dozen or so hearings I still find it naggingly unsatisfactory. The main problem, I fear, is with the opening movement, which still seems to me all over the place. It starts impressively, even imposingly, with a genuinely stirring and purposeful-sounding theme, but after little more than a minute the tempo has slowed to an absolute crawl and the tension has sagged dreadfully, never really to be regained. This seems to be a recurring problem; the movement repeatedly drops the ball, is discursive and meandering where it needs to be direct and purposeful, and continually squanders any kind of momentum or tension through passages of near-stasis, which unlike the equivalent passages in say Elgar, are in no way questioning or searching, but just...slack. The two middle movements are more successful in their own terms, but they are both rather slight, and are fatally similar in mood and tempo - after 25 minutes there has still been almost no fast music in the symphony - and again, they neither scale any particular heights or explore any true depths. The finale seems to be the most completely successful movement, and it does finally build up to an energetic close, but that close doesn't seem particularly earned in terms of any preceding struggle, and the movement sounds to me more like the close of a sinfonietta than a full-blown symphony. So I think the time has come to lay it aside for now (and maybe come back to it another day) while spending more time on some of the more rewarding works to be found in the Artmusic vaults...Shame. But I guess they can't all be buried treasures...

[Albion]

Recent reference to Walford Davies in another thread has renewed my interest in him and I would dearly love to see his music more widely appreciated. His cantata Everyman was the sensation of the 1904 Leeds Festival and the (adequate) recording by Dutton goes some way to explaining why.

About a decade ago I uploaded my collection of vocal scores to IMSLP and I still strongly believe that there is a great deal of life in this music, especially Lift Up Your Hearts (1906), Ode on Time (1908), Noble Numbers (1909) and Song of St Francis (1912) -

https://imslp.org/wiki/Category:Davies,_Walford

 :)

[Albion]

I still strongly believe that there is a great deal of life in this music

I have a strong affection for his second symphony (1911) which is in the British and Irish Music Archive in the 2013 EMF performance under Martin Yates - such a pity that the work didn't make it onto Dutton's recording schedule during the period when they were still vigorous in supplying us with wonderful innovative disc-fodder...

 ::)

Others may demur, but I really like it!

 :D

[Grandenorm]

I like it too, John, and (like you) I wish it had appeared on Dutton - a missed opportunity, I fear. I would very much like to ear his "Conversations" for piano and orchestra (score in RCM).

[Albion]

I like it too, John, and (like you) I wish it had appeared on Dutton - a missed opportunity, I fear. I would very much like to hear his "Conversations" for piano and orchestra (score in RCM).

Hi Gareth, great to see a fellow Davies fan! Dutton's Everyman has probably been deleted from the catalogue by now - I simply haven't had the heart to check.

 ???

Yes, the Library at the RCM holds a vast amount of H. W.-D.'s scores in safe-keeping (thankfully).

 ;)

[Grandenorm]

It is showing as "Out of stock" (which means "Deleted") on Dutton's website, but seems to be available from Amazon in both CD and MP3 download here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Henry-Walford-Davies-Jennifer-Johnston/dp/B0006840LG
Only second hand copies from 3rd party retailers - or there is one "new" which ships from Amazon US at the not too outrageous price of £19.24. But it is very sad that Dutton delete titles from their back catalogue and then doesn't make them available in any other format (i.e. a bargain label- like Hyperion's "Helios" or a download).
I think The Temple (which I first encountered in VS as an A level music student) contains some fine music - autograph full score at RCM (8225).

[Albion]

I think The Temple (which I first encountered in VS as an A level music student) contains some fine music

Gareth, your syllabus must have been incredibly wide-ranging, lol.

 ;D

Mine confined us to Palestrina, Purcell, Tchiakovsky and sundry Austro-Germans...

 ::)

No Cowen, Walford Davies, Holbrooke or Havergal Brian in sight (though even at that tender age I certainly knew that they existed, or at least that their music did).

 :o