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New Dutton CDs for May - Vaughan Williams, Braunfels, Arne and Elgar

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Author Topic: New Dutton CDs for May - Vaughan Williams, Braunfels, Arne and Elgar  (Read 3387 times)
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patmos.beje
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« on: May 03, 2019, 03:55:46 am »


In searching the internet to see if I could discover when Sullivan's The Martyr of Antioch might be recorded and released by Dutton (apparently next year), I stumbled upon John Andrew's Twitter account and discovered Arne's The Judgement of Paris has just been released.  This caused me to look at Dutton's web page and, so far as I can see, here are some new releases:

Ralph Vaughan Williams: Richard II - Incidental Music/Songs of Travel/Suite de Ballet/Fantasia on Sussex Folk Tunes

https://www.duttonvocalion.co.uk/proddetail.php?prod=CDLX7359

Walter Braunfels: Vol. 4 - Orchestersuite, Op. 48/Sinfonia Concertante/Hebridentänze, Op. 70

https://www.duttonvocalion.co.uk/proddetail.php?prod=CDLX7355

Thomas Arne - The Judgment of Paris

https://www.duttonvocalion.co.uk/proddetail.php?prod=CDLX7361

Edward Elgar: The Spanish Lady/Organ Sonata/Severn Suite/Three Civic Fanfares

https://www.duttonvocalion.co.uk/proddetail.php?prod=CDLX7363

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Dundonnell
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« Reply #1 on: May 03, 2019, 01:40:05 pm »

A couple of points:

I wonder whether Dutton were entirely aware that both CPO and Capriccio were embarking upon almost simultaneous explorations of the music of Walter Braunfels when they began their own series. In getting all of Braunfels's purely orchestral music onto disc there are now several duplications. The new Dutton cd does have the advantage of including the first recording of the last previously unrecorded piece: the Orchestral Suite, op.48 (which is why I shall buy the cd).

I am a passionate fan of the music of RVW and will be delighted to finally have the Fantasia on Sussex Folk Tunes on cd. But I have reservations about Dutton's seeming obsession with resurrecting, orchestrating, completing, revising every piece of incidental music ever written by RVW (and Elgar for that matter) rather than in recording music by other composers. Obviously Elgar and RVW will sell-and that matters a great deal! But my perception is that there is much less new music from less well-known composers from Dutton these days. Economic reality, I suppose.
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« Reply #2 on: May 26, 2019, 01:08:21 pm »

Slightly off piste here, I was at a fascinating pre-concert talk on Friday (part of the English Music Festival) where Martin Yates discussed many of his reconstructions/completions with the highly esteemed Lewis Foreman. Some very interesting background to many of the Dutton recordings, and the  last to be discussed was the Elgar Spanish Lady disc.

In the offing is a further Vaughan Williams 'premiere', his choral piece "The Future" which (as some here may already have spotted) will be played in concert on successive evenings in November in Edinburgh & Glasgow, with presumably recording sessions to follow.

By the way, this opening concert at the EMF included two notable premieres (not yet on CD) - Lord Berners "Portsmouth Point" (very different from the Walton!) and the Milford Symphony. A broadcast on BBC R3 will follow at some point.
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Dundonnell
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« Reply #3 on: May 26, 2019, 02:58:47 pm »

Thank you for this!

I will not reiterate my reservations about reconstructions/completions. I have expressed these often often already. My own preference would be for more of a balance from Dutton with a return to the days when the company also recorded composers like Arthur Butterworth and John Veale. No doubt however the Robin Milford Symphony is amongst their future plans.

Regarding the Vaughan Williams "The Future", I do see that the work-which is described as a "rediscovered choral masterpiece"-will be performed by the RSNO in Edinburgh and Glasgow in November. However I can find absolutely nothing about the work online. When was it composed and when "rediscovered"? How long is it?  There appears to be no mention of the work on the RVW Society website. I am intrigued.
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« Reply #4 on: May 27, 2019, 08:02:25 am »

Quote
Regarding the Vaughan Williams "The Future", I do see that the work-which is described as a "rediscovered choral masterpiece"-will be performed by the RSNO in Edinburgh and Glasgow in November. However I can find absolutely nothing about the work online. When was it composed and when "rediscovered"? How long is it?  There appears to be no mention of the work on the RVW Society website. I am intrigued.

Martin Yates said it came from around the same time as the Sea Symphony, and was also on a "Sea" theme. I think it is about 40 minutes - there was some talk of the notebooks which contain the extant music/sketches from VW, and I think what will be heard will be a reconstruction/orchestration of this but it will still "peter out" at the end. It sounded as though VW just put it to one side and never returned to it.
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Dundonnell
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« Reply #5 on: May 27, 2019, 02:11:54 pm »

Well, obviously I very much hope that it is "an undiscovered choral masterpiece". Vaughan Williams certainly wrote several pieces that amply justify such a description. But, I have to confess to a certain initial scepticism. If VW did indeed "put it aside" and not return to it then the question which arises is: why not? How much of the work as it will be presented later this year is actually VW and how much Martin Yates's re-imagining of what VW might have written?

The reconstructions of VW sketches and the orchestration of incidental music etc etc have produced some perfectly attractive music but hardly-in most cases- "undiscovered masterpieces".

My reservations about the efforts (hugely accomplished though these are) and the exercise as a whole remain undiminished, I am afraid.
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« Reply #6 on: May 27, 2019, 03:17:35 pm »

"The Future" is listed in Michael Kennedy's book, "A Catalogue of the Works of Ralph Vaughan Williams".  Here is what it says:

1908: The Future ('A wanderer is Man from his Birth') for solo soprano, chorus, and orchestra.  Words by Matthew Arnold (1822-88), Unpublished and incomplete.  Manuscript (vocal score) is 32 pages.  It is quite impossible to date this work accurately, but to include it in 1908 after a study of handwriting and other factors of that kind which must be taken into account seems reasonable.  The Manuscript is in the British Library.  Imperfect condensed score.

 The Future
By Matthew Arnold
A wanderer is man from his birth.
He was born in a ship
On the breast of the river of Time;
Brimming with wonder and joy
He spreads out his arms to the light,
Rivets his gaze on the banks of the stream.

As what he sees is, so have his thoughts been.
Whether he wakes,
Where the snowy mountainous pass,
Echoing the screams of the eagles,
Hems in its gorges the bed
Of the new-born clear-flowing stream;
Whether he first sees light
Where the river in gleaming rings
Sluggishly winds through the plain;
Whether in sound of the swallowing sea—
As is the world on the banks,
So is the mind of the man.

Vainly does each, as he glides,
Fable and dream
Of the lands which the river of Time
Had left ere he woke on its breast,
Or shall reach when his eyes have been closed.
Only the tract where he sails
He wots of; only the thoughts,
Raised by the objects he passes, are his.

Who can see the green earth any more
As she was by the sources of Time?
Who imagines her fields as they lay
In the sunshine, unworn by the plough?
Who thinks as they thought,
The tribes who then roam'd on her breast,
Her vigorous, primitive sons?

What girl
Now reads in her bosom as clear
As Rebekah read, when she sate
At eve by the palm-shaded well?
Who guards in her breast
As deep, as pellucid a spring
Of feeling, as tranquil, as sure?

What bard,
At the height of his vision, can deem
Of God, of the world, of the soul,
With a plainness as near,
As flashing as Moses felt
When he lay in the night by his flock
On the starlit Arabian waste?
Can rise and obey
The beck of the Spirit like him?

This tract which the river of Time
Now flows through with us, is the plain.
Gone is the calm of its earlier shore.
Border'd by cities and hoarse
With a thousand cries is its stream.
And we on its breast, our minds
Are confused as the cries which we hear,
Changing and shot as the sights which we see.

And we say that repose has fled
For ever the course of the river of Time.
That cities will crowd to its edge
In a blacker, incessanter line;
That the din will be more on its banks,
Denser the trade on its stream,
Flatter the plain where it flows,
Fiercer the sun overhead.
That never will those on its breast
See an ennobling sight,
Drink of the feeling of quiet again.

But what was before us we know not,
And we know not what shall succeed.

Haply, the river of Time—
As it grows, as the towns on its marge
Fling their wavering lights
On a wider, statelier stream—
May acquire, if not the calm
Of its early mountainous shore,
Yet a solemn peace of its own.

And the width of the waters, the hush
Of the grey expanse where he floats,
Freshening its current and spotted with foam
As it draws to the Ocean, may strike
Peace to the soul of the man on its breast—
As the pale waste widens around him,
As the banks fade dimmer away,
As the stars come out, and the night-wind
Brings up the stream
Murmurs and scents of the infinite sea.
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Dundonnell
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« Reply #7 on: May 27, 2019, 03:57:31 pm »

Thank you very much for this helpful information!
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jimfin
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« Reply #8 on: May 29, 2019, 11:24:14 pm »

With the Elgar, I'm interested  (vaguely) that there are three civic fanfares, as was only aware of one (the one Elgar himself recorded 'live'). As for the Spanish Lady, I wonder whether this will just be the suite or the longer version recorded long ago for the BBC.

Good to see Arne getting a showing too, one of the few 18th Century composers I really enjoy.
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Gauk
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« Reply #9 on: May 30, 2019, 11:28:22 am »

Whether the music is or is not a masterpiece, that poem certainly isn't.
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jimfin
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« Reply #10 on: June 27, 2019, 02:03:06 pm »

Finally got the disc and am extremely impressed by the Elgar: not the Percy Young versions at all: a new suite of material from the opera, most of it previously unheard. Those hoping for the popular Burlesco or Sarabande will be disappointed, but there's about half an hour of gorgeous 'new' Elgar. Not at all a replacement, rather a complement to the Young suite and extended reconstruction. Yates seems to imagine it as something like the symphonic suite Elgar might have made from the opera.
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« Reply #11 on: June 28, 2019, 08:54:58 pm »

You seriously tempt me to buy this cd!
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Vandermolen
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« Reply #12 on: July 17, 2019, 09:16:42 am »

I enjoyed the VW Richard II CD very much. Not great music but still very enjoyable. As a resident of Sussex it's always good to hear a new recording of the Fantasia on Sussex Folk Tunes. Any chance of Dutton releasing Robin Milford's Second Symphony? I thought that it was quite light weight until I heard the slow movement which I found very moving.
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Grandenorm
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« Reply #13 on: July 17, 2019, 11:16:40 am »

Why not drop them line with this excellent suggestion. I will certainly back you up.
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Vandermolen
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« Reply #14 on: July 18, 2019, 06:14:20 pm »

Why not drop them line with this excellent suggestion. I will certainly back you up.
Good point! I'll email them.

Right! I've just emailed them.
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