H Ferguson: Octet; Bliss: Clarinet Quintet; Robin Holloway: Serenade in C
Wigmore Soloists
BIS BIS-2547 (CD/SACD) 74:09 mins
The Wigmore Soloists’ three previous albums have focused on mainstream repertoire, but this new release probes lesser-known territory. Belfast-born Howard Ferguson wrote just 20 works, and his music gradually fell out of favour after he stopped composing in 1958. The Wigmore Soloists’ outstanding performance of Ferguson’s 1933 Octet makes you wonder why.
Scored for the same instruments as Schubert’s, its opening movement is restless, the putative late-Romantic idiom constantly challenged by jagged, almost Mahlerian interjections. With violinist Isabelle van Keulen and clarinettist Michael Collins spearheading the players, it’s unsurprising that the performance as a whole is something of a revelation.
Collins leads Bliss’s Clarinet Quintet, his fluttering arpeggios adding delicate grace notes to the emotionally ambivalent slow movement. The clarinet by no means dominates Bliss’s writing, however, and bristling accounts of the scherzo and finale highlight the teamwork in this performance, each line tingling with vitality and sharp interpretive observations.
Robin Holloway’s Serenade in C (another octet) completes the recital, van Keulen’s skittish spiccatos typifying the self-deprecating wit of the opening Marcia movement. She swaps riffs with Collins in the hyperactive Menuetto, while Diego Incertis Sánchez’s horn inserts droll commentary.
Holloway’s urbanity and playful harmonies probably seemed hopelessly retrograde in 1979, when the Serenade was written. But quality has a way of enduring, and this wonderfully enjoyable work has quality written all over it, as does this entire recital.