COMPOSERS: SaxtonLutyensMcCabeWilliamson
LABELS: Signum
ALBUM TITLE: Red Leaves
WORKS: Birthday Piece; Seventh Symphony for Strings
PERFORMER: Teresa CahillBrunel EnsembleChristopher Austin
CATALOGUE NO: SIGCD 053
On paper this looks a random
assembly of disparate pieces, but
proves instead to be an absorbing,
even fascinating, collection of
some splendid contemporary, and
causelessly neglected no-longerquite-
contemporary works by British
composers (plus one Australian).
From the dramatic unisons of Robert
Saxton’s unexpectedly weighty
Birthday Piece for Richard Rodney
Bennett to the marvellously varied
writing of Malcolm Williamson’s late
Seventh Symphony for strings, with
its Macedonian dances and warmly
elegiac Andante, there are continual
surprises and satisfactions.
The continuing strength of the
lyric, broodingly pastoral post-Maw,
post-Tippett tradition with its lush
post-tonal harmony, hinted at in
these works, seems to be affirmed by
John McCabe’s title piece, inspired
by the forests of New England in
the Fall, and by the four movements
of Saxton’s quasi-symphonic cycle
Elijah’s Violin, a work puzzlingly left
unmentioned in Nicholas Williams’s
booklet notes. Counterpoised to
this is the fiercer, flintier modernist
aesthetic of Elisabeth Lutyens,
whose long-neglected Bagatelles
nevertheless disclose a marmoreal
grace within their expressionistic
stance, and whose brief, ecstatic
Rimbaud cantata, O saisons, ô châteux,
stunningly sung by Teresa Cahill, is
perhaps the highpoint of the entire
disc. Throughout, the playing of
the Brunel Ensemble is first-rate
and totally committed; the resonant
(perhaps too resonant) acoustic of All
Hallows Church, Gospel Oak, gives
this comparatively small ensemble
a vibrant orchestral weight and
presence. A valuable and distinctive
release. Calum MacDonald