Reginald Smith Brindle (1917-2003)
Complete Works for Solo Guitar – Volume 1
Duilio Meucci (guitar)
rec. 2022, Newmarket, Canada
Naxos 8.574476 [69]
The British composer Reginald Smith Brindle was born in Cuerden – not ‘Cuerdon’ as several sources claim – Lancashire in the North-West of England. Over many years he studied guitar, clarinet, saxophone and organ. He attended the music faculty of University College of North Wales before undertaking advanced tuition with Pizzetti and Dallapiccola.
Smith Brindle wrote in most mediums but there is a very great deal for guitar. His music for that instrument was admired by one of its most celebrated practitioners: Julian Bream. His prodigious quantity of solo guitar music did well and it is hardly astonishing that he wrote a Guitar Concerto. This had its first broadcast performance in 1983 with Carlos Bonell, the BBC Welsh Symphony Orchestra and Lionel Friend.
The remainder of the Smith Brindle catalogue extended in several directions. BBC Radio did distinguished, if not numerous, service for him. “Composer’s Portrait” and “Music in our Time” programmes during the 1960s honoured him. The first programme of that ilk (chamber and vocal) came in January 1957 with the Radio Times reminding us that he had “studied mainly in Italy [and] now belongs to the Florentine dodecaphonic group … His setting of Psalm 137, one of his last tonal works, dates from 1951”. There were broadcasts, often with the composer introducing the music: in 1966 (Melos Ensemble), 1979, and a pair of programmes in December 1987 to mark his 70th birthday. Odaline de la Martinez conducting the BBC Welsh celebrated with two striking all-Smith Brindle orchestral concerts in 1988 (Symphonic Variations; Via Crucis, for strings; Creation Epic) and 1991 (Journey Towards Infinity, Symphony No 2 Veni Creator, Worlds without End).
Other notables in his chronology included a chamber concert (1970) by the University Ensemble of Cardiff with his Piano Quintet alongside John Ogdon’s String Quartet. His one chamber opera The Death of Antigone (Sophocles) was heard in Oxford and again in a single broadcast on May 1976. A number of other fixtures were prominent. Single orchestral pieces, often in their premieres, were heard on Radio 3 with BBC orchestras in 1970, 1971 (Apocalypse; Symphonic Variations; Renaissance Suite) and 1978 (Homage to H.G. Wells).
Having set the scene, we come to this Naxos disc. It is likely to be the first of several extensively crowded volumes. The avant-garde wildness of his orchestral music is not replicated here. Any dissonances are most artfully presented. The intricately cozened fragility of the Etruscan Preludes speaks with a subtlety that I associate with the Iberians and admirers of the warmer climes – Rodrigo, Tarrega and Mediterranean Walton. The five movements of El Polifemo de oro were dedicated to Julian Bream. Again, they are delightful poems of deep shadows and dazzling afternoons.
The two movements of Memento (1975), as edited by guitar aristocrat, Angelo Gilardino, are in memory of the composer’s father. They relate to three lines of poetry by Federico Garcia Lorca, a poet to whom Smith Brindle was to return in guitar terms in two years later for his Four Lorca Poems. Those later darkling pieces incorporate percussive effects rapped out against the body of the guitar, as well as delicately trilled dynamics suggestive of waterfalls and ornate fountains. Generally, these clasp and embrace the dissonance which became a byword for this composer’s music. Like the other pieces here, the player is expected to meet the subtlest technical and poetic/atmospheric demands. The experience of listening to these often short works suggests shifting and shivering tesellae: a mosaic in usually slow motion. What a shame that Roberto Gerhard’s own scorching Lorca piece never made it to a recording.
Death again confronts the listener in Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night, a lengthy (5:55) work to words by Dylan Thomas. Despite the promptings of the words of this famous poem the emotional boundaries of the music do not extend to rage. It’s more a case of Orpheus picking his way along a path through the isolating gloom. The lengthy Variants on Two Themes of J.S. Bach is in five sections: Poco andante, Vivo, Lento, Allegretto and Coda. It inhabits darkly sequestered but luxuriant places relieved by halting scurries of virtuosity. This too is a work of the 1970s and is dedicated to Julian Bream. Volume 3 of The Guitarcosmos, comprises Three Inventions,all enigmatically named. The first of these is To John Cage is a thing of silent islands and is most gently touched in fragility.
The exceptionally attentive and respectful liner note is by Graham Wade.
Smith Brindle’s guitar works have never had such plushly enjoyable treatment. The disc offers something more than a servant’s entrance to this disregarded composer’s heritage.
Rob Barnett
Help us financially by purchasing from
Contents
Etruscan Preludes (1953)
1 No. 1. Tempo libero (Con fuoco e passione) [00:56]
2 No. 2. Molto adagio, e espressivo [1:00]
3 No. 3. Mosso, ma non troppo, espressivo [1:40]
4 No. 4. Un poco lento e sostenuto [1:12]
5 No. 5. Molto vivace [00:42]
El Polifemo de oro (1958)
6 I. Ben adagio [1:41]
7 II. Allegretto [2:12]
8 III. Largo [2:40]
9 IV. Ritmico e vivo [2:11]
10 Nocturne [3:15]
Memento
11 I. Tempo libero, quasi improvvisando [2:35]
12 II. Lento, espressivo [4:33]
13 Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night [5:55]
14 Variants on Two Themes of J.S. Bach (1975) [16:09]
Guitarcosmos, Vol. 3: Three Inventions
15 No. 1. To John Cage [3:45]
16 No. 2. Percussion Piece [3:00]
17 No. 3. Chance Flight [3:35]
Four Poems of García Lorca
18 No. 1. Lamentación de la Muerte [3:12]
19 No. 2. Danza [2:32]
20 No. 3. Tierra Seca [3:28]
21 No. 4. Clamor [3:13]
