Derek B. Scott (b. 1950)
Orchestral Works, Volume 3
Wilberforce: tone poem, Op 43 (1983/2022)
Salisbury Plain; Fantasy for horn and Orchestra, Op 1 (1972/2022)
Lament, Op 8 (1977 rev 2022)
Fibrillation Fantasy, Op 41 (2022)
Pavane, Op 42 (2022)
The Warning Song; tone poem, Op 44 (1985/2022)
Reminiscence: Rondo for orchestra, Op 45 (1971/2022)
Concerto Grosso in G minor, Op 40 (1972/2021)
Ingus Novicāns (horn), Līga Baltābola, Jānis Baltābols (violin), Klāvs Jankevics (cello), Gertruda Jerjomenko (harpsichord)
Liepāja Symphony Orchestra/Paul Mann
rec. 2023, ‘Great Amber’ Concert Hall, Liepāja, Latvia
Toccata Classics TOCC0700 [71]
This is my third encounter with Derek B Scott’s orchestral music. The earlier volumes 1 and 2 showed how communicative a composer he is and this third encounter reinforces this view whilst adding elements of social warning and political engagement in – largely but not exclusively – new revisions of works written decades ago.
Scott has a decided knack for melody and for colourful orchestration and he’s not tied to any pesky compositional -isms. His music is therefore healthy, even when it’s inclined to be pessimistic. Wilberforce is a tone poem arranged from an operetta of the same name composed in 1983 that celebrated the sesquicentenary of the death of the Hull-born anti-slavery campaigner. The tone poem was written in 2022 and draws on melodies from the operetta but develops them symphonically – as throughout this review, I’m leaning heavily on Scott’s booklet notes. It’s a richly contrastive tone poem with a portentous start followed by lighter material – a calypso even inveigles its way in – ending in a strong brassy and percussion buttressed final section: a resounding close of vindication and triumph.
Scott is a miniaturist when the occasion demands as well as a symphonist and concerto composer. Salisbury Plain, a fantasy for horn and orchestra, is based on folkloric material but it proves malleable, even mordant in places, to differentiate it from more static, repetitive examples of the genre. There are hints of VW’s string sonorities and in the sing-song swaying rhythm with which it ends, cleverly, the horn (the excellent Ingus Novicāns) playing a kind of reveille in the distance. Lament was originally written in 1977 and is the most forbidding of Scott’s works I’ve yet encountered. As he relates in his notes he was on a modernist kick at the time and this uneasy work makes few compromises though it’s structurally excellently conceived and makes ‘sense’.
Fibrillation Fantasy is one of the new works and owes its genesis to an attack of atrial fibrillation Scott suffered, which later led to atrial flutter. It’s no wonder that the work is a kind of orchestral study in rhythm and in the movement from agitation to calm. There are six sections in this five-minute work, each with an Italian marking, the English translations of which suggest the exceptional anxiety and fear the condition must have caused. Pavane is another new work, dedicated to the victims of the war in Ukraine, cast in a series of variations lasting just short of seven minutes. It references the Ukrainian national anthem and is notable for the use – subtly done and not overused – of the tabor. It shows Scott’s focused musical thinking as well as his control, and command, in using variation form. As with the case of Wilberforce, The Warning Song is a newly conceived tone poem based on earlier material – in this case, a dramatic cantata written in 1985. The work’s subject concerns the opposition to the proliferation of nuclear weapons and the tone poem is marked by compacted march themes – some of a notably mordant kind – and also notably elegant writing. By contrast there’s a reworking of a teenage work which is now called Reminiscence which is tuneful, youthful, fresh and engaging, and even naïve.
In 2021 Scott returned to music he’d written as a student back in 1972 and the Concerto Grosso in G minor is the result. This is another warmly textured piece that honours the principles of the concerto grosso whilst adding little personal touches such as the deft little comic turns of phrase which are especially notable, as is the way the orchestra wanders through the keys.
The sequence of pieces is performed adroitly, as ever, by the Liepāja Symphony under Paul Mann over several days in May 2023. The disc is hot off the press and offers new perspectives on Scott’s compositional directions and history.
Jonathan Woolf
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