Sir Arthur Bliss (1891-1975)
The Composer Conducts: A 50th Anniversary Tribute
London Symphony Orchestra, BBC Symphony Orchestra, BBC Northern Orchestra/Sir Arthur Bliss
rec. 1961-1969
SOMM Ariadne 5039-2 [2 CDs: 156]
This year marks the fiftieth anniversary of the death of Sir Arthur Bliss, a fact that so far seems to have gone unnoticed by most of the record labels at the time of writing (June, 2025). There have been two honourable exceptions. One is Pristine Audio which remastered two commercial recordings which Sir Arthur made for Decca in 1955: the Violin Concerto (with Campoli) and A Colour Symphony (review). The second, equally honourable exception is SOMM Recordings, and dare I say their release is even more valuable because it brings to the catalogue, all for the first time, no fewer than six of Bliss’s scores, several of them important ones, in live performances conducted by the composer himself. Four of the performances were given, at different times, at the BBC Proms. I had feared that the Bliss anniversary might not have been marked at the 2025 Proms, but such is not the case: one of Bliss’s many fanfares will open the First Night and later in the season the BBCSO’s Chief Conductor, Sakari Oramo, will lead a rare performance of The Beatitudes.
For all the importance of the other works and performances in this collection, one thing made this a must-hear set for me: the opportunity to hear Bliss conduct the work which I consider to be one of his two greatest works, Morning Heroes (the other is Meditations on a Theme by John Blow). This deeply eloquent piece was the composition in which, to some extent, Bliss exorcised the demons resulting from his own distinguished front line service in the trenches of World War I. Even more importantly, in Morning Heroes he memorialised his brother, Kennard Bliss who was killed in action in 1916. It would have been nice if this moving work had been included in a Prom during the years (2014-18) when we were marking the centenary of World War I but I was unsurprised that the BBC ignored it. Happily, the Three Choirs Festival staged a fine performance in 2015; this is the only time I’ve experienced the work in concert (review), though I know it well through the various recordings that have been issued. The present performance was given at the Proms in 1968. As with the other Proms represented in this collection, I suspect Bliss conducted only his own piece: the BBC Proms website shows that Colin Davis also conducted and the works in the first half, for which I bet he was on the podium, were Elgar’s Introduction and Allegro and Beethoven’s Fourth Piano Concerto (with Ashkenazy).
This performance is notable for a number of reasons. The most obvious is the presence on the podium of Bliss himself. He conducts very well indeed. He ensures that all the exciting episodes make their full impact and he also brings out the poetry in several key passages. Another important factor is the contribution of Donald Douglas. Never before have I been so conscious of the fact that Bliss specifically designated the spoken part as an orator, not as a narrator or speaker. This is, I think, the first live recording of Morning Heroes and those who know the work through the three studio recordings, conducted by Sir Charles Groves (review), Michael Kibblewhite (review) or Sir Andrew Davis (review) may be disconcerted, as I was momentarily, by the very ‘public’ style adopted by Douglas as compared with his peers on those recordings. However, I soon realised that Douglas was speaking in the substantial acoustic space of the Royal Albert Hall, which necessitated strong projection. Furthermore, I infer from the notes that he spoke without any form of amplification. It’s also very important to remember that when he composed the work Bliss would not have been expecting his orator to be amplified in any way; what we hear from Douglas is, I’m sure, what the composer had in mind. Douglas is absolutely excellent. It’s true that he doesn’t achieve – or attempt – the patrician sensitivity of John Westbrook on the Groves studio recording but Douglas displays a very fine feeling for the words. His diction is as clear as a bell and I admired his contribution very much indeed.
The orator is involved in the first and last of the work’s five movements. In all but the first movement the chorus has a vital role to play. Bliss clearly had a substantial group of singers at his disposal – four choirs were involved; that was probably desirable in the Royal Albert Hall. The combined chorus produces a sound that is suitably weighty, yet the large choir never sounds unwieldy and the rhythms are well articulated. I was particularly pleased by the clarity of diction, something which is no mean feat when you consider that in the extract from Walt Whitman’s ‘Drum Taps’ (from Leaves of Grass), which Bliss set as ‘The City Arming’, there are an awful lot of words. It’s an achievement of this account of ‘The City Arming’ that the tumult portrayed by Whitman and Bliss cones across vividly and also clearly. Having praised the fulness of the choir’s sound, I should also record that in the more delicate writing of the third movement, ‘Vigil’, both the ladies and, after them, the gentlemen of the chorus do very well. It sounds to me as if the BBC microphones were deliberately placed to the advantage of the chorus. This undoubtedly helped them in the matter of clarity but it does mean that when they are required to sing loudly they tend to dominate to the detriment of the orchestra. That caveat apart, this is a compelling account of Bliss’s masterpiece and the value of having a recording which is conducted by him can’t be underestimated.
It was at the suggestion of Elgar, no less, that Bliss was commissioned to compose a major work for the 1922 Three Choirs Festival at Gloucester. The result was A Colour Symphony. Bliss himself conducted the premiere in Gloucester Cathedral – the orchestra was the LSO – but to his great disappointment the work was not well received; Elgar himself was cool about it and this caused a breach between them which was not healed for several years. In 1932 Bliss revised the score and it is, of course, the revised version that he conducts in this performance. The occasion was a 1961 Promenade Concert to mark his 60th birthday; the concert was given on his actual birthday. I can’t be sure, but I wonder if this was the only work which Bliss conducted that evening; according to the BBC Proms website, he shared the conducting duties with Basil Cameron and A Colour Symphony was the last work to be played, following a Beethoven overture, and the Brahms Violin Concerto and ‘Haydn’ Variations. The Bliss was worth waiting for. Sir Arthur was reunited with the orchestra with whom, some six years before, he’d made the Decca recording referenced above. The first movement, ‘Purple’ is impressive; not only does the composer know how he wants his music to ‘go’; he achieves his aim. There’s dash and vigour in the performance of the second movement, ‘Red’, which functions as the symphony’s scherzo. The romantic lyricism of the slow movement, ‘Blue’ comes across well; Bliss and the LSO bring out the poetry in the music. The finale is given the title ‘Green’. There’s an heroic nature to the music at times but the composer’s contrapuntal skill in the movement should definitely be acknowledged. As the finale reaches its conclusion a pair of timpani joust excitingly across the rest of the orchestra – I’ve often wondered whether Bliss knew Nielsen’s Fourth symphony (1916) when he wrote A Colour Symphony. At the start of the symphony the timpani, as recorded, sounded a bit dull, which is not unexpected given that the recording is over sixty years old; however, in this finale duel both sets of drums register excitingly. This thrilling account of ‘Green’ caps a very fine account of the whole symphony which justifies the extremely enthusiastic Proms-style ovation given to composer and performance.
Five years later, Bliss’s 65th birthday was marked at the Proms, again on the very anniversary of his birth, with a concert from which this recording of the Piano Concerto stems. I may be being unfair to the organisers, but I must say the Proms tribute to the Master of the Queen’s Musik seems to have been a little half-hearted: the concerto was the sole work on the programme by Bliss; he only conducted the first half, which consisted otherwise of a Vivaldi concerto; the second half was devoted to works by Beethoven, with Sir Arthur’s place on the podium taken by Sargent. The Piano Concerto has appeared on disc several times – and in estimable recordings – yet it has never secured a place in the concert repertoire. As I listened to the present, excellent performance it crossed my mind that part of the trouble may be that concert promoters may feel that the thematic material is not, perhaps, as immediately memorable as the material found in many other concertos. It’s a formidable display piece – dare I say, a concerto in the ‘old style’ – but we’re not exactly short of pianists who would be absolutely equipped to surmount its challenges if given the opportunity in concert. The work was written, to a British Council commission, for the New York World’s Fair of 1939/40; the premiere was given by Solomon with Sir Adrian Boult conducting the New York Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra in June 1939. A recording of that premiere has been issued on CD and, despite sonic limitations, it gives a vivid impression of the occasion (review). The present performance features that great British virtuoso John Ogdon and to say it’s valuable to have a recording by him of this concerto would be an understatement. Ogdon gives a scintillating rendition of the challenging solo part. He’s commanding in the big first movement and I especially admired his astonishing playing in the big cadenza (tr 5, 13:18-16:00) where he grasps not only the opportunities for overt virtuosity but also the chances to display his lyrical gifts. The lyrical side of his playing is even more to the fore in the slow movement, which provides welcome contrast with the outer movements. The finale is a tour de force for the soloist and Ogdon seems positively to revel in the challenges that the composer sets hm. Bliss and the BBC Symphony Orchestra back him to the hilt throughout the concerto and it’s heartwarming to hear the audience’s warm reception for both work and performance. At the end we also get to hear a charming little speech of thanks by Sir Arthur, acknowledging a birthday gift with which he had been presented. The piano is very much to the foreground in this recording and, to be honest, the sound of the instrument is a bit overbearing at times. However, that doesn’t detract from the value of having this performance available on CD.
The second disc in this set allows us to hear Sir Arthur conducting another concertante work; the Concerto for Two Pianos. This work had a complicated genesis, as related in the booklet. Originally a work from the 1920s, Bliss revised it several times until it reached its final form in 1950. However, the story doesn’t quite end there because in 1968 Bliss, assisted by Clifford Phillips, arranged the work so that it could be performed by two pianists, using just three hands. This was to accommodate the duo of Cyril Smith and Phillis Sellick who had courageously rebuilt their repertoire and joint career after Smith suffered a stroke in 1956 which left him with a paralysed left arm. The new three-hand version of the Concerto received its premiere at the Proms in 1969 as part of a mixed programme of English music by six composers. Bliss shared the conducting duties with Malcolm Arnold and I don’t know who conducted which works, other than that each composer was on the rostrum for the performances of their respective concertos (the Arnold work was his Concerto for Two Pianos (three hands), otherwise known as the ‘Concerto for Phyllis and Cyril’). Bliss’s work is cast in a single movement, playing for about twelve minutes; however, it’s clearly divided into three sections – fast-slow-fast – and these are separately tracked. The first movement is mainly brilliant in nature, though it winds down nicely into the reflective Adagietto section. The concluding section once again features a goodly amount of brilliance though there’s a pensive central episode. I don’t think the concerto is top-drawer Bliss but the present performance strikes me as being excellent in all respects, though, as in the Piano Concerto, you’ll find the piano sound is very much to the fore. It must have given Siva Oke, the founder of SOMM Recordings, particular pleasure to include this recording of the Concerto for Two Pianos because I understand that she was a sometime piano pupil of Cyril Smith. Incidentally, if you want to hear this concerto in its 1950 version there’s a Naxos recording by Peter Donohoe and Martin Roscoe; Donohoe’s formidable account of the Piano Concerto is on the same disc (review).
Two shorter works complete this collection. I don’t think I’ve ever heard March, ‘The Phoenix’, “Homage to France, August 1944”. As the subtitle suggests, it was composed to salute the liberation of France; it’s one of a number of similar pieces which show Bliss’s talent for composing ceremonial musique d’occasion. The piece has a good swagger to it, as does the performance. It struck me that the main melody, which we hear several times, may contain just a hint of ‘Roll out the barrel’ – but I’m sure that’s just coincidence. There’s also a performance of Mêlée Fantasque. This piece was first composed in 1921, so it dates from what I might term Bliss’s ‘radical’ period. This performance uses the final revision of the score which Bliss made in 1965; it slightly predates the commercial recording which Bliss made in, I think, 1971 (review). Here, Bliss is conducting the BBC Northern Orchestra – forerunner of the BBC Philharmonic – and the players give an alert performance, pointing the rhythms very well.
For admirers of the music of Sir Arthur Bliss, this is an indispensable collection. Without exception, the performances are very good, confirming what a good conductor Sir Arthur was. One or two minor reservations aside, all the recordings have come up very well thanks to the expert restoration work of Lani Spahr. The set benefits enormously from excellent notes jointly authored by Stephen Lloyd and Lewis Foreman.
SOMM have done Bliss proud with the fine and important 50th anniversary tribute.
Previous review: Nick Barnard (June 2025)
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Details
A Colour Symphony F.106 (rev.1932)
London Symphony Orchestrarec.2 August 1961, Royal Albert Hall, London
Piano Concerto in B flat F.108 (1938)
John Ogdon (piano), BBC Symphony Orchestra
rec.2 August 1966, Royal Albert Hall, London
March: The Phoenix F.(1944)
BBC Symphony Orchestra
rec. 24 November 1965, Studio 1 Maida Vale, London
Morning Heroes F.32 (1930)
Donald Douglas (orator), BBC Chorus and Choral Society, Alexandra Choir, Croydon Philharmonic Society
BBC Symphony Orchestra
rec. 16 August 1968, Royal Albert Hall, London
Concerto for 2 Pianos F.110 (arr. for 3 hands 1968)
Cyril Smith & Phyllis Sellick (pianos), BBC Symphony Orchestra
rec. 16 August 1969, Royal Albert Hall, London
Mêlée Fantasque F.119 (rev.1965)
BBC Northern Orchestra
rec. 2 October 1966 Milton Hall, Deansgate Manchester
