British Music for Strings IV
Southwest German Chamber Orchestra Pforzheim / Douglas Bostock
rec. 2021, CongressCentrum, Pforzheim, Germany
cpo 555 452-2 [73]

This is the fourth volume in a series of minor British works that appear courtesy of the 14-strong Southwest German Chamber Orchestra Pforzheim directed by the ever-inquisitive Douglas Bostock. Support has been provided by some of the societies that promote the composers and I note the names of the Alan Bush Music Trust and the Pitfield Trust amongst others – and indeed individuals, such as Lewis Foreman. Without their support, discs like this would probably never be made.

These compact Suites, Themes and Variations and other pieces range in date from 1928 to 1958 and, in the main, offer lighter-hearted charm, though there are some choppier, more dissonant waters to be encountered.  Gordon Jacob’s Denbigh Suite, the earliest piece in the disc, cleaves to the warmly expressive, broadly neo-classical lightness end of the scale and the four Baroque-sounding movements offer airy, but not glib, resourcefulness. Vectis is the 1937 suite by Thomas Dunhill, and its title – which is the Roman name for the Isle of Wight – offers similar Baroque-tinged pleasures as Jacob’s. Both wouldn’t have been out of place at a Dan Godfrey concert – lively, unpretentious, rooted in the Light Music tradition. The best movement is the fourth, a Mayday Dance of great vitality.  

Imogen Holst’s straightforwardly titled Suite is a wartime work that, in terms of its expressive depth, is a cut above the Jacob and Dunhill effusions. It evokes the feel of the London Symphony in its first movement as well as her father’s Hammersmith – quite freely written with a folkloric element. She knows how to cast an intriguing, tight Fugue, and the renewed folk elements are never simplistic. The Jig finale may certainly remind the listener of her father, once again, but it’s not a bad model to follow. This is a conceptually effective work, well detailed, and attractively presented. 

At the end of the war Alan Bush composed a Homage to William Sterndale Bennett in which he utilised a passage from Bennett’s The Maid of Orleans, Op.46, a programmatic piano sonata, which he orchestrated and elaborated quite delightfully. It’s wholly unpretentious but very skilfully done in his own style – even though I suspect you’d be hard pressed to guess it was composed by Bush.

The Theme and Variation of Thomas Pitfield dates from 1951 – as you’ll have noted CPO presents the works in chronological order of composition – and demonstrates Pitfield’s accustomed lack of pretension. This is a lively work bathed in the warm embrace of VW’s Tallis Fantasia, the old-fashioned modality of the writing touchingly deployed throughout the Theme and five variations. Finally, there’s Armstrong Gibbs’ Shade and Shine, published as late as 2006. The opening movement is quite pensive, and Warlock-like, the Cradle Song that follows is sweetly done, there’s a scherzo in the shape of the Intermezzo, pizzicato-flecked and light-hearted. The finale is charming.

The chamber orchestra has been recorded, as usual, in the CongressCentrum, Pforzheim and that has allowed the sound to inflate quite attractively and, needless to say, Bostock’s direction is stylistically assured, and Foreman’s notes astutely judged. The series continues to go well though expectation levels need to be managed.

Jonathan Woolf

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Contents
Gordon Jacob (1895-1984)
Denbigh Suite (1928)
Thomas Dunhill (1877-1946)
Vectis, suite, Op.82 (1937)
Imogen Holst (1907-1984)
Suite (1942)
Alan Bush (1900-1995)
Homage to William Sterndale Bennett (1945-46)
Thomas Pitfield (1903-1999)
Theme and Variations (1951)
Cecil Armstrong Gibbs (1889-1960)
Shade and Shine (1958)