Ernest John Moeran (1894-1950)
Symphony in G minor (1937)
Violin Concerto (1938)
Cello Concerto (1945)
Sir Adrian Boult, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Albert Sammons (violin), Peers Coetmore (Cello)
rec: BBC Live Broadcasts: 9 February 1949, Royal Albert Hall, London, (symphony); 28 April 1946, St Andrew’s Hall, Norwich, (Violin Concerto); 10 April 1946, People’s Palace, Mile End, London, (Cello Concerto)
SOMM Ariadne 5045 [103] (Cello Concerto available as digital download only)
In recent years, SOMM have done a tremendous job scouring the off-air archives of the BBC to assemble a series of discs celebrating the concert work of famous British conductors and composers. Aside from Beecham’s recording of his Sinfonietta, Ernest John Moeran’s music has been absent from these historical surveys. That is, until now, in the 75th anniversary year of his death, when they have released this very valuable and generous collection of three major works. It is so generous that there is only room on the CD for two of the three pieces with the third – the Cello Concerto played by Moeran’s wife and inspiration for the work Peers Coetmore – available as a download only.
The value of all three live performances is that these were given by that great champion of British music, Sir Adrian Boult, conducting the BBC Symphony Orchestra during the composer’s lifetime with, one assumes, a degree of pre-performance engagement by the composer. That these audio treasures exist at all is down to the labour of love of Lionel Hill who arranged for private audio transcriptions to be made at the point of live broadcast. Moeran aficionados are indebted to Hill not just for this act of preservation but also his precious little book; “Lonely Waters – the diary of a friendship with E J Moeran” [pub. Thames Publishing 1985]. The friendship originated in 1943 when Hill heard a broadcast performance of Lonely Waters and lasted for the remaining seven years of the composer’s life.
The disc opens with the Symphony in G minor. Stephen Lloyd mentions in his excellent liner note that Hill and Moeran attended the performance, having arranged for the broadcast to be privately recorded. It is interesting to read that at the time of the work’s composition Boult was by no means Moeran’s preferred choice of interpreter, the composer going as far as writing to the work’s dedicatee, Hamilton Harty that he was “not keen” on Boult directing the premiere, preferring either Harty or Leslie Heward. By the time of this 1949 broadcast both of those conductors were dead, but fortunately his view on Boult had changed. Post performance, he wrote to Coetmore – away on one of her many tours – “Boult rose to the occasion and gave it a fine performance, really good. I heard he spent hours on it. So he did on Wednesday when I was there. He knew the score backwards and has his own ideas and suggestions.” And indeed, listening to this performance – as with so many of SOMM’s archive releases lovingly restored by Lani Spahr – the interpretation is completely convincing. The caveat from a historical/archival perspective is that Boult would preserve a very similar interpretation in infinitely finer sound for Lyrita with the New Philharmonia recorded about 25 years later. This was the last of five Moeran works Boult recorded for the label and all can arguably still be considered definitive. Certainly, on a purely personal level, his 1975 version of the Symphony remains my favourite.
Spahr has worked his usual magic stabilising the sound and any pitch variations but there is a limit even his transformative skills. The liner does not make clear what sources he used but in ‘Lonely Waters’ [page 95] Hill mentions the 78s he had made of the broadcast so I assume that is what was used. As mentioned, there have been a series of similar off-air recordings mined for release from a similar period. Boult’s live Planets and Vaughan Williams’ Job from Boston in 1946 both benefit significantly from source material in better technical condition than this version of the Moeran Symphony. Hill and Moeran seem to have been pleased with the performance, too. Interestingly, Boult could be more impulsive live than in the studio – as evidenced by, and to the benefit of, the two Boston performances above – but the symphony is very similar in expressive and interpretative approach between live 1949 and studio 1975. For sure, there is nip and tuck between movements – the most substantial being a slower more broodingly atmospheric second movement Lento in 1949 – but the overall timings are literally a handful of seconds different over the 44-minute total span. To my ear, this movement and the closing pages of the entire work – before the slightly unsatisfactory “Sibelius 5” ending are Boult at his finest. More disappointing – or perhaps surprising should be the word – is the relatively scrappiness of the BBC SO’s playing especially in the strings. Moeran is far from easy to play, with tricky cross-rhythms and ungrateful figurations and quite often it sounds tricky here. Hill’s book deals specifically with the brief few years when he interacted with Moeran – it would have been interesting to read his thoughts on later records and interpreters about which he offers nothing. Of course, for those interested in how a ‘period’ performance of this marvellous, dynamic and often intensely beautiful symphony could sound there is the famously fine studio recording from 1942 by Leslie Howard and the Hallé, recorded by Walter Legge for EMI and sponsored by the British Council. This version has appeared in various CD incarnations over the years and shows what could be achieved technically under optimal studio conditions.
The 1946 recording of the Violin Concerto is of considerably greater significance on a documentary level and luckily this is matched by a better surviving audio transfer. The significance is the presence of the masterly Albert Sammons as soloist. Sammons was arguably the finest British violinist of the first half of the 20th Century so by that measure alone this would be of notable documentary value. Add to that, this very performance is not only – remarkably – the only live concerto recording of Sammons to have survived it was actually the last time he played a concerto in public. He would live another eleven years but the onset of Parkinson’s disease curtailed his public performing career. As it happens, Sammons was Lionel Hill’s father-in-law and it was at his prompting that he took up the work. He would play it first at the Proms in 1945 under Boult – in preparation for that he worked with Moeran, who enthusiastically wrote; “he already plays it marvellously…when the time comes for him to perform it with orchestra, we shall hear such a rendering as it never yet had.” It is worth noting that although Arthur Catterall gave the work its 1942 premiere, Moeran told Hill that he had Sammons in mind when writing it.
Listening to this 1946 live performance it is hard not to agree with Moeran. This is a stunningly successful performance with Sammons’ technique and musical temperament ideally suited to the work. Listening to his wonderfully focussed tone and easily fluent technique, it is hard to conceive a player in the twilight of his playing career. Given the extended rhapsodic nature of the two outer movements, this is not an easy concerto to bring off. In lesser hands – and I include Boult’s clear-headed accompaniment as part of the achievement here too – the music can meander off into some kind of Celtic dreamworld. Sammons finds the perfect balance between lyricism and playfulness. His use of little portamenti is of course completely in tune with the playing style of the period and wholly convincing. On disc in recent years there have been three fine modern recordings: Handley/Georgiadis/Lyrita, Handley/Mordkovitch/Chandos and Davis/Little/Chandos; the latter is the most recent, recorded some twelve years ago. Perhaps the most interesting direct comparison to Sammons is another live Boult/BBC SO performance – this time with another great British player – Alfredo Campoli from 1954. Campoli is more febrile with a faster vibrato and is notably more expansive in the outer movements. I have to say I love his performance (and sound!) very much but Sammons’ slightly tighter grasp on the structure of the outer movements makes for the most impressive all-round performance and interpretation of the work. There is a second Campoli broadcast version on Lyrita/Itter Edition with Rudolf Schwarz from 1959 that is wholly enjoyable too. It is interesting to note that Sammons’ total timing for the work makes it by some distance the fastest overall with the two outer movements in effect accounting for all of the differences, yet at no point does it feel even slightly rushed.
The source of the original recording was again Lionel Hill’s private collection and this has been released on CD before. There was a 1999 Symposium release that included it but I have not heard that version to know how well the transfer has been handled. Certainly, this new Lani Spahr restoration is remarkably successful with the solo violin caught with impressive purity and stability of sound. Of course, in part that must be down to the success of the original BBC broadcast engineering which, as preserved here, is markedly better in terms of balance as well as tonal bloom than the symphony received three years later. After the symphony this concerto is Moeran’s most substantial work – I do not count the reconstructed Symphony No.2 – and for admirers of this composer this is a performance that must be heard.
Of similar documentary value is the third work included here – the Cello Concerto performed by Moeran’s wife and inspiration for the work, Peers Coetmore. They married in July 1945 and the first performance was given in Dublin the following November. The recording here was the work’s London premiere in April 1946. Coetmore and Boult performed it at the Proms the same year but that was not broadcast or recorded by the BBC. The concerto was one of the works Boult took into the studio for Lyrita, with Coetmore again as soloist, in 1969. Coetmore was in her early sixties by the time of that later recording and for all of the documentary significance of her interpretation being preserved there is a degree of technical fallibility that impacts that performance. It is notable that every movement in 1969 is slower than the 1946 recording on this new disc. As noted above, comparing Sammons and Campoli, ‘slower’ can in turn bring different insights but there is more than a hint of ‘laboured’ in the later Coetmore version. Which makes this freshly-minted performance of a work barely six months old by its dedicatee and inspiration even more valuable.
Ian Maxwell, in his 2021 comprehensive biography, suggests a degree of transactional basis for the work’s genesis. Moeran was inspired to write (in unusually quick time for him) a work that would be a useful, hopefully popular (financially rewarding) piece that could also act as a kind of courting gift. Maxwell further suggests that Moeran was pragmatic enough to write a work that would play to Coetmore’s chamber music/lyrical strengths without exposing her relative lack of technical virtuosity. In turn, Coetmore would receive a major work to promote without the usual cost and trouble of commissioning. Geoffrey Self in his “The Music of E J Moeran” [Toccata Press 1986] makes a strong case for this being a major work worthy of being better known. He also acknowledges its debt to both the Elgar and Dvořák concerti. However, as in the symphony, Moeran had an ability to almost directly copy other composers’ musical gestures yet with the result becoming unmistakeably his own.
The audio transfer of this performance is again rather murky. Coetmore’s cello is relatively forward and present with the orchestra distanced some way back in something of an aural gloom. The performing success here is again – much like the Sammons – the fusion of the rhapsodic and the dynamic. In all his major works Moeran was able to write extended passages of real rhythmic, motoric energy which balance the beautiful lyrical writing very effectively. In the first movement Moderato at around 4:53, the music explodes into life with Boult driving the tempo forward thrillingly. In 1969, this same passage sounds positively pedestrian – a choice one imagines dictated by the solo passage work to come. The central Adagio – one of Moeran’s most impassioned and personal utterances – finds this earlier version achieving a very effective balance between ardour and reflection. The superior sound of the later Lyrita disc makes the warmth of the accompanying string writing and harmonies all the more moving and in fact the extra minute Coetmore takes in 1969 is rather touching, although there is still a sense that she cannot quite sustain an unforced tone in an appropriately effortless way. The closing Allegretto deciso, alla Marcia is again more totally convincing in the earlier performance – the 1:20 difference pointing again to a more energised approach that benefits the music. In fact, neither of the other more recent commercial recordings – Wallfisch on Chandos in 1986 or Guy Johnston on Naxos from 2012 – are as fast as Coetmore’s 1946 traversal. The key is again the balance Boult and Coetmore find between the expressive extremes of the music. In this last movement there is one of Moeran’s fairly explicit ‘homages’ to another – here the Elgar concerto where a ‘slow’ passage recollects earlier material before pressing forward to a dynamic ending. Boult and Coetmore maximise the contrast to good musical effect, although the very last bars do risk coming off the musical rails.
So these are three genuinely valuable archive recordings. The symphony is of least (relative) importance simply because other available/comparable versions offer superior sound and less fallible playing. Peers Coetmore’s account of the cello concerto is seminal if not flawless. By some distance, the most significant performance here is Albert Sammons’ violin concerto which simply underlines the quality of the work and the brilliance of the player. In all of this repertoire Boult proves himself to be an insightful and persuasive interpreter. Moeran’s output was relatively small but deeply felt and it remains not as well known as it surely deserves. All of this is presented with SOMM’s usual high quality technical and production values. The CD booklet essay is very useful and provides a link to access the download of the cello concerto files. Unusually for SOMM they do not include any other images or photographs although the digital booklet has one of Albert Sammons alone. On the booklet cover. SOMM have opted to use the same image – but colourised – of the composer that is on the cover of the Geoffrey Self book where it is in the preferable original black and white.
Nick Barnard
Other review: Jonathan Woolf (October 2025) and John Quinn (November 2025)
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