Huw Watkins (b.1976)
Two Orchestral works
Fanfare for the Hallé (2020)
Symphony No 2 (2020-21)
Concerto for Orchestra (2024-25)
The Hallé/Sir Mark Elder
rec. 2020/2021/2025, The Bridgewater Hall, Manchester, UK.
Hallé CD HLL7569 [68]

It’s worth remembering that Sir Mark Elder and the Hallé Orchestra record, on their own label, only music which really matters to them and is personal to the orchestra. Consequently, you can expect and hear these works played with passion, commitment and precision – which must thrill the composer.

The orchestra played Huw Watkins’ First Symphony to much acclaim in 2017, and then recorded it with his Flute Concerto on NMC, but sadly I have not yet heard these works. The Second Symphony was also written for them. It was started in March 2020 and completed in January 2021, so one can describe the work as a ‘Covid’ symphony. The composer has acknowledged that it was written during those strange times and that the music may well reflect them. The booklet tells us that this was ‘recorded, socially distanced on March 24th, 2021’.

The symphony has three movements. The opening sets the mood and style – approachable but original. Mostly a sort of sonata form structure, this and the wonderful second movement evoke for this listener a wondrous, sunny, spacious landscape, largely pastoral, undisturbed by the posturings of irate humans, inhabited by bird calls and featuring an occasional stormier moment. I am sorry if I am being unusually sentimental, but the sounds carry me back to the calm that some of us were fortunate to experience during the spring and summer of 2020 when perhaps one could spend more time than ever before contemplating the skies and the clouds. Watkins admits that he also wanted to compose a work with a hopeful, uplifting conclusion and the finale offers just that. It gradually grows through three climaxes to an exultant and explosive coda. This is a rare moment when I would have been more than happy for the finale to have been longer and have an even more exuberant ending. As it stands, this is a very fine work, worth getting to know.

Before moving on to the other big work the Concerto for Orchestra its worth pausing to hear the opening track, a Fanfare for the Hallé. It lasts not much longer than it takes for you to read this. It was written for eleven of the brass players of the orchestra. There is a photo of the recording being made where the players are socially distanced. After the silence of Covid, it was the first piece to be heard in the Bridgewater Hall in November 2020.

The symphony, as I have indicated, is very enjoyable and approachable but the Concerto for Orchestra, a work of almost the same thirty-minute duration, is even more so. Here we have three movements. When it started, I had to perform a re-take as with its filigree flutes and other woodwinds it sounded similar to the opening of the symphony, but in demonstrating that this is an orchestral concerto Watkins makes sure that each section of the orchestra in this movement has its own distinctive material, and his intention was again to write a positive and joyous work. Thus, we hear buoyant rhythms, vigorous writing for the brass and lyrical writing for the strings. In the second movement we hear first a fresh, delicate, magical scoring for harp and strings like a spring morning, marked Lento. Watkins combines this delicious section with an alternating scherzo making the form ABABA. This is all very satisfying but not without its more explosive and exciting moments as a consequence. The finale is also quite like a scherzo and in the woodwind writing of a dance, even has elements of a Jig. There is also a dreamlike section for harp, glockenspiel and celeste. It is all simply joyous and reaches a sonorous climax when a sustained brass hymn-like melody is mixed with the dance elements. No wonder the applause, which is retained on the recording, was enthusiastic. This is the sort of work we need for our disturbed and distracted times.

All of this music, needless to say, is superbly handled by Mark Elder and the orchestra, and I imagine that the composer was overjoyed by the results. The recording does it all great justice.

Gary Higginson

Other review: Paul RW Jackson

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