Déjà Review: this review was first published in October 2011 and the recording is still available.
Christopher Ball (1936-2022)
Cello Concerto No. 1
Works for Cello and Piano
Stjepan Hauser (cello)
Yoko Misumi (piano)
Emerald Concert Orchestra/Christopher Ball
rec. 2010, All Saints Church, Weston-super-Mare & Wyastone Concert Hall, UK
Musical Concepts MC 142 [66]
Christopher Ball is a British clarinettist, composer and conductor. He was born in Leeds and studied clarinet and piano at the Royal Manchester College of Music alongside contemporaries such as Birtwistle, Maxwell Davies, Goehr and Ogdon. His teachers at the Royal Academy of Music were Jack Brymer, Reginald Kell and Gervase de Peyer. He participated in conducting masterclasses with Monteux, Silvestri, Mackerras, Del Mar and Solti. He is reported to be interested in early music and founded the Praetorius Consort with oboist and recorder player Paul Arden-Taylor. Since the 1990s he has increasingly turned to composition. There are concertos for recorder, oboe, flute, clarinet, and violin. These works have since been commercially released. His seventh concerto (for horn) was released in November 2011. Ball writes pleasingly in a smilingly lyrical but not slack-jawed vein.
The Cello Concerto concerns itself with long breathed melody and carries the redolence of English folksong and pastoral contentment. Dark clouds may slip by but only in the distance. It’s all most vivaciously done but with no trauma or angst – only deliquescent beauty. There are some moments of grit as in the opening bars of the finale but much of this put me in mind of the most engaging aspects of Howard Blake and on occasions of John Barry. There’s also a second cello concerto dedicated to Hauser – come the day soon.
After some 38 minutes of an ambitious cello concerto Ball and Hauser offer us eight short morsels with which to wind down and relax. The Song Without Words is sentimental and unassertive. The music of Roundelay is nicely rounded rather in the piquant Capriol manner of Peter Warlock’s antique miniatures. Close of the Day looks to the sunset innocence of Dvorák. Scarborough Fair starts in the stratospherics of the cello’s range – fragile beauty indeed. These are all unassuming pieces designed to please and executed with great skill. There ‘s real abrasive life in the Star of the County Down – a winning little concert-pleaser if ever there was one. Brigg Fair is followed by the highland skirl of Bonnie Dundee/The Water is Wide. After this the sensitively alert Yoko Misumi leaves the studio with Hauser playing the winding and self-absorbed solo written for him by Ball, For Stjepan.
The lineage of this writing goes back to Howells without his harmonic complexity and Holst without his mysticism. Music designed to please then – mission accomplished and a delight. It deserves wide-ranging success. Do not let it pass you by.
Rob Barnett
Contents
Song Without Words
Roundelay
Close of the Day
Scarborough Fair
The Star of the County Down
Brigg Fair
Bonnie Dundee / The Water Is Wide
For Stjepan
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