Michael Tippett (1905-1998)
Piano Concerto (1953-5)
Symphony No 2 (1956-7)
Steven Osborne (piano)
London Philharmonic Orchestra/Edward Gardner
rec. 2023 (Piano Concerto) & 2024 (symphony), Royal Festival Hall, London
Reviewed as WAV files
LPO 0129 [67]
More than a quarter of a century since the death of Tippett, his works are ripe for rediscovery. I’ve always loved his music. As I was finding my feet in classical music in my early days, a mentor got me hooked on the Fantasia Concertante on a Theme of Corelli, more than once getting misty-eyed about its use in Akenfield (not my era I’m afraid), and this piece alongside the Concerto for Double String Orchestra would be how I would recommend a first encounter with this national treasure. I once saw him in the stalls circle at the Proms which must have been in the early 1990s (though I was far too nervous and star-struck to say hello).
His opus is well worth the effort if you don’t know him and this new disc from the LPO is an excellent way of discovering two great works which we cannot allow to be forgotten.
In the last twenty years we have lost three of his great interpreters in Richard Hickox, Colin Davis and Andrew Davis. The latter, in particular, I felt had a real affinity with the man and I am sorry we will never get to hear more of his Tippett on disc. Mark Elder is someone who has never really committed Tippett’s music to recording despite having ample opportunity with his Hallé label. I well remember (although as I recall the hall being less than half-full, I’m not sure how many others will) his massive piece The Mask of Time at the Bridgewater Hall just before he formally arrived as Music Director in Manchester. I believe he did the Symphony reviewed here, too, but that, alas, is now for us lost in time.
The LPO label is making sure Ed Gardner’s legacy is not lost to future listeners and I commend them for it. Steven Osborne our pianist has recorded the work for Hyperion, and Symphony No. 2 has had at least two outstanding performances on record relatively recently by Richard Hickox and Martyn Brabbins. This does not, of course, exclude the viability of the LPO disc, though, as long as Gardner and his band have something original to say.
Gardner took on the reins at the LPO in 2021 and began with The Midsummer Marriage by Michael Tippett. It was broadcast on Radio 3 at the time and subsequently released polished up by the LPO label. It won a Gramophone award and I would highly recommend it. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to have been reviewed at MWI but take my word for it, in the journey we are about to make into the magical and mysterious world of Tippett in the 1950s we could not be in better hands.
Both works on the record are infused with the spirit of Tippett’s hero, Beethoven. The Piano Concerto is clearly influenced by the Fourth Concerto yet is completely original. It is an accessible piece of Tippett and is here performed with sparkle and joy by Steven Osborne and his LPO colleagues. There are echoes of the aforementioned opera The Midsummer Marriage all through the concerto (and in the Symphony, too, for that matter) and a mood of mystical serenity can wash over the music at times providing moments that could have been written by no-one else – the true sign of a master-craftsman. The orchestra does not merely accompany and principal players shine when they get their opportunity for solo work or close dialogue with Osborne. Soloist and conductor have found a lively pace for the first movement; the cadenza is reached by 12:50. There is a lightness to the orchestra that allows us to hear all the inner parts (not least the celesta) really well and the piano does not dominate. I might highlight the principal flute (from 10:43) in dialogue with violin and piano as an example of the communion between players found in this performance.
Beethoven Fourth Piano Concerto has an Andante said to have been inspired by Orpheus’ descent into the underworld to seek and retrieve his beloved Eurydice felled by a snake bite. His prayerful song of love melts the hearts of the demons who hold his beloved and she is returned to life. Tippett obviously models his own slow movement on this plan (reference from 5:35 to the end of the movement). He gives us a rhapsody both virtuosic and noble that is a fine achievement.
The concerto ends with a fun rondo finale brimming with energy. It’s all very exciting and stands up well to its competitors on record. I enjoy Howard Shelley (1994, Bournemouth SO, Chandos) and Benjamin Frith (1995, BBC Scottish, Naxos) but there are plenty of others, not least Steven Osborne himself on Hyperion.
There is a neat symmetry in this disc. Both pieces last 33/34 minutes so why not have yourself an interval before embarking on the second half. Only a couple of years separate the works but they often feel very different.
Most collectors of the British symphonic repertory will have heard of the “disastrous” breakdown in the first performance of Tippett Symphony No 2 in 1958. To be honest this interests me little and the kind of music lover who wants to find that BBCSO Boult recording (it does exist) purely to listen to the collapse of the orchestra and the spoken apology thereafter is focussing too much on the macabre and rather missing the point. The work is genius and demands to be played. Sure Tippett was probably not the best orchestrator and not great at transcribing what was in his head to black notes on a page but in a performance as studied and executed with the skill we have here from the LPO and Gardner we have a masterpiece of the era that ranks with Vaughan Williams’ Eighth.
The first movement gets underway to pounding chords and lively string figurations from both sections of violins. A contrasting section (1:16) has winds weaving a tapestry of sound with high energy agility and interleaving of tone. We sail into calmer waters at (1:48) before the main theme is back (2:23) and passed around the whole orchestra. We soon begin our sonata-form development which is interesting and varied throughout. There is a feel of neo-classicism in this very Beethovenian opening and Stravinsky’s works in this idiom have often been recalled by commentators. Certainly, I hear a very tight structure and an uncompromising rhythmic pulse that dances in this performance. The coda build-up begins at (7:56) in winds and lower strings and leads to an exciting finish.
I find the second movement to be one of Tippett’s loveliest creation. The solo trumpet (Paul Beniston) shines in his quality of tone and his pure high notes (0:52 and 3:19) as he gets us underway. We might be back in the fantasy world of The Midsummer Marriage. A doleful cello theme taken on by the whole strings and accompanied in that characteristic eerie manner by flute, harp and piano is interrupted sharply (2:58) with trumpet fanfare on top of pizzicato strings. A new, lilting melody (from 3:30) is likened by Oliver Soden in his notes to Brabbins’ Hyperion performance of the symphony to the “Moonlight” Sea Interlude from Peter Grimes or “Sea Slumber Song” by Elgar. I can relate to that. What gentleness pervades this music and in this account we are content to linger awhile. Listen to the phrasing and blending of timbres (5:24) and those soaring voices (8:00). The themes and ideas in this movement return at the end and we drift out with a chorale in horns. Lovely.
The third movement is bubbly and led by statements in woodwind. Strings arrive (0:46) bringing strange rhythms and a challenging soundworld. The different time signatures throughout make this a tricky movement of the symphony to bring off. Frenzied solo violin passages from our leader Alice Ivy-Pemberton (2:09) take us to punctuated hammer chords for full orchestra. The movement ends as it began with winds in calmer mood.
The finale starts with a recollection of the first movement but from (1:36) we embark on some very effective variations on a strong pounding bass theme, a neat mirror of those pounding chords of the opening movement (again very much in the grand tradition of the master). A second idea high in the strings (4:10) but with important contributions from the wind choir and harp, descends, down, down and further down into the depths of the orchestra. Gardner sets a vigorous tempo and keeps everything together admirably well. Tippett said he ended the work with five “gestures of farewell”. We hear them at (6:28, 6:48, 7:12, 7:30 and 7:48) they provide a fitting culmination to a symphony worthy to be put alongside other masterpieces of the Second Elizabethan Age. Incidentally, neither here nor in the concerto do we hear applause.
Martyn Brabbins with the BBC Scottish gave us a Tippett symphony cycle in concert and on record that is highly impressive (2017 Hyperion). Over twenty years earlier, Richard Hickox did the same in Bournemouth (1994 Chandos). Many collectors will have discovered the piece with the Argo LP of Colin Davis with the LSO (1967), luckily for us re-issued in various ways and at various times by Decca and its successors.
I am still attached to that Colin Davis recording. Its Kingsway Hall sound is so well captured by the engineers of the day. The second movement is ideal – Davis gives everyone just that little bit more room than here – but the newcomer is a contender, no mistake. Funnily enough, in the concert itself Gardner and the LPO preceded it with Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No 4 and the evening was very well received in the media. Kudos to the LPO label for releasing these tapes and keeping the memory of Tippett very much alive.
Philip Harrison
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