Grace Williams (1906-1977)
Four Illustrations for the Legend of Rhiannon (1939/1940)
Castell Caernarfon (1969)
Ballads (1968)
Sea Sketches for String Orchestra (1943/1944)
BBC Philharmonic/John Andrews
rec. 2024, BBC Philharmonic Studio, Salford, UK
Reviewed as a 16-bit/44kHz download
Resonus RES10349 [73]
Grace Williams was born in the South Wales coastal town of Barry. In her valuable booklet essay, Dr Leah Broad, an authority on female composers, tells us that when Williams enrolled at what is now Cardiff University in 1923, she found the musical tutors were “restrictive” in their attitudes. In 1926 she moved to London to study at the Royal College of Music where her teachers included Vaughan Williams and Gordon Jacob. Later (1930-31) she studied in Vienna with Egon Wellesz. On her return from Vienna, Williams taught in London until 1945 when she returned to her home town where she lived for the rest of her life.
Her music has received some attention from record labels, chiefly (and unsurprisingly) Lyrita who have released two discs of her works. One includes the two works that are probably her best-known, the Fantasia on Welsh Nursery Tunes for orchestra (1940) and Sea Sketches for string orchestra (review). A second disc includes the Ballads and also the powerful Second symphony (1956) (review). Admirers of Grace Williams’ music will be delighted to learn that in March 2025 Lyrita will be advancing her cause still further by issuing the premiere recording of her magnum opus, the Missa Cambrensis (1970).
This new disc by the BBC Philharmonic and John Andrews is particularly welcome because their programme includes two works which may either be receiving their first recordings or at least be new to CD (though Resonus don’t claim either as recorded premieres, so I may be wrong about prior recordings). The first of these is Four Illustrations for the Legend of Rhiannon. This work was completely new to me and so I was grateful that Leah Broad tells us so much about the work, and its background, in the booklet. The starting point was a commission from the BBC in Wales for an orchestral suite ‘on some Welsh subject’; that strikes me as a temptingly vague brief, allowing the composer ample latitude. Grace Williams chose as her subject for this four-movement work an old legend from the Mabinogion, the earliest collection of Welsh prose stories. Leah Broad describes the work as “[n]ot quite a symphony and not quite a suite” and she relates that two early drafts of the work bore different titles, each containing the word ‘symphonic’. Then she makes a point which really grabbed my attention, suggesting that Rhiannon: “is perhaps best understood as a sequence of tone poems, similar to Jean Sibelius’s Four Legends from the Kalevala, otherwise known as the Lemminkäinen Suite”. This thought struck a particular chord with me because I had moved on to reviewing this disc immediately after finishing a review of an excellent new book on the Sibelius symphonies and tone poems of Sibelius by David Vernon. In that book, the Lemminkäinen Legends (1892) is one of the works discussed in detail. Vernon makes the point that “Sibelius himself often claimed to have written nine symphonies, including Kullervo and Lemminkäinen”. Maybe it’s not too wide of the mark to think that Williams’s Rhiannon Suite was an important staging post on her way to the composition of her First symphony (1943).
The Suite is in four movements. Leah Broad explains that the first movement concerns the fight between two suitors, Pwyll and Gwawl, for Rhiannon’s hand in marriage. Their contest is depicted in colourful, highly charged music which the BBC Philharmonic delivers incisively. Pwyll is the victor and the second movement depicts the marriage feast. Early on in this movement we hear brightly imposing fanfares alternating with more relaxed passages which might be taken for courtly dances. The main body of the movement is a hectic allegro which illustrates the celebrations. The third movement, though, stands in complete contrast. Rhiannon has born Pwyll a son, Pryderi, but the child disappears and his mother stands accused of his murder. As a penance, she is made to sit at the castle gate and recount her story. Williams illustrates this episode with music of intense, haunting sadness. A Welsh folk tune (first heard at 1:22) is the poignant melodic foundation of this highly effective movement. In the end, though, all is well. It transpires that Pryderi had been abducted by a demon but the fourth movement illustrates his happy return to his parents in music that is celebratory and attractive, showing confident use of the orchestra. I liked this suite a lot.
Castell Caernarfon was written some thirty years later, for the Investiture of Prince Charles (as he then was) as Prince of Wales at Carnarvon Castle in 1969. Leah Broad explains that the work was conceived for outdoor performance by the BBC Welsh Orchestra and musicians from the Royal Military School of Music. What John Andrews presents here is a subsequent revision of the score by the composer for concert use. The piece, which lasts for just over ten minutes, has two elements but plays continuously. Wiliams opens with a big, strong ‘Prelude’ which, as Ms Broad says, “establishes a regal air”. This gives way (at 4:04) to ‘Processional’. This section is arresting; the music is based on incisive, rhythmically propulsive music which includes a lot of prominent writing for the trumpets. Here, the music is played with great panache. The piece achieves a grandiose conclusion in which the full orchestral regalia is enriched by tubular bells, prominent brass and other percussion.
Though the Ballads have been recorded before, the music was new to me. The work was composed for the 1968 Eisteddfod, which was held in Barry. Apparently, there’s no specific programme but the piece has what Leah Broad terms an “evocative, richly orchestrated, narrative style”. I was particularly drawn to the second of the four movements which Broad describes as a “sardonic funeral march”. I think she’s right to suggest “a nod” to Mahler and Shostakovich – especially the latter, I think. There’s a notably astringent quality to the music, which becomes strident in tone as it moves to a powerful climax underpinned by pounding drums. There follows a movement marked Andante calmante which is, in Leah Broad’s apt description, “a more pensive, dreamlike movement that occasionally becomes a nightmare”; an example of the latter occurs between 2:45 and 3:07 and is most imaginative, I think. All four movements are interesting and inventive and I’m glad I’ve caught up with this work at last.
The work for which Grace Williams is surely best known is her five-movement Sea Sketches for string orchestra. Apparently, Williams had a lifelong fondness for the sea and, as previously noted, she moved back to her native Wales and, more specifically, to her costal home town of Barry in 1945. However, Sea Sketches must have relied on memory because she composed it while living and working in London during the Blitz. Clearly, her memories of the sea were deeply ingrained because this score is most atmospheric and highly suggestive of various aspects of the sea. So, for example, she convincingly depicts in sound the gusts of swirling winds in the opening ‘High Wind’. ‘Sailing Song’ which follows is pacific in nature and easefully lyrical. The subdued but very evocative music of ‘Channel Sirens’ is most atmospheric and has a pronounced air of mystery to it. ‘Breakers’ contains turbulent music, as the title suggests; this is another strongly illustrative piece. The longest movement is ‘Calm Sea in Summer’; it’s hard to imagine a more satisfying conclusion to Sea Sketches. The music is beautiful and, moreover, is expertly imagined for strings. The string section of the BBC Philharmonic plays this movement with great sensitivity but, in truth their account of all five movements is exemplary.
This programme is full of attractive and highly imaginative music which is well worth getting to know. The performances by John Andrews and the BBC Philharmonic present Grace Williams’s music in an ideal fashion and the recorded sound, masterminded by producer Adam Binks and engineer Stephen Rinker, presents both music and performances in the best possible light. As you may have inferred from the extent to which I’ve drawn on Leah Broad’s booklet essay, it is ideal as an introduction to Grace Williams and to these particular compositions. There’s quite a lot of music by this fine Welsh composer which has yet to achieve a recording. I’d like to think that John Andrews and Resonus might give us some more; a recording of the First symphony would be very welcome to hear.
Previous review: Philip Harrison (November 2024)
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