This SACD reissue of flautist Dave Valentin’s fourth album, 1981’s Pied Piper, marks the continuation of Vocalion’s trawl through the vaults of possibly the foremost jazz/MOR label of them all: Arista GRP.

Arista GRP grew out of Grusin/Rosen Productions, which had been set up in 1975 by long-time friends and colleagues Dave Grusin and Larry Rosen who had first met each other in 1960 when Grusin, then working as Andy Williams’s musical director, hired Rosen, a drummer, as part of Williams’s touring band. Their paths would soon diverge, yet Grusin and Rosen reunited in 1973 when Rosen, by now a record producer and recording engineer, hired Grusin to write the orchestrations for singer Jon Lucien’s 1973 album Rashida, which in turn quickly led to the formation of Grusin/Rosen Productions (GRP).

During 1975-77, GRP masterminded albums by violinist Noel Pointer, guitarist Earl Klugh and singer Patti Austin. This period also included Dave Grusin’s fifth solo album, One of a Kind, for the Polydor label. It bore many of the hallmarks that would characterise the next stage in GRP’s evolution: stylish fusion numbers in lush orchestrations, captured in Larry Rosen’s immaculate recordings.

Grusin and Rosen’s work came to the attention of Arista Records’ President Clive Davis, who offered to house Grusin/Rosen Productions under the Arista banner, with all the attendant financial and distribution advantages that would bring, and so in 1978 the Arista GRP label was born, as a wholly owned subsidiary of Arista.

Arista GRP’s initial signing was a young flautist named Dave Valentin. Born in the South Bronx, New York in 1952 to parents of Puerto Rican origin, Dave Valentin studied percussion at New York’s High School of Music and Art before switching to the flute. He progressed so rapidly on the instrument that soon he was supplementing his studies by taking six months of private tuition with renowned flautist Hubert Laws.

Having graduated from the High School of Music and Art, Valentin paid his dues by playing and touring in the Latin bands of pianist Ricardo Marrero and percussionist Manny Oquendo. But, in 1977, Valentin was invited to play on the demo sessions for Noel Pointer’s Grusin/Rosen-produced album Phantazia; suitably impressed, Grusin and Rosen asked Valentin to participate in the upcoming sessions for Grusin’s One of a Kind album, which in turn led to Valentin becoming the first artist signed under the new Arista GRP deal.

Like Valentin’s previous album, 1980’s Land of the Third Eye, Pied Piper featured his touring band in addition to a starry cast of New York session musicians. Numbered among the latter were studio aces such as Marcus Miller (bass guitar), Buddy Williams (drums) and Crusher Bennett (percussion), all of whom had contributed towards creating the distinctive Arista GRP house style.

There’s much to savour here, with Valentin’s by now familiar blend of lush R&B and steamy Latin jazz. The former is represented by the Phyllis St. James-penned title track and Earl Klugh’s lyrical This Time, while Valentin’s touring band is featured to superb effect in the latter material, especially in Seven Stars, a buoyant Dave Valentin composition given wings by the close-knit playing of Tito Marrero, bass guitarist Lincoln Goines and percussionists Roger Squitero and Rafael DeJesus. The standout track, however, is undoubtedly pianist Bill O’Connell’s Dragonfly, a beautiful, almost celestial piece in which a beguiling theme and equally beguiling harmonies draw from both Valentin and O’Connell some truly inspired solos.

This reissue includes a newly written essay detailing Dave Valentin’s career and the history of the Arista GRP label; and, of course, there’s an in-depth discussion of the music itself.

Immaculately recorded by Larry Rosen and suoerbly remastered by Michael J. Dutton from the original stereo master tapes, both albums are presented here for the first time in high-resolution digital stereo, and they sound better than ever before. This Hybrid SACD is fully compatible with all CD players: the SACD layer contains the high-resolution stereo programme, the CD layer the standard 44.1kHz/16-bit CD stereo programme. The SACD layer is playable on any SACD-capable device, while the CD layer provides stereo playback on any standard CD player.

Oliver Lomax

While the passing of the August Bank Holiday may signify the unofficial end of summer in the UK, here at Vocalion we aren’t quite ready to throw in the towel on our own Summer of Quad, and our September slate of titles may be our most exciting group of quadraphonic SACD releases to date. Comprising seven albums across five hybrid quad/stereo discs, the artists that make up this month’s release may all have found common inspiration in jazz, but each followed their respective muses in wildly divergent directions, resulting in albums that run the stylistic gamut from soul, to funk, to jazz-fusion, and even rock and roll.

This month’s release sees Vocalion delving for the first time in to the back catalogue of the mighty Philadelphia International Records – a label as pivotal to the sound and direction of R&B and soul in the ‘70s as Motown was in the ‘60s – for no less than three albums by one of its cornerstones, the inimitable Billy Paul. United on a single disc are Paul’s two finest studio efforts for the label – his 1972 commercial blockbuster, 360 Degrees of Billy Paul, and its 1973 follow-up, the artistically triumphant concept album War of the Gods.

One of Philadelphia’s native sons, Paul exploded in to the public consciousness in the autumn of 1972 with the release of Me and Mrs. Jones, the first single culled from 360 Degrees, but he was far from being a “new” artist. Born in 1934, Paul was nearly 38 by the time the single was released, and had more than two decades of experience as a jazz singer, having made his professional debut by the time he was 16. The album also wasn’t his first outing with PIR principals Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff either – after first crossing paths with the duo in 1968 he released Feelin’ Good at the Cadillac Club (a studio record that replicated his live set) on their Gamble label, followed by Ebony Woman on their Neptune label, before his 1971 album, Goin’ East became PIR’s inaugural release. With each album, Gamble and Huff brought Paul further in to the R&B mainstream (while still being sensitive to his jazz roots) and with the release of 360 Degrees in 1972, everything fell in to place.

Recorded at Philadelphia’s legendary Sigma Sound Studios with PIR’s vaunted MFSB house band, the album overflows with the tight playing and smooth-as-silk string and horn arrangements that would become hallmarks for the label. Paul’s unique vocal style (along with the charisma and gravitas born from his life experience) also helps unite a diverse collection of songs, from the previously mentioned Me and Mrs. Jones (a slow-burning ode to marital infidelity that would go on to sell two million copies and win Paul a Grammy) to Gamble & Huff social consciousness groovers like I’m Just a Prisoner, Am I Black Enough For You and Brown Baby to soul-injected covers of Carole King’s It’s Too Late and Elton John’s Your Song.

Determined not to have Paul repeat the same formula employed on 360 Degrees to diminishing returns, Gamble and Huff went in an entirely different direction when they crafted his follow-up. As much an artistic statement as a musical one, 1973’s War of the Gods found Paul cast almost as a prophet, ruminating on a variety of existential and social topics including war and peace, life and death, and heaven and hell. In many ways the album was PIR’s answer to concept albums like Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On and Norman Whitfield’s extended-length forays with the Temptations like Papa Was a Rolling Stone, especially on the mini-suite comprised of I See the Light and War of the Gods, which originally formed the entirety of the album’s first side. Paul doesn’t forget his pop roots on the flipside however, with the one-two punch of the wistful I Was Married and the jubilant Thanks for Saving My Life, the latter giving Paul another top-10 R&B hit. The best, however, is truly saved for last, with the album-closing Peace Holy Peace, a stunning, gospel-infused track that finds Paul delivering a prayer for peace backed by the 22-voice Dandridge Choral Ensemble.

1973 would prove to be a banner year for PIR, with many of its acts (including Paul, The O’Jays, and Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes) enjoying chart-topping success. In December of that year, the label mounted a month-long package tour of Europe that featured Paul, along with label-mates The Intruders and The O’Jays, backed by the MFSB band. Gigs at the Hammersmith Odeon in London and Central Hall in Chatham were recorded, and highlights from those two jubilant shows comprise 1974’s Live in Europe. Featuring repertoire drawn exclusively from 360 Degrees and War of the Gods, the recordings find Paul stretching out on extended versions of some of his most well-known tracks including Me and Mrs. Jones, Brown Baby and Your Song in front of enthusiastic crowds, and displaying all of the charisma and showmanship that helped propel him to the top of the charts that year.

September also sees the continuation of our exploration of the quadraphonic output of Creed Taylor’s CTI Records. In the spotlight this month is George Benson’s 1973 release, Body Talk, an album that finds him deep in the midst of his reputation-making run for the label. Unquestionably one of the finest jazz guitarists to ever pick up the instrument, Benson was a child prodigy, and by his late teens his combination of taste and technique (both as part of Brother Jack McDuff’s quartet and on early solo outings) had begun to mark him as heir apparent to the great Wes Montgomery. That status was only furthered when Montgomery died of a heart attack in 1968 and his label, A&M, signed Benson and paired him with Taylor, who’d helmed Montgomery’s final (and most commercially successful) recordings. Under Taylor’s supervision, Benson would quickly establish himself as a star in his own right, beginning with 1969’s The Shape of Things to Come. Benson would continue to record at a prolific pace with Taylor, also issuing Tell It Like It Is in 1969 and The Other Side of Abbey Road in 1970, but it was Taylor’s decision to take his CTI label (which had been an A&M subsidiary up until that point) fully independent at the end of that year that would usher in Benson’s greatest successes.

In the wake of the split with A&M, Taylor began to record Benson in smaller ensemble settings that put the spotlight more squarely on his endlessly-inventive playing, and the move paid dividends immediately – 1971’s Beyond the Blue Horizon reached No. 15 in the jazz charts, and 1972’s White Rabbit did even better, reaching No. 7. The success of White Rabbit (with its attendant promotional and touring commitments) was such that it was nearly 18 months before Benson and Taylor could reconvene to record what would become Body Talk. Taylor, who seemed to have an uncanny grasp of which way the wind was blowing commercially, set the tone for the album by bringing in saxman and arranger Pee Wee Ellis, who’d been a pivotal member of James Brown’s late-‘60s lineup, arranging and co-writing hits for the Godfather of Soul that included Cold Sweat and Mother Popcorn. Also joining the sessions were CTI stalwarts Ron Carter and Jack DeJohnette, and balancing out the album’s R&B inclinations, hard-bop electric pianist Harold Mabern.

Body Talk also marked the first full-album contribution from Benson’s guitar protégé, 19-year old Earl Klugh, who’d appeared briefly on White Rabbit. Genre mixing always carries the potential for catastrophic failure, but Body Talk more than answers the bell, thanks both to the pedigree of the assembled talent and Benson’s wilfulness as a leader. From the album opener, Dance (which sparkles with the same rhythmic intensity as Ellis’s work with James Brown) to the Latin-influenced title track, to the moody, slow-burning epic Top of the World, Body Talk proves itself to be a well-forged alloy of the rhythmic inventiveness of R&B and funk and the improvisational excitement of jazz.

This month also sees two of the quad albums we’ve received the most requests to reissue coming together, with the release of jazz-rock brass powerhouse Chase’s 1971 self-titled debut album, Chase, and 1974 swansong, Pure Music, on a single disc. In the wake of the platinum-selling successes in 1969 and 1970 of bands that combined rock and roll instrumentation with jazz-influenced horn sections like Blood, Sweat & Tears and Chicago, major labels were eager to find the next “big thing” in the same mould. Signing with Epic in late 1970, Chase certainly benefitted from horn-rock gold rush, they weren’t simply a Johnny-come-lately cash-in – they were a breed apart, both in terms of pedigree and also instrumentation, featuring a one of a kind, four-trumpet horn section.

While many jazz-rock bands of the early 70s were really rock and rollers who’d had a little experience in high school jazz band, Chase was the real deal – the brainchild of leader and driving force Bill Chase, a Berklee-educated trumpet virtuoso with a remarkable four-octave range. Beginning in 1958, Chase began to make a name for himself in the big bands of Maynard Ferguson, Stan Kenton, and finally in Woody Herman’s New Herd, where he spent more than half a decade as the outfit’s first chair trumpeter, also writing and arranging for the band. Tiring of the road, in 1966, Chase left Herman’s band and settled in Las Vegas, where he worked the “making the bread circuit” (as Herman called it) playing in various musicals and backing entertainers who played in the city. But by 1968 he’d grown creatively restless, and at the suggestion of his old boss, Herman (one of the first of the jazz “old guard” to embrace rock music), Chase began to work on original music, and in the summer of 1970 the band bearing his name played a three-week residency at Las Vegas’s Pussycat a’ Go Go club that led to a contract with Epic records.

For their 1971 debut album, the label paired the group with producers Bob Destocki and Frank Rand, the same duo who’d helmed the brass-driven #2 smash hit Vehicle for The Ides of March the previous year. The move proved to be a wise one when the album’s first single, Get It On, powered by lead vocalist Terry Richards’ gritty blue-eyed soul vocals and an instant classic horn riff, leapt up the charts and pushed the LP in to the US Top 40. The hit single is far from being the album’s only attraction however, with songs like the instrumental whirlwind Open Up Wide, a gospel-infused cover of Handbags and Gladrags and the jazzy, 14-minute album closing Invitation to a River all showcasing the group’s unique cascading four-trumpet sound, not to mention the instrumental virtuosity of its individual members. Unfortunately for Bill Chase, the success of the band’s first album was followed by the dreaded sophomore jinx when their second album, 1972’s complex and overly serious Ennea, fell flat with critics and fans who were expecting more of the free-wheeling excitement of Get It On. The album’s failure would fracture the original band’s lineup, and Chase’s personal problems were only compounded when he was forced to disband the group and declare personal bankruptcy.

However, he regrouped quickly, and by the end of 1972 he’d put together a new band and had begun working on new material. Over the course of the next 18 months the reconstituted Chase toured relentlessly – during this fallow period Chase experimented with a variety of band configurations, including trying out a sax/flute player, percussionist, and vibraphonist, but by the end of 1973 he’d returned to his signature four-trumpet sound. When the group’s third album, Pure Music, was released in March 1974, it revealed not only a new lineup but also a new sound. If Chase had been something of a jazz-fusion band ahead of its time in its earliest years, with the fusion movement in full bloom by 1974 it had found its moment on Pure Music, fully embracing the genre’s focus on funky rhythms and instrumental improvisation.

With only two of the album’s tracks featuring vocals (courtesy of the Ides of March’s Jim Peterik) the remainder of the album finds Chase and his band stretching out across four epic instrumentals, including the jazzy Weird Song #1, the hauntingly atmospheric Twinkles, and Bochawa, a song with a horn riff that builds in power like a tidal wave. Tragically, however, Chase’s comeback would come to an abrupt end less than six months after the release of Pure Music – en route to a gig, the light aircraft he was travelling in crashed, killing him along with three other members of his band. In the years since, his death has sometimes been reduced to the status of “rock and roll factoid”, but one listen to this pair of superb albums reveals just how vital and alive his music remains, even four decades after the fact.

And finally, rounding things out this month is another hidden gem from the extensive back catalogue of Vocalion fusion favourites Weather Report, 1975’s Tale Spinnin’. It’s often been said that with the warp-speed pace of the group’s musical evolution, and the nearly 30 different musicians that played alongside band principals Wayne Shorter (sax) and Joe Zawinul (keyboards) during the course of its 15 year lifespan, every album was a transitional album. For any fan of the group, it’s an axiom that rings very true, but perhaps never more so than on Tale Spinnin’. Following two critically-acclaimed avant-garde albums in 1971 and 1972 that were primarily acoustic, the group made a concerted turn toward electrified jazz-funk with 1973’s Sweetnighter. The move toward groove was a canny one commercially – Sweetnighter landed the group near the top of the jazz charts in addition to giving them their first appearances on both the pop and R&B charts, but it was at a cost: co-founding bassist Miroslav Vitouš would exit the group after a heated debate with Joe Zawinul over the band’s future direction following the album’s release.

If dabbling with funkier rhythms on Sweetnighter had been something of an experiment, with the recruitment of electric bassist Alphonso Johnson for 1974’s Mysterious Traveller, the band embraced their new identity completely. The album represented a quantum leap in the group’s sound in almost every regard, from its muscular grooves, to Zawinul’s extensive use of cutting edge synthesizer techonology, to an increased reliance on overdubbing, creating songs that were equal parts improvisation and orchestration. Reaching No. 2 in the jazz charts, Mysterious Traveller would be the breakthrough album in Weather Report’s crossover ascendancy when it made it all the way to No. 31 in the R&B Albums chart and No. 46 in the pop charts – no small feat for a record of challenging instrumental jazz. As successful as the album was, the group’s enhanced focus on rhythm took a toll on its percussionists, and when the Mysterious Traveller tour finished, drummers Ishmael Wilburn and Darryl Brown (who’d been brought in to buttress Brown mid-tour) along with long-time percussionist Dom Um Romão all departed the band, leaving it entirely drummerless at the close of 1974.

With an album due to Columbia, Johnson, Shorter and Zawinul regrouped in Los Angeles in early 1975 with legendary engineer/producer Bruce Botnick, known for his long association with both The Doors and Arthur Lee’s Love. Joining the trio were Brazilian percussionist Alyrio Lima and Philadelphian drummer Chuck Bazemore, but early rehearsals quickly revealed that Bazemore’s style didn’t mesh with the band’s sound, and he parted ways with the group. What could have been a difficult situation was resolved in a twist of serendipity – leaving the studio one day after Bazemore’s departure, the group ran in to Santana drummer Leon “Ndugu” Chancler, who had been playing on a session for Jean Luc Ponty in a nearby studio. Zawinul, who was a fan of Chancler’s work with Santana, asked if he’d come in and do a session with the group, and shortly thereafter Chancler joined Weather Report for a week’s worth of recording that would yield Tale Spinnin’.

Sandwiched as it is, between Mysterious Traveller and 1976’s Black Market (which introduced the world to the talents of fretless bass virtuoso Jaco Pastorius), Tale Spinnin’ is often overshadowed by those twin behemoths – the sort of “misfortune” that only a band with a back catalogue as rich as Weather Report could suffer. But Tale Spinnin’ is much more than just an expressway from Mysterious Traveller to Black Market, it’s an album that stands on its own merits. Songs like The Man in the Green Shirt (a prototypical WR combination of an urbane melody with rhythmic ferocity) and the North Africa-tinged Badia offer a sunny, cosmopolitan antidote to Mysterious Traveller’s dark, foreboding aura, while jams like the funky Between the Thighs and the muscular Freezing Fire mark the end of the group’s extended-length forays before the more concise song forms that begin to take hold on Black Market. Sitting at the crossroads between Weather Report’s two eras, Tale Spinnin’s synthesis of long-form musical exploration and studio wizardry in many ways represents the best of both worlds for the open-minded listener.

All of the albums that make up this release have been meticulously remastered by Michael J. Dutton from the original discrete quadraphonic and stereo master tapes, and they all feature extensive newly-penned liner notes (with the exception of Billy Paul’s Live in Europe, which reproduces the album’s original sleeve notes) that offer history, context and analysis on these superb albums.
Vocalion Hybrid SACDs play in three ways – high-resolution multichannel (quadraphonic), high-resolution stereo and standard 44.1kHz/16bit CD stereo. The SACD layer (which contains both multichannel and stereo programmes) is playable on any SACD-capable device, while the CD layer provides stereo playback on any standard CD player.

David Zimmerman
Toronto, 2018

Recording Havergal Brian’s Cleopatra
by
Lewis Foreman

In the happy days when the late John May’s antiquarian music catalogues were an anticipated regular event, I found myself with endless opportunities to acquire books and scores elusive in even the best music library. Over the years I must have spent hundreds of pounds. One of my greatest prizes from May & May’s catalogues was a mint copy of the vocal score of Havergal Brian’s prize-winning choral work The Vision of Cleopatra, composed in 1907.

Subtitled Tragic Poem for Orchestra, Soli and Chorus (in that order), Cleopatra had been issued by Bosworth & Co. in 1909, to allow its first (indeed only) performance to take place. It was Brian’s entry for the Norwich Triennial Music Festival’s Cantata Competition in 1908. The typographical treatment of the cover and title page would have been very much up-to-the-minute at the time, reflecting the latest Continental views of print design, all Vienna Succession and sans-serif, and underlining how modern it was in its musical treatment. Brian did not win and so his piece was not heard at Norwich, but he did come second, and when his setting was performed it was at the Southport Triennial Music Festival on 4 October 1909. Consequently, he inscribed it to that festival.

At the first performance the orchestra was the Hallé, the conductor [Sir] Landon Ronald. Later, during the Second World War, one of the few significant British publisher’s warehouses to be destroyed during the London Blitz was Bosworth’s, and with it was lost Brian’s unique full score, orchestral parts and probably most of the vocal scores as well. (It is piquant to remember that when Breitkopf & Härtel’s Leipzig warehouse suffered a similar fate in 1944, it was Brian’s mentor and friend Granville Bantock whose music was lost.) It is very difficult music to appreciate at the piano, but the only time we had heard any of Cleopatra was on 8 May 1982 at that year’s Havergal Brian Society AGM when pianist Peter Jacobs played the opening Slave Dance.

I have long thought it possible to rescue Cleopatra if the right person were to undertake the enormous task of re-orchestrating it. Its reappearance, now orchestrated in vivid period style, is thanks to the efforts of composer John Pickard. His realisation is an utterly convincing revelation, and was first heard when he conducted the Bristol University Choral Society and Symphony Orchestra at the Victoria Rooms, Bristol on 12 March 2016.

Thanks to the support of the Havergal Brian Society, Dutton Epoch has now taken its Havergal Brian series with Martyn Brabbins back to an earlier time in Brian’s career, with Cleopatra and a supporting programme. A magnificent lineup of young soloists features Claudia Huckle (contralto) as Cleopatra; Peter Auty (tenor) as Antony; the Irish lyric-coloratura soprano Claudia Boyle as Iris; and the mezzo-soprano Angharad Lyddon (who sang Cleopatra at the Bristol University premiere) as Charmion. Martyn Brabbins directed the English National Opera Orchestra and ENO Opera Chorus at Dutton Epoch’s sessions at St. Jude-on-the-Hill, Hampstead Garden Suburb on 5-7 July 2017.

The programme was completed by Brian’s Two Herrick Songs for female chorus and orchestra (1912) – Requiem for the Rose and The Hag (his earliest surviving choral and orchestral pieces) – in a world premiere professional recording. The Concert Overture: For Valour and the Fantastic Variations on an Old Rhyme completed the proceedings. Excluding the Dutton historical Brian programme, this is the fifth disc (the sixth if you include the Cello Concerto, also recorded at St. Jude’s) in Dutton Epoch’s Brian series.

St. Jude’s, Edwin Lutyen’s iconic focus of the Garden Suburb, with its 178-foot spire, is a wonderful recording location for a large-scale work such as Cleopatra, especially in summer. With its hint of the Byzantine, and the murals by Walter Starmer, it seemed a suitable context for Brian’s music, while the entrance directly into the lofty tower transept and the informality of an improvised studio all contributed to the magic of the occasion. The soloists and the choir were under the tower, immediately behind Martyn Brabbins, the orchestra spread out before him in the nave.

The recording took place on three splendidly warm summer days at the beginning of July 2017. At the lunch break on the middle day I was delighted when Martyn Brabbins, John Pickard and the cast agreed to a group photograph outside in the sunshine, which I hope gives a good idea of the spirit and vigour they were bringing to the project.

L-R: Martyn Brabbins, Claudia Boyle, John Pickard, Angharad Lyddon, Peter Auty, Claudia Huckle

The first day was rehearsal. The big day for the soloists in Cleopatra was the second – in fact the first day of recording – but Antony and Cleopatra were also together in the passages not requiring the chorus for much of the third morning. At the very end of the session Claudia Huckle (Cleopatra) glanced up and the sun suddenly caught her face in a quite dramatic way. She was putting her music away, but I dashed over to her and asked if she would hold it while I tried to catch her with my camera, I hope successfully.

These were notably happy sessions, and the soloists and the orchestra impressed all present with their command of such unfamiliar repertoire. The score was sectioned for recording and so there was no complete performance in sequence, but the sections were substantial ones allowing everyone to get a true sense of the music and its underlying drama.

The cast impressed us all; a superbly vibrant group of young professionals all just making their mark in the wider operatic world, and their contributions were fresh and vivid. For example, the Irish soprano Claudia Boyle (singing the role of Iris) was notable for her delivery and vocal colouration before the microphone, remarkably animated in such passages as: “Her proud eyes glanced, Her neck seemed conscious of its loveliness, her lips, curv’d into beauty, parted with the expectancy of lover’s quick pain . . .”

The ENO Chorus were not as large as the student choir at Bristol, but you would not have known it from the sound they made, singing with considerable punch when required, and were also absolutely right in the “small chorus” moments. The women of the choir were miraculously controlled in the Two Herrick Songs, transforming one’s former impression of these atmospheric miniatures.
The session was completed by the two orchestral numbers – For Valour and the Fantastic Variations on an Old Rhyme – in which the playing of the ENO Orchestra under Martyn Brabbins’s direction gave us convincing performances of such natural flow and energy that one was left wondering why both pieces are not in the regular orchestral repertoire.

This programme of the music Brian wrote between 1907 and 1912 reveals that, in his time, Brian was already a composer of real achievement and a distinctive musical personality. It was his tragedy that he could not promote that assessment to his post-First World War audience. In fact, Brian’s command of the latest idioms of his day produced memorable music.

These sessions were a triumph for Martyn Brabbins and his fine orchestra and chorus, and the soloists. In a sense this is also a remarkable discovery for those who are not admirers of the later Havergal Brian – if you love Richard Strauss, Elgar and Bantock then this will be a discovery for you.

Ralph Vaughan Williams: Bluebird, Rhapsodies and Variations
by
Lewis Foreman

Dutton Epoch’s summer 2017 recording sessions with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra and conductor Martin Yates took place in the orchestra’s new hall and offices immediately behind Glasgow’s Royal Concert Hall. The spacious accommodation for the orchestra, the bright summer light and the extremely analytical sound all contributed to a memorable and distinctive session.

Many years ago, the late John Bishop was commissioned by the Vaughan Williams Society to establish a regular journal, and while assembling the first issue (which appeared in September 1994) he asked me to write an article on a VW-related subject that would generate interest and comment. I chose to write about the early and partially lost works of Vaughan Williams, which at that time were generally barred from performance. We were successful, in that my championship of a range of then unheard works was severely criticised by various writers long-associated with the composer. I was unrepentant and as, gradually over many years, we have been able to hear these lost or forgotten scores, it has become apparent that I was right, and the stature of Vaughan Williams has been increased and much lovely music returned to performance, mainly on compact disc.

Such revivals have involved much research in manuscripts and archives to identify what is to be played and how it is to be presented. Dutton Epoch first engaged in this practical research when they recorded John Wilson conducting VW’s impressive 20-minute Heroic Elegy and Triumphal Epilogue (CDLX 7237). However, Dutton Epoch’s expanding engagement with this repertoire came when conductor Martin Yates was introduced to the Vaughan Williams collection in the British Library, and he started to closely study the manuscripts, something that most previous commentators clearly had not done. His succession of wonderful VW discoveries has made his Dutton Epoch series, largely with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, a significant contribution to the Vaughan Williams repertoire.

The 2017 VW session featured more discoveries made in the Vaughan Williams manuscripts. This was a further exploration of what an earlier volume in Martin Yates’s Dutton Epoch series had called “Vaughan Williams early and late works” (CDLX 7289). This time we started with Norfolk Rhapsodies dating back to VW’s folksong-collecting in 1905, followed by his unplayed music for Maeterlinck’s The Bluebird from 1913, and folk-dance settings written for the English Folk Dance and Song Society’s gatherings between the wars, and ended with Gordon Jacob’s orchestration of the Variations for Orchestra (originally for brass band) from the year (1957) before VW died. It made for a fresh, varied and tuneful overview of VW’s achievement, albeit a comparatively unfamiliar one.

Completely unknown, even from many lists of VW’s music, is his score for an episode in Maeterlinck’s play The Blue Bird, which survives in piano score. In 1913 Vaughan Williams wrote incidental music to two plays by Maeterlinck, The Death of Tintagiles and The Blue Bird. The Blue Bird is the most familiar of these plays, but Vaughan Williams’s short score does not seem to have been orchestrated, suggesting, in fact, that it was never performed.

The Belgian playwright Maurice Maeterlinck was all the rage with musicians and the public during the last decade of the nineteenth and the first couple of decades of the twentieth centuries, the most notable score, of course, being Debussy’s opera Pelléas et Mélisande. But many composers wrote incidental music for stage productions, and Vaughan Williams wrote his music in 1913, although the widely-used incidental music, which effectively sidelined VW’s score, was by his friend and colleague Norman O’Neill.

In the years before the First World War, Vaughan Williams wrote incidental music for many plays, including various Greek plays of which The Wasps is the earliest and the most familiar, owing to the popularity of the overture. There were also a variety of Shakespeare plays for F.R. Benson’s 1913 Stratford-upon-Avon season. His music for The Blue Bird presents a series of short fantastic dances comparable to Ravel’s later music in L’enfant et les Sortilèges or Bax’s ballet From Dusk till Dawn.

To hear all three Norfolk Rhapsodies in quick succession was in itself an education. Of course, it shouldn’t have been possible – two pages of No. 2 are missing and the Third Rhapsody is totally lost. Vaughan Williams, enthused by his success in collecting folksongs during winter-time visits to Norfolk in 1905, soon used his memorable discoveries in a variety of orchestral works. We know only the First Norfolk Rhapsody in the 1914 revision, but written in 1906 it was the start of a fascination with these folksongs, and it is said VW was intending to try to turn them into a Norfolk Symphony. The symphony never materialised, but the process he had started, particularly in the later revision of the First Rhapsody, might well be viewed as a kind of technical study for textures and instrumental treatment that later informed his A London Symphony.

The familiar First Norfolk Rhapsody is notable for the atmospheric treatment of the tune The Captain’s Apprentice, given prominence as a viola solo. It was good to find oneself so close to the atmospheric orchestral textures that conjure up the Fenland landscape in winter – this is indeed a landmark in British orchestral music. It came as a bit of a shock to realise that although written in 1906, and the revision first performed in May 1914, the First Norfolk Rhapsody was not published until 1925 and so it did not find a place in most people’s awareness until much later than we might have assumed, looking back.

The second and third Norfolk Rhapsodies date from 1907 and both were heard in the same concert in September that year. Withdrawn by the composer, the Second Rhapsody was long thought unplayable, as two pages had gone missing, that is until Stephen Hogger completed it with reference to the detailed programme notes of the early performances.

When we reach the Third Rhapsody, we are no long hearing a work by Vaughan Williams but the Norfolk March, a tribute by David Matthews based on the original programme notes of a work that is otherwise lost. All enthusiasts who have explored pre-1914 concert programmes will know in what detail the notes are given, in most cases virtually a blueprint for the piece, complete with musical incipits, keys and titles of tunes quoted. We are fortunate that such a note for Vaughan Williams’s Third Norfolk Rhapsody survives from 1907, for when the unique score and orchestral parts vanished during the First World War, it was all that remained.

David Matthews has followed this description in his post-2000 reading. Taking this musical blueprint, David Matthews tells us he has “followed this programme note for the most part as accurately as I could (I begin with a 29-bar introduction in an approximation to Vaughan Williams’s style). The treatment of the four folksongs in the first half of the piece, up to the end of the Trio, with straightforward repetitions in varied scoring, is perhaps more characteristic of Grainger. Up to this point the mood of the piece has been carefree: soldiers marching gaily off to war. But in this centenary of the worst year of the First WorId War, thoughts of what might have happened to those soldiers in 1916 caused me to make a drastic change from what Vaughan Williams would have done. Though I do not stray far from the programme note, the piece becomes suddenly dark and sinister, and the ‘fortissimo and largamente’ statement of Ward the Pirate is a grim funeral march. My coda begins with a wistful recollection of The Lincolnshire Farmer on solo violin, but ending with a kind of ‘last post’ on the trumpets, deliberately recalling Vaughan Williams’s trumpet solo in his Pastoral Symphony, his own First World War statement.”

The craze for open-air historical pageants and masques was a notable feature of the early years of the twentieth century. The Pageant of London in 1911 and the Pageant of Empire in 1924 were notable examples. Although we have a wide familiarity with Vaughan Williams’s espousal of folksong in a variety of oft-played works based on traditional tunes, many collected by VW himself, we have forgotten this inter-war enthusiasm for historical pageants and masques often featuring large groups of amateur singers, where folk music also had a role. The English Folk Dance and Song Society also promoted annual festivals at which Vaughan Williams was usually seen, as he had contributed to the music. Because most of his scores were not published and were often either for military band or idiosyncratic orchestral forces, they have been forgotten. Here, Martin Yates has unearthed a Little Folk Dance Medley, which comes down to us in the original orchestration by Vaughan Williams, the existence of contemporary orchestral parts suggesting it was played at the time. Written in 1934, it may have been for an EFDS event in 1935 (they were usually at London’s Royal Albert Hall). The music features a rapidly changing selection of English country dance tunes, mainly Morris tunes.

A short folksong work left in piano score, so probably never played, was the Little March Suite, in fact a typical short march on folksongs. This folksong quick march is in a familiar Vaughan Williams format, probably best known from the Sea Songs of 1923, music that seems to have been conceived for one side of a 12” 78-rpm disc. Here, Vaughan Williams sets three numbers; the second, On Board a Ninety-Eight, was collected by Vaughan Williams himself during his collecting tour in 1905, when it was sung to him by a fisherman, Mr Leatherby. Another short item that VW orchestrated for performance, but was then forgotten, was his miniature Christmas Overture (1934), another fragment probably associated with the English Folk Dance and Song Society’s annual festivals. This abbreviated Christmas Overture opens with a vigorous presentation of God Rest you Merry Gentlemen, with a middle section presenting the tune Boys and Girls Come out to Play, presumably to illustrate a thematic moment in the event.

In many ways the surprise of the sessions was Gordon Jacob’s orchestration of the Variations for brass band. Vaughan Williams continued writing music to the end and this substantial work appeared immediately before his Ninth Symphony in 1957. It was first performed as the test piece at the National Brass Band Championship at the Royal Albert Hall in October that year, where twenty-one leading bands played it in succession. Hearing it in its orchestral dress was a revelation. I have seen commentators remarking that the band version is more effective; I can only say that with a top-line orchestra such as the RSNO playing it, that is not my experience.

Throughout we find constant reminiscences of this work or that by VW. There are short passages and textures that would not be out place in the Fifth Symphony. The variations are strongly characterised, constantly changing, and the music is always engaging. Gordon Jacob, an old hand at Vaughan Williams’s music, has done an idiomatic job in adapting it from the band to the orchestra. It is full of surprises, for example the fifth variation, which is an increasingly extrovert waltz. The eighth variation, Alla Polacca, is an extended mini-movement running nearly two minutes and announced by a dynamic timpani solo while the strings are silent. Variation ten, a fast Fugato, has the character of a scherzo before the authentic voice of VW closes the proceedings with a typical Chorale. Gordon Jacob surely anticipated how VW would have scored this serene, short finale when he emphasised the strings and woodwind and eschewed the heavy brass until the triumphal closing bars.

John Ireland: A Downland Suite, Julius Caesar, The Overlanders
by
Graham Parlett

On 14 and 15 August 2017 sessions were held in the RSNO Centre, Glasgow, at which Martin Yates – that great champion of British music – conducted première recordings of John Ireland’s complete score for the Ealing Studios film The Overlanders, together with his incidental music for a radio production of Julius Caesar, and Martin’s own arrangement for full orchestra of A Downland Suite. The latter was originally written for the 1932 National Brass Band Championships of Great Britain, and in 1941 Ireland arranged the Minuet and Elegy for string orchestra, his pupil Geoffrey Bush later working on the Prelude and final Rondo in similar style. In arranging the suite for full orchestra, Martin Yates returned to the original brass version and has produced a most enjoyable score that will delight all lovers of John Ireland’s music.

The recording sessions had begun with his impressive music for the Ealing Studios production of The Overlanders, a 1946 film telling the story of real-life events that had taken place four years earlier, when there were fears that the Japanese might invade Australia. This resulted in large numbers of cattle being driven across the Northern Territory from Wyndham in the west to Queensland in the east, a distance of roughly 1600 miles. The film was shot entirely on location there, and although the composer never went to that part of the world it is remarkable how he managed so effectively to evoke its wide, open spaces and to capture the spirit of its people. In 1971, Boosey & Hawkes published a five-movement suite arranged by Charles Mackerras and Two Symphonic Studies by Geoffrey Bush, based on sections from the score but with the original orchestration sometimes altered. For example, the original bass clarinet, tenor tuba and piano parts were either omitted or assigned to other instruments. This recording reinstates the original scoring, and we now have the opportunity of hearing the music complete, including a few episodes omitted from the final soundtrack.

In 1948, the composer had been asked to make a suite from the music but declined to do so, though he later joked about producing a Sinfonia Overlandia to match Vaughan Williams’s Sinfonia Antartica. It is a great pity that he never set about producing such a symphony, as parts of the score, especially in the sections entitled Night Stampede, Mountain Crossing and Water Stampede, contain some wonderfully dramatic music, which were superbly played by the RSNO. This contrasts with Ireland at his most romantic, as in the ravishing Love Theme and in a beautiful section for strings marked “Broad and noble,” with its nod to Tudor music, which links two versions of the recurring passage referred to in the manuscript as the Cheer-up Tune – one of Ireland’s catchiest numbers.

The final score recorded was the incidental music for Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, written for a 1942 radio production and played here, for the first time, complete. It was left to the end of the sessions because it is scored not for full orchestra but for the unusual combination of woodwind, brass, percussion, piano and two double basses. In the manuscript Ireland adds a footnote that the three horns “must do their maximum, & do the duty of 6 players,” and so for the purposes of this recording six horns were used, together with four double basses instead of the two marked in the score. As may be expected, the score includes a number of fanfares and military marches as well as music illustrating several other scenes in the play, such as Ghost Music and Crowd Music. One of the most exciting sections is the Lupercalia Music, used for the scene in which Caesar holds a victory parade during this annual Roman festival and a soothsayer utters the famous warning “Beware the Ides of March.”

There was one section in which Ireland only sketched some music but never finished it, namely the Battle Music, which accompanies the final armed confrontation in October 42 BC between the two principal conspirators (Brutus and Cassius) and Mark Antony. By fleshing out the bare bones of these sketches, it was possible to reconstruct what the composer may have intended if he had had more time in which to complete the scene. As with the other two scores recorded at these sessions, the RSNO players and Martin Yates were on top form and entered wholeheartedly into John Ireland’s memorable music.

All session photos taken by Lewis Foreman
All session photos © Lewis Foreman/Dutton Epoch