The thirty-first concert in the Enterprising series
Guildford Corporation Concerts 1973-74
Civic Hall—Guildford
SATURDAY 10 NOVEMBER 1973
at 7.45 p.m.
Guildford
Philharmonic
Orchestra
Leader: HUGH BEAN
Philharmonic
Choir
Rodney Friend
Violin
Anthony Roden
Tenor
Vernon Handley
Conductor
This concert is promoted by Guildford
Corporation with financial assistance from
the Arts Council of Great Britain
Rodney Friend
Rodney Friend, one of the outstanding
British violinists of his generation, has
pursued a successful double career as
soloist and orchestral leader. Born in
Yorkshire, he studied at the Royal Academy
of Music on an open scholarship awarded
to him at the age of twelve and later at the
Royal Manchester College of Music, when
he became widely known through his solo
Philharmonic Choir
The Philharmonic Choir is the larger of the
two choirs under the conductorship of the
Musical Director, who acknowledges with
thanks the help he has received in training
the Choir from Mr. Kenneth Lank, and
accompanists Miss Mary Rivers, Miss
Patricia Finch and Miss Prudence Edden,
and from Mrs. D. W. Wren who has given
time to a seating plan to accommodate
the Choir.
appearances and broadcasts. He made his
London début in 1961, playing the Sibelius
Concerto with the Hallé Orchestra under
Barbirolli, and he has since appeared as a
soloist with most of the major British
orchestras, as well as abroad.
He was appointed Leader of the London
Philharmonic Orchestra at the remarkably
early age of twenty-four, and his leadership
has played a major part in achieving the
world-wide renown that that Orchestra now
has. He has often been engaged as a soloist
with the Orchestra, winning warm tributes
from the critics.
Mr Friend, who plays a Guarnerius del
Gesu violin made in 1731, has also given
recitals in Britain and abroad, and has
taken master classes for Dutch orchestral
violinists in Amsterdam.
PROGRAMME
Concerto For Double String Orchestra
Tippett b. 1905
Allegro
Adagio (cantabile)
Allegro molto
The first two works in this evening’s
programme were written within the space
of two years. Tippett’s Concerto for
Double String Orchestra was composed
between 1938 and 1939, and Britten’s Violin
Concerto in the latter year. Both of these
composers have shown throughout their
careers a need to develop their musical
Anthony Roden
Anthony Roden studied at the Adelaide
Conservatoire, South Australia with Arnold
Mathers and later with Donald Munro.
Whilst in Australia he sang many concerts
for the Australian Broadcasting
Commission. He came to Britain in
January 1969, and recommenced his studies
at the London Opera Centre, and also with
Alexander Young. In September 1969 he
gained second place in the S’Hertogenbosch
competition, and was thereafter offered
several concerts by Hilversum Radio.
After two years on tour with Opera for All,
he was engaged by the Glyndebourne
Festival Opera, and in 1971 he won the
much coveted John Christie Award.
Anthony Roden made his début with the
Welsh National Opera Company this year,
and in 1974 he will be appearing with the
Sadler’s Wells Opera Company, and will
also return to Holland to sing with Dutch
Opera.
language to keep pace with their similarly
developing spiritual worlds. The process is
clearer in Britten than in Tippett, but there
can be no doubt that many of the seeds
later to flower in Tippett’s music were
planted well and truly in the Concerto for
Double String Orchestra. These
characteristics are a tautness of rhythms, a
similar tautness, not to say muscularity, of
melody, and a frequent return to lyricism,
a lyricism which eschews sentimentality in
the course of a work.
The first movement of the Concerto plunges
into a syncopated two part exchange
between the two orchestras. The movement
proceeds with development of the original
material which can be clearly followed by
the listener, and in fact ends with a formal,
though shortened, recapitulation. This
continuous development owes much to the
bouncing nature of the first rhythmic idea.
The strange thing about Tippett’s work is his
ability to mould different styles into what
becomes a clearly individual language, and
in this movement and the ensuing ones, he
has recourse to baroque procedures,
rhythms which come to their full flower in
the madrigals, and even sonata form in the
central development. The force of the first
movement gives way to a quiet
song-dominated second movement. As the
song is repeated, so the accompaniment
becomes more complicated, and we realise
suddenly that we are hearing a slow version
of the syncopated figure from the beginning
of the previous movement. The song itself
is a beautiful one, and is given to all the
sections of the double string choir in turn.
The finale, a sort of sonata rondo, is just
what is required to round off the work.
There is a great sweep of melody related
to the second movement, and dancing
rhythms related to the first. The rondo can
be followed easily: A B A C A B D, for
the coda suddenly produces a new theme,
rather like a Spiritual, and yet one which, if
isolated, bears a strong resemblance to the
opening phrase of the second movement’s
song. This might be considered a formal
weakness, but the strength of the idea
itself, and the way it soars above the design
figure of the finale, achieves a great
exhilaration for the end of the work.
Concerto for Violin and Orchestra,
Op. 15
Britten b. 1913
Moderato con moto
Vivace
Passacaglia: andante lento
Formal freedom marks the approach of
Britten to the Concerto, at least in this
particular example. The three movements
are quite different in material and mood,
and Britten’s tremendous ability to create
different pictures within the span of the
work is amply evidenced. One thing is clear,
when formal freedom is the order of the
day and the moods are so varied, the solo
voice will not be enough to bind a work of
this length together. The composer
therefore employs two devices in order to
give the Concerto its unity. The first is
ostinato, a device of which Britten is
particularly fond, and the second is the late
placing of the cadenza, in which the soloist
records earlier material, and this helps to
concentrate our feelings about the work.
Signs of an ostinato begin the first
movement. The soloist states the first
melodic material over the little rhythmic
figure of the ostinato, and soon the
movement tears itself away from its mould
with a repeated note idea. The composer
has now given us a lyrical tune, a
mysterious ostinato and a repeated note
figure from which anything can be made.
It is with these elements that he develops
the first movement, changing mood
constantly and keeping our attention.
The vivace is no more settled. It is a savage
one-in-a-bar dance with orchestra and
soloist constantly answering one another in
a percussive three-eight. Later comes a more
sinuous section, the soloist in two-four
against the orchestra in six-eight, and here
Britten’s love of Verdi can be heard
creeping into the portamento of the
soloist’s phrases. The quick three-eight
returns, and after a passage of
extraordinary orchestration with two
piccolos, muted strings and solo tuba, the
movement ends by leading to the cadenza.
The final movement relates to Britten’s love
of ostinato, because it begins with a
passacaglia. Low instruments have the tune
at first, and we soon realise that it is not
an ordinary passacaglia, for each repetition
seems to start from a different harmonic
point; sometimes bits of the theme are
used instead of the whole theme, and
around it the violin explores the
development of each fragment or harmonic
situation. Eventually, a great statement of
the passacaglia on the brass is decorated by
the rest of the orchestra, and this climax
recedes for the final lento. One of the most
beautiful passages that Britten has ever
composed closes the Concerto. It is a
strange broken procession: repeated chords
are given different colours in the
orchestration while the soloist utters a
broken-phrased lament over each last
chord left by the orchestra. This lament
seems to end, and its sheer beauty of sound
lessens the sadness. It is a strange mood
which defies description, and yet brings a
wonderful sense of completion to the
Concerto.
INTERVAL
During the interval refreshments will be
served in the Surrey Room by members
of the Concertgoers’ Society.
—PS
Intimations of Immortality
Gerald Finzi 1901—1956
Gerald Finzi’s setting of one of
Wordsworth’s finest poems was first
performed at the Gloucester Festival in
1950.
It had been conceived and partly written
Preceded by an orchestral introduction the
poem is set complete except for stanzas 7
and 8. The omission of these does not
disturb the train of thought. ‘Wordsworth’s
repetition in stanza 10, of lines which
appear in stanza 3’, wrote the composer,
‘helps to make for a natural reprise and to
balance the contemplative aspect of the
music with vigorous contrast’.
before the outbreak of war in 1939, but
being then of necessity laid aside it was
only taken up again after a break of several
years and completed in the year of its
production, which happened to coincide
IMITATIONS OF IMMORTALITY
From Recollections of Early Childhood
with the centenary of Wordsworth’s death.
I
It has been said that in his odes and
elegiac poems Wordsworth best exhibits his
power of fusing metaphysical thought with
lyrical feeling. What makes this statement
interesting to us here is: Why should a
composer choose to set the work of a
philosophical poet, who, to judge by the
fact that only two of his poems are called
‘Song’, took little interest in the composition
of verses for music?
There was a time when meadow, grove, and
stream,
The earth, and every common sight,
To me did seem
Apparelled in celestial light,
The glory and the freshness of a dream.
It is not now as it hath been of yore;—
Turn whereso’er I may,
By night or day,
The things which I have seen I now can see
no more.
Gerald Finzi gave an answer to this question
11
‘It is sometimes argued’, he wrote, ‘that
certain poems, complete and wonderful in
themselves, are in no need of musical
setting. Such a view may express personal
feelings, but by no means the feelings of the
composer, if he has been lit by the impact
of the words and obsessed by their content.’
Let so much suffice by way of thoughts
upon the relationship between poet and
composer.
The Rainbow comes and goes,
And lovely is the Rose,
The Moon doth with delight
Look round her when the heavens are bare;
Waters on a starry night
Are beautiful and fair;
The sunshine is a glorious birth;
But yet I know, where’er I go,
That there hath past away a glory from the
earth,
The subject matter of this work may be
said to continue the argument of the.
composer’s earlier cantata ‘Dies Natalis'—
words by Thomas Traherne—where the
theme is the glory of birth and the
perfection of childhood; where there is
only joy and no fear at all. But
Wordsworth, standing in the ‘light of
common day’, speaks in a different tone.
He speaks as one who having had much
experience feels that he is living as part of
an immense unbounded system with a
height above and a depth beneath.
The composer has resolved the wide range
and changing moods of the poem into
music which can be enjoyed for its own
sake even by those to whom Wordsworth’s
mysticism carries no message.
111
Now, while the birds thus sing a joyous song,
And while the young lambs bound
As to the tabor’s sound,
To me alone there came a thought of grief:
A timely utterance gave that thought relief,
And I again am strong:
The cataracts blow their trumpets from the
steep;
No more shall grief of mine the season wrong;
I hear the Echoes through the mountains
throng,
The Winds come to me from the fields of sleep,
And all the earth is gay;
Land and sea
Give themselves up to jollity,
And with the heart of May
Doth every Beast keep holiday;—
Thou Child of Joy,
Shout round me, let me hear thy shouts, thou
ha
Shepherd-boy!
&
v
Ye blessed Creatures, I have heard the call
Ye to each other make; I see
The heavens laugh with you in your jubilee;
My heart is at your festival,
My head hath its coronal,
The fulness of your bliss, I feel—I feel it all.
Oh evil day! if T were sullen
While Earth herself is adorning,
This sweet May-morning,
And the Children are culling
On every side,
In a thousand valleys far and wide,
Fresh flowers; while the sun shines warm,
And the Babe leaps up on his Mother’s arm: —
I hear, I hear, with joy I hear!
—But there’s a Tree, of many, one,
A single Field which I have looked upon,
Both of them speak of something that is gone:
The Pansy at my feet
Doth the same tale repeat:
Whither is fled the visionary gleam?
Where is it now, the glory and the dream?
The thought of our past years in me doth breed
Perpetual benediction: not indeed
For that which is most worthy to be blest;
Delight and liberty, the simple creed
Of Childhood, whether busy or at rest,
With new-fledged hope still fluttering in his
breast: —
Not for these I raise
The song of thanks and praise;
But for those obstinate questionings
Of sense and outward things,
Fallings from us, vanishings;
Blank misgivings of a Creature
Moving about in worlds not realised,
High instincts before which our mortal Nature
Did tremble like a guilty Thing surprised:
But for those first affections,
Those shadowy recollections,
Which, be they what they may,
Are yet the fountain light of all our day,
Are yet a master light of all our seeing;
Uphold us, cherish, and have power to make
Our noisy years seem moments in the being
Of the eternal Silence: truths that wake,
To perish never;
Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavour,
Nor Man nor Boy,
Nor all that is at enmity with joy,
Can utterly abolish or destroy!
Hence in a season of calm weather
Though inland far we be,
Our Souls have sight of that immortal sea
Which brought us hither,
Can in a moment travel thither,
And see the Children sport upon the shore,
And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore.
v
Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Upon the growing Boy,
But He
Beholds the light ,and whence it flows,
He sees it in his joy;
X
The Youth, who daily farther from the east
Must travel, still is Nature’s Priest,
And by the vision splendid
Is on his way attended;
At length the Man perceives it die away,
And fade into the light of common day.
VI
Earth fills her lap with pleasures of her own;
Yearnings she hath in her own natural kind,
And, even with something of a Mother’s mind,
And no unworthy aim,
The homely Nurse doth all she can
To make her Foster-child, her Inmate Man
Forget the glories he hath known,
And that imperial palace whence he came.
b
Then sing, ye Birds, sing, sing a joyous song!
And let the young Lambs bound
As to the tabor’s sound!
We in thought will join your throng,
Ye that pipe and ye that play,
Ye that through your hearts to-day
Feel the gladness of the May!
What though the radiance which was once so
bright
Be now for ever taken from my sight,
Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the
flower;
We will grieve not, rather find
Strength in what remains behind;
In the primal sympathy
Which having been must ever be;
In the soothing thoughts that spring
Out of human suffering;
In the faith that looks through death,
In years that bring the philosophic mind.
XI
And
IX
O joy!
that in our embers
Is something that doth live,
That nature yet remembers
What was so fugitive!
O,
ye
Fountains,
Meadows,
Hills, and
Groves,
Forebode not any severing of our loves!
Yet in my heart of hearts I feel your might;
I only have relinquished one delight
To live beneath your more habitual sway.
I love the Brooks which down their channels
fret,
Even more than when I tripped lightly as they;
The innocent brightness of a new-born Day
Is lovely yet;
The Clouds that gather round the setting sun
Do take a sober colouring from an eye
That hath kept watch o’er man’s mortality;
Another race hath been, and other palms are
won.
Thanks to the human heart by which we live,
Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears,
To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.
Saturday 24 November at 7.30 p.m.
in Holy Trinity Church
Guildford Concertgoers’ Society
Members’ Evening
The Syrinx Wind Ensemble
William Wordsworth
*Sunday 25 November at 7.00 p.m.
Introduction and Bridal Procession
from Le Coq d’Or—Rimsky-Korsakov
Piano Concerto No. 3 in D minor—
Rachmaninov
Symphonic Dances—Rachmaninov
Guildford Philharmonic Orchestra
Hugh Bean—Leader
Jeffrey Siegel—Pianoforte
Vernon Handley—Conductor
*Please note the time of this concert