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/SATURDAY 16 NOVEMBER 1974
A
at 7.30 p.m.
CANTERBURY CATHEDRAL
(By kind permission of the Dean and
Chapter)
Guildford
Philharmonic
Orchestra
Leader: JOHN LUDLOW
Philharmonic Choir
Rohan de Saram
Cello
Vernon Handley
Conductor
L
This G%ncert is promoted by the South East
Music
Trust with financial assistance from
the South East Arts Association
//
ROHAN de SARAM
Rohan de Saram studied the cello with
Gasper Cassado and Casals. He has played
in Europe, Asia, U.S.A., Australia and the
Soviet Union, appearing as soloist with the
major orchestras of the world. Among
the conductors with whom he has worked
are Sir Adrian Boult, Sir Malcolm Sargent,
Sir John Barbirolli, Sir Charles Groves,
Colin Davis, Zubin Mehta, John Pritchard,
Van Otterloo, Steinberg, Ozawa, Martinon.
Scrowecewski. His debut in the U.S.A. was
at the Carnegie Hall with the New York
Philharmonic Orchestra, at the invitation
of Dmitri Mitropoulos.
He has worked personally with several
composers, including Kodaly,
Schostakovich, Poulenc, Walton and
Rubbra. His performances of Xenakis’
Nomos Alpha won great praise from the
composer, who invited him to play it at
the 1974 Xenakis Festival in Bonn. He
performed the work at the English Bach
Vernon Handley was born in Enfield in
1930, and educated at Balliol College,
Oxford, and the Guiidhall School of
Music and Drama. Before he came to
Guildford he had amassed great experience
as a free-lance conductor with choirs and
orcheztras, and had won several awards
for conducting.
Vernon Handley has been Guildford’s
Musical Director for twelve years, raising
the Guildford Philharmonic Orchestra to
professional status. He has conducted over
140 concernts in the large and modern Civic
Hallwith the Guildford musical forces:
the Philharmonic Orchestra and the
Philharmonic and Proteus Choirs, both
Choirs playing an active part in the annual
concert series and performing many
challenging and little-known works, in
addition to the standard classics of the
choral repertoire.
Festival in 1973 subsequently broadcasting
it on Hilversum Radio, Holland.
Vernon Handley broadcasts with all the
B.B.C. Regional Orchestras, about 30
The famous cellist, Piatigorsky, has
guest Conductor with the London
presented him, after a recital in America,
with a special bow which he uses at
concerts.
concerts a year, and appears regularly as
Philharmonic and Royal Philharmonic
Orchestras. He is one of the few British
Conductors who will have as many as six
records made or released within 1974. His
recent record of music by Vaughan
Williams and Tippett, with the London
Philharmonic Orchestra, has received wide
acclaim. He is particularly noted for his
championship of British music and was this
year voted Conductor of the Year 1973 by
the Composers’ Guild of Great Britain.
PROGRAMME
Applause is permitted in the cathedral.
Fantasy-Overture ‘Hamlet’
Tchaikovsky 1840-1893
Tchaikovsky’s fantasy-overture ‘Hamlet’ 1is
one of the three works which he wrote on
Shakespearian subjects. Of the other two,
the fantasy-overture ‘Romeo and Juliet’ is
amongst his most popular works, while the
orchestral fantasy ‘The Tempest’, amongst
his least known. It is interesting to note
that one of the rare performances of “The
Tempest’ was given by the Guildford
Philharmonic in its series of unfamiliar
works several seasons ago.
‘Hamlet’ is a much later work than ‘Romeo
and Juliet’, the latter dates from 1869,
whereas ‘Hamlet’ was composed in 1888,
simultaneously it seems with the Fifth
Symphony. Yet it is very different from
that work. A more compressed form than
‘Romeo and Juliet’ and one somewhat
nearer to ‘Francesca da Rimini’ lays before
us clear sections of alternating material.
The introduction, marked lento lugubre,
has two important ideas: a tragic theme,
heard on the lower strings and an agitated
figure, heard on the strings and woodwind.
There follows an allegro vivace, and after
this is worked up to a climax, the supposed
‘love’ theme appears on the oboe. All the
ideas heard up to now are heard in reverse
order, and combine to produce a Vvery
dramatic full orchestra climax. This stark
fantasy is brought to an end by a short
funeral march which uses the first solemn
theme.
Although not so immediately attractive as
‘Romeo and Juliet’, this work deserves a
larger public by reason of its refusal to
use anything more than the one beautiful
element of Hamlet’s and Ophelia’s love,
which the play provides. Tchaikovsky
endeavours to and succeeds in sustaining
interest with the darker and more sombre
elements of the tragedy. One of the most
imaginative sections is the ‘love’ theme
played against strong opposition from the
rest of the woodwind, and tiring string
triplets, as if to suggest Ophelia’s madness.
Variations on a Rococo Theme for
’Cello and Orchestra
Tchaikovsky 1840-1893
This work, dedicated to the German
*cellist, Fitzenhagen, was composed in 1876
which was a time of feverish activity in
Tchaikovsky’s composing career for from
this year also date the Third String Quartet,
the Slavonic March, Swan Lake and
Francesca da Rimini, and people who
complain of the sparseness of development
in Tchaikovsky’s music could surely not
argue against the power of an imagination
which embraces these diverse subjects. Add
to this list the fact that the Third
Symphony was composed in the previous
year and the Fourth Symphony in the
following year, and one has the picture
of a composer working almost at fever
pitch. This, in fact, was the case, for a few
years later he succumbed to a mood of
intense depression. This, however, is not
foreshadowed in the wonderful *cello work
that he wrote for his friend. Lightly scored
and with many touches of chamber music
style: this is how Tchaikovsky solves the
*cello and orchestral balance problem.
The work starts moderato quasi andante,
which is merely a twenty bar introduction,
and then the soloist announces the theme,
moderato semplice. From there the
variations run as follows:
Var. I
Tempo del tema.
Var. 2
Tempo del tema.
:
Triplets for the soloist, accompanied by
pizzicato chords for the strings.
Runs for the soloist, and the first few
the whole
notes of the theme scattered over
orchestra.
four.
Var. 3 Andante sostenuto. Threetheme for
A straightforward version of the oboe
and
the soloist, with comments from tion by
clarinet; the second half a decora
the woodwind instruments of the soloist’s
tune.
Var. 4 Andante grazioso. Two-four.
the
The soloist’s line becomes more florid, for
accompaniment simpler, and passages
the soloist alone begin to appear.
Var. 5
Allegro moderato.
the
The soloist now decorates a version oftutti
theme on the flute, and after a loud e
the soloist is given a decorative passag
before the flute returns with the tune. A
large cadenza for the soloist completes
this variation.
Var. 6 Andante.
Although melodically simple, the version
now given to the soloist is charged with
expression, and a great deal of the
accompaniment is for off the beat pizzicato
strings.
Var. 7 Allegro vivo.
This is, in fact, the finale. Running
passages of extraordinary difficulty for the
soloist, and the accompanists’ ability to
interject their tiny phrases strained to the
utmost. The whole variation is a miracle of
lightness, the fortes being quickly
interchanged with piano and pianissimos.
searching for the profound, the remote,
yet never treating any unusual topic
superficially. Holst’s setting mirrors
precisely Whitman’s words: ‘Lovely and
soothing death’ is given a cool, but
beautiful, melody, the ‘chant of fullest
welcome’ is sung to a majestic procession,
the ‘loving, floating ocean’ receives the
lovely chromatic harmony which elsewhere
the composer eschews. Perhaps the most
extraordinary stroke of composition comes
at the end when the sopranos float a
beautiful song, ‘Over the tree tops’, while
the rest of the choir intone their original
INTERVAL
welcome to death in the background. This
gives a formal completeness to the work
which would otherwise have been difficult
to achieve with the words as they stood.
Ode to Death, Opus 38 for Chorus
and Orchestra
Holst 1874-1934
In the centenary year of Holst’s birth, this
remarkably original British composer
seems to have had very few performances
of his more important and neglected works.
Organisations pay lip service to the
centenary by producing more
performances of The Planets, The Perfect
Fool Ballet Music, and the Hymn of
Jesus. The great Choral Symphony,
performed in Guildford in 1969, Egdon
Heath and Hammersmith have received no
more performances than usual; The
Morning of the Year, the Double Violin
Concerto, the Ode to Death have had one
or two airings, or none at all.
Holst wrote the Ode to Death in 1919,
three years after The Planets was finished
~ and four years before the Choral
Symphony.
In it he employed, as well as
his own stark originality, a chromatic
There is nothing morbid or sickly about
the Ode or its setting. It is an original
view of an honest idea, and as such it
is unique in music.
ODE TO DEATH
Come lovely and soothing death,
Undulate round the world, serenely arriving,
arriving,
In the day, in the night, to all, to each,
Sooner or later delicate death.
Prais’d be the fathomless universe,
For life and joy, and for objects and
knowledge curious,
And for love, sweet love—but praise! praise!
praise!
For the sure-enwinding arms of cool-enfolding
death.
Dark mother always gliding near with soft
feet,
Have none chanted for thee a chant of
fullest welcome?
Then I chant it for thee, I glorify thee above
all,
I bring thee a song that when thou must
indeed come, come unfalteringly.
Approach strong deliveress,
When it is so, when thou hast taken them I
joyously sing the dead,
harmony for certain passages, which was
never again to appear in his work.
Lost in the loving floating ocean of thee,
Laved in the flood of thy bliss O death.
Considered by many one of his finest
From me to thee glad serenades,
Dances for thee I propose saluting thee,
adornments and feastings for thee,
And the sights of the open landscape and the
high-spread sky are fitting,
And life and the fields, and the huge and
thoughful night.
works, it is probably performed very little
simply because of its title, a superficial
response to which is wholly misleading.
Whitman’s experiences on the battlefields
of the American Civil War had led him to
see death as a blessed release, and it was a
development of this feeling that he voiced
in his Ode. Such a different approach
would be bound to attract the originalminded Holst, a composer always
The night in silence under many a star,
The ocean shore and the husky whispering
wave whose voice I know,
And the soul turning to thee O vast and
well-veil’d death,
And the body gratefully nestling close to thee.
Over the tree-tops I float thee a song,
Over the rising and sinking waves, over the
myriad fields and prairies wide,
Over the dense-pack’d cities all and the
teeming wharves and ways,
I float this carol with joy, with joy to thee
O death.
Walt Whitman
Meditation 4—*“He restoreth my soul: ”’
another determined allegro, this time with
clear phrases of John Blow’s tune emerging
every now and then.
Meditation 5—“In green pastures: ” a
movement in three parts, two illustrations of
the pastures flanking the most beautiful
tune, which is in itself meditative as well as
a meditation on Blow’s tune.
Interlude—“Through the valley of the shadow
of death: > the full orchestra and a battery
of percussion are subjected to variations of
time, 3/4, 4/4, 5/4, 6/4 and 7/4, in one of
the most terrifying orchestral passages ever
written.
Meditations on a Theme of John Blow
Bliss, b. 1891
The Meditations received its first
performance in 1955. Sir Arthur had found
amongst the anthems of John Blow in
Musica Brittanica, a tune in the Sinfonia
for Strings which comes before the
anthem The Lord is my Shepherd. He got
the idea of a set of variations, but the
form the work took was so influenced by
the ideas in the psalm that it could not be
written as a theme with its set. Just as in
the psalm the psalmist is confident of the
Lord’s constant support, he does not reach
the House of the Lord until the end of
the poem. The composer therefore
reserves the full statement of John Blow’s
lovely tune for the very end of the work.
The meditations on the tune are variations
on parts of it worked into illustrations of
contrasted ideas of the psalm, leading to a
triumphant statement of the tune itself
when we have entered the House of the
Lord.
— Lord is my Shepherd, I
< The
Introduction
will fear no evil: ” a pastoral scene with
flutes and sheep bells interrupted by an
agitated and evil figure on the brass.
Meditation 1—“He leadeth me beside still
waters: >’ a tranquil allegro moderato,
reminiscent of Bach,
Meditation 2—“Thy rod and staff they comfort
me: > allegro deciso; nobody but Bliss could
have written this forthright determined
variation, the natural accents of the tune
having been brought forward one beat.
Meditation 3—Lambs: ” dotted note tunes
derived from Blow’s last phrase form an
intermezzo.
Finale—In the House of the Lord: > the brass
intone as a chorale the first phrase of
John Blow’s tune, but Bliss is not mawkish.
If we are in the House of the Lord, would
it not be a good thing to dance? The great
dance ensues, bells herald the arrival of
John Blow, his tune is triumphantly stated.
He retires to a more tranquil version, and
we are left with the scene as it was at the
beginning. Memories of the different
meditations are quoted; there is one last
look at the terrifying evil prospect, and
then a chord of confident affirmation
finishes the work.
The Meditations is all things as an
orchestral work: variety and contrast are
expressed with musical economy, though
with great recourse to orchestral virtuosity,
and couched in an original approach to
variation form, which makes it one of the
composer’s masterpieces. On closer
acquaintance it becomes one of the most
emotionally satisfying works of the
twentieth century.
GUILDFORD PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA
Musical Director/Conductor:
Vernon Handley
First Violing
Violas
Oboes
Leader:
Trumpets
Stephen Shingles
James Brown
Clifford Haines
Janice Knight
John Ludlow
Roger Chase
Martin Hughes
Levine Andrade
Vaughan Armon
Margaret Brookes
Dennis Curtis
Diane Booth
Michael Hinton
Stephen
Cor Anglais
Hetherington
Maurice Checker
Averil Carmalt
Julian Shaw
Bradley Creswick
Ruth Treloar
Clarinets
Vito Gambazza
John Denman
Victor Slaymark
Trevor Herbert
Cellos
Justin Jones
Jack Holmes
Robert Lewcock
John Stilwell
Bass Clarinet
Stephen Saunders
Gordon Lewin
Jean Fletcher
Bass Trombone
Margaret Moss
Christopher Lebon
Prunella Sedgwick
Edward Doe
Nina Whitehurst
Miriam Crahin
Pauline Sadgrove
Robert Jordan
Second Violins
Paul Moxon
" Frank Warnock
Tuba
Nicholas Maxted
Jones
Trombones
Alfred Flaszynski
Bassoons
Stephen Wick
Timpani
Roger Blair
Basses
Contra Bassoon
Rosemary Roberts
Paul Cullington
Nicholas Reader
Marie Louise
Keith Marjoram
Percussion
Amberg
Charles Cudmore
Horns
Jonathan Tolansky
John Jeffery
Nigel Broadbent
Jeremy Gordon
Peter Clack
Margaret Harris
Jonathan Bose
Sally Rowe
George Woodcock
Heather Steedman
Paul Manley
Flutes
Ian Urquhart
Nicholas Mathias
Celesta
George Crozier
Adrienne Sturdy
David Clack
Jane Parry
John Forster
Donald Hart
Charles Bloomfield
Deryck Wareing
Anne West-Watson
Harp
Piccolo
Clifford Seville
Fiona Hibbert
Concert Manager
Kathleen Atkins
The audience may be interested to know that the violin sections are listed in
alphabetical order after the first desk, because a rotation of desks is adopted in
this orchestra, so that all players have the opportunity of playing in all positions
in the section.
/