The forty-first concert in the Enterprising series
Guildford Borough Council Concerts 1975-76
GUILDFORD PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA
L%
- Director of-Music/Cofiductor: Vernon Handley
First Violins
Leader:
.
John Ludlow
Diane Booth
Patricia Cassidy
Bradley Creswick
Vito Gambazza
Marilyn Germains
Beatrice Harper
Robert Lewcock
Kathleen Malet
Paul Manley
Robert St. John Wright
Julie Taylor
Nina Whitehouse
Second Violins
Nicholas Maxted Jones
Rosemary Roberts
Marie Louise Amberg
Constance Ames
Ruth Dawson
Cynthia Dunn
David Greed
Eileen Malone
Graham Pyatt
Michael Spencer
Yvonne Wooldridge
John Stilwell
Pauline Sadgrove
Christina Macrae
Claire Deniz
Leonard Lock
Nigel Bielby
Juliet Walters
Cellos
Eldon Fox
Jack Holmes
Horns
Peter Clack
Gwen Cassidy
Dennis Scard
Basses
George Woodcock
Keith Marjoram
Anthony Gray
Charles Bloomfield
Sally Rowe
Douglas Lees
Trumpets
Anthony Moore
Michael Hinton
' Charles Cudmore
Ted Hobart
Nick Bomford
Flutes
Henry Messent
Trombones
Jane Parry
David Purser
Leon Taylor
Piccolo
Christopher Nicholls
Bass Trombone
Martin Nicholls
Clarinets
Pauline Drain
Philip Todd
Tuba
John Elliott
E flat clarinet
Timpani
Paul Harvey
Roger Blair
Bass Clarinet
Percussion
Andrew McCulloch
John Jeffery
Peter Chrippes
Violas
John Meek
Stephen Gorringe
Robin Grice
Rosemary Sanderson
Robert Duncan
Nicholas Reader
Oboes
Sara Barrington
David Johnson
Jack Lees
Moyra Tomey
Harps
Cor Anglais
Fiona Hibbert
Deirdre Lind
Miriam Keogh
Bassoons
Pianoforte
Nicholas Hunka
David Nissen
John Forster
Concerts Manager
Contra Basscon
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.
Philharmonic Choir
The Philharmonic Choir is the larger of the
two choirs under the conductorship of the
Music Director, who acknowledges with
thanks the help he has received in training
the choir from Mr. Kenneth Lank, and
accompanists Mary Rivers, Patricia Finch
and Prudence Smith, In 1973 the choir
made its first recording with the orchestra:
‘Intimations of Immortality’ by Gerald
Finzi,
chamber-music fashion. The ‘Symphony in
Three Movements’, five years later, was an
extension of this conception, It partly grew
from the composer’s declared admiration
for the Second, Fourth and Eighth
Symphonies of Beethoven, and is infused
with the dynamic rhythmic energy that has
been a dominant factor throughout
Stravinsky’s music. In a programme-note
written for its first performance, the
composer emphasised that it should not be
regarded as having any kind of
‘programme’, but went further than was his
PROGRAMME
wont by admitting that there might be
found in it traces of impressions affected by
‘this our arduous time of sharp and shifting
Symphony in Three Movements (1945)
events, of despair and hope, of continual
torments and at last, cessation and relief’.
Igor Stravinsky 1882-1971
The musical material of the Symphony had
Crotchet=160
Andante
Con moto
Throughout an active career of nearly 60
years, Igor Stravinsky sprang a surprise
with almost every new work. He composed
in a wider variety of forms and styles than
any other composer of this century, and
each reflected some fresh and often
unsuspected facet of his creative
imagination, Early in 1946 the ‘Symphony
in Three Movements’, commissioned by the
New York Philharmonic Society and
completed the previous year, was given its
first parformance. Its full-blooded
symphonic character seemed in striking
contrast to the sparse textures typical of
Stravinsky’s music in the preceding years.
For all its eloquence, however, and its
reminiscences of his earliest, pre-1914
music, the orchestra is almost Mozartian in
its ensemble (with piano and harp added),
and the conception of the Symphony is
essentially a classical one in an up-to-date
guise,
Like many of his contemporaries,
Stravinsky had shown little enthusiasm for
expressing his ideas in terms of the
conventional symphony, His earliest
orchestral work was a Symphony in E-flat,
written in 1905-7 while studying with
Rimsky-Korsakov, but thereafter he avoided
writing another until the ‘Symphony in C’
appeared in 1940, This was an adaptation of
the earlier classical idiom of his Piano
Sonata (1924) to an orchestra used in almost
part of its origin in some ideas first sketched
in 1942 and intended to form part of a
piano concerto, which explains the
significant presence of the piano (and its
cousin the harp) in the work as finally
completed, The piano has several important
passages as a concertante element in the
first movement, the harp comes into
prominence in the second and, in the finale,
both are used together. The Symphony has
a tonal basis which is subject to constant
harmonic tension between major and minor
—a prominent feature in much of
Stravinsky’s music before his later use of
serial technique.
A conflict of opposing tonalities runs
through the Symphony, the first movement
stressing D-flat at the start but ending in a
decided C major, and the finale reversing
the process, The central Andante holds a
symmetrical balance by being in D major
with a constant pull towards D minor—a
result of the simple germinal idea from
which the entire work grows. This
fundamental feature is simply a conflict of
major and minor chords on the same root.
If you imagine the plain chord of C-E flat-C
played ascending on the piano, and its
inversion of G-E natural-G played
descending, you have the nature of the
organic germ of the Symphony. It provides
the harmonic, tonal and melodic core of the
music, the source of its character and the
feature which gives underlying unity to the
musical development.
The first movement follows the general
outline of the sonata principle, in which
contrasting themes are first stated and then
developed before being re-presented and
followed by a coda, Stravinsky gives no
direction for tempo, but simply a
metronome marking—an indication that the
musical effect is very much dependent on
firmness of rhythm. There is, for instance,
a famous passage near the start where a
succession of 60 staccato chords falling on
irrcgular beats are gauged to a hair’s
breadth in their cumulative impact. The
elegiac slow movement had its origin in
film music: it was first composed as a
suggested accompanient for the Apparition
of the Virgin scene in the film of Franz
Werfel’s ‘Song of Bernadette’, but the
project fell through so far as Stravinsky’s
contribution was concerned, The movement
is in three sections, the third being a rcpeat
of the first, and each section separated by a
passage for harp, heard against the upper
strings the first time and woodwind the
second. An interlude of seven bars links the
Andante to the final Con moto
—energetically as powerful as the first
movement and more vivid in harmonic
centrasts, its themes continuously developed
to the vigorously assertive ending.
So far as Stravinsky was concerned, the
Symphony had no successors in the same
style, It was the end of a phase in the
composer’s creative progress, and a
summing-up of experience before he passed
to a new sphere of musical exploration, but
it remains a major testimony to his
© Noél Goodwin
achievement.
INTERVAL
Refreshments will be served in the Surrey
Room by members of the Philharmonic
Society during the interval,
A Sea Symphony
Ralph Vaughan Williams 1872-1958
With the production his cantata Toward
the Unknown Region at the Leeds Festival
in 1907, Vaughan Williams, hitherto known
chiefly as a song writer, drew attention to
himself as one of whom great things might
be cxpected, Three years later, at the same
Festival, he introduced his first symphony,
A Sea Symphony, which made an even
stronger impression and established him as
a figure of real significance in English
music.
As in the earlier work, Vaughan Wiiliams
went for his text to the American poet Walt
Whitman, choosing sections of the poem
‘Sea Drift’, from Leaves of Grass, for his
first three movements and parts of ‘Passage
to India’ for his finale, (It was the first of
the 11 poems which make up ‘Sea Drift’
that Delius set.)
The voices—soloists and chorus—play the
leading part throughout; there is no purely
orchestral movement. The symphony is
memorable for its wealth of broad, noble
melodies, the feature above all which makes
a hearing such an uplifting inspiring
experience,
1.
A SONG OF ALL SEAS, ALL SHIPS
Baritone, Soprano, Chorus
Behold, the sea itself,
And on its limitless, heaving breast, the ships;
See, where their white sails, bellying in the
wind, speckle the green and blue,
See, the steamers coming and going, steaming
in or out of port
See, dusky and undulating, the long pennants
of smoke.
Behold, the sea itself,
And on its limitless, heaving breast, the ships.
(Baritone)
Today a rude brief recitative,
Of ships sailing the seas, each with its special
flag or ship-signal,
Of unnamed heroes in the ships—of waves
spreading and spreading far as the eye can
reach,
Of dashing spray, and the winds piping and
blowing,
And out of these a chant for the sailors of all
nations,
Fitful like a surge.
Of sea-captains young and old, and the mates,
and of all intrepid sailors,
Of the few, very choice, taciturn, whom fate
can never surprise nor death dismay,
Picked sparingly, without noise by thee, old
ocean, chosen by thee,
Thou sea that pickets and cullest the race in
time, and unitest nations,
Sucfided by thee, old husky nurse, embodying
thee,
Indomitable, untamed as thee.
(Soprano)
Flaunt out, O sea, your separate flags of
nations!
Flaunt out visible as ever the various flags and
ship-signals!
But do you reserve especially for yourself and
for the soul of man one flag above all the
rest,
A spiritual woven signal for all nations, emblem
of man elate above death,
Token of all brave captains and of all intrepid
sailors and mates,
And to all that went down doing their duty,
Reminiscent of them, twined from all intrepid
Down from the gardens of Asia descending,
Adam and Eve appear, then their myriad
(Baritone)
Wandering, yearning, with restless explorations,
questioning, baffled, formless, feverish,
captains young and old.
A pennant universal, subtly waving all time,
progeny after them,
with never-happy hearts that sad
o’er all brave sailors,
All sea, all ships.
ON THE BEACH AT NIGHT ALONE
2.
Baritone, Chorus
On the beach at night alone,
As the old mother sways her to and fro singing
incessant refrain,—
‘Wherefore unsatisfied soul? Whither O
mocking life?’
Ah who shall soothe these feverish children?
Who justify these restless explorations?
Who speak the secret of impassive earth?
her husky song,
Yet soul be sure the first intent remains, and
the future.
Pcrhaps even now the time has arrived.
After the seas are all crossed,
After the great captains and engineers have
As T watch the bright stars shining, I think a
thought of the clef of the universe and of
A vast similitude interlocks all,
All distances of space however wide,
All distances of time,
All souls, all living bodies though they be ever
The true son of God shall come singing his
may exist,
O we can wait no longer,
We too take ship O Soul,
All lives and deaths, all of the past, present,
future,
This vast similitude spans them, and always has
spanned,
And shall forever span them and shall
completely hold and enclose them.
(SCHERZQ) THE WAVES
Chorus
After the sea-ship, after the whistling winds,
After the white-gray sails taut to their whistling
spars and ropes,
Below, a myriad, myriad waves hastening,
lifting up their necks
Tending in ceaseless flow toward the track of
the ship,
Waves of the ocean bubbling and gurgling,
blithely prying,
Waves, undulating waves, liquid, uneven,
emulous waves,
Toward that whirling current, laughing and
buoyant with curves,
Where the great vessel sailing and tacking
displaced the surface,
Larger and smaller waves in the spread of the
ocean yearnfully flowing,
The wake of the sea-ship after she passes,
flashing and frolicsome under the sun,
A motley procession with many a fleck of foam
and many fragments,
Following the stately and rapid ship, in the
wake following.
4,
accomplished their work,
After the noble inventors,
Finally shall come the poet worthy that name,
so different,
All nations, all identities that have existed or
3.
shall be carried out,
THE EXPLORERS
Baritone, Soprano, Chorus
O vast Rondure, swimming in space,
Covered all over with visible power and beauty,
Alternate light and day and the teeming
spiritual darkness,
songs.
Joyous we too launch out on trackless seas,
Fearless for unknown shores on waves of
ecstasy to sail,
Amid the wafting winds (thou pressing me to
thee, I thee to me, O Soul),
Caroling free, singing our song of God,
Chanting our chant of pleasant exploration.
O Soul thou pleasest me, I thee,
Sailing these seas or on the hills, or walking in
the night,
Thoughts, silent thoughts, of Time and Space
and Death, like waters flowing,
Bear me indeed as through the regions infinite,
Whose air I breathe, whose ripples hear, lave
me all over,
Bathe me, O God, in thee, mounting to thee,
I and my soul to range in range of thee.
O thou transcendent,
Nameless, the fibre and the breath,
Light of the light, shedding forth universes,
thou centre of them.
Swiftly I shrivel at the thought of God,
At Nature and its wonders, Time and Space
and Death,
But that I, turning, call to thee O Soul, thou
actual me,
And lo, thou gently masterest the orbs,
Thou matest Time, smilest content at Death,
And fillest, swellest full the vastnesses of Space.
Greater than stars or suns,
Bounding O Soul thou journeyest forth;
Away O Soul! hoist instantly the anchor!
Cut 1lhe hawsers—haul out—shake out every
sail!
Reckless O Soul, exploring, I with thee, and thou with me,
For we are bound where mariner has not yet
dared to go,
Unspeakable high processions of sun and moon
And we will risk the ship, ourselves and all.
With inscrutable purpose, some hidden
O daring joy, but safe! are they not all the seas
and countless stars above,
Below, the manifold grass and waters,
prophetic intention,
Now first it seems my thought begins to span
thee.
O my brave Soul!
A farther, farther sail!
of God?
O farther, farther, farther sail!
Walt Whitman
SATURDAY 16 MAY at 7.30 p.m.
University of Surrey Chamber Orchestra
Overture ‘William Tell>—Rossini
Essay for Clarinet and Orchestra—
Sebastian Forbes
Piano Concerto in A minor—Schumann
Symphony No. 5—Sibelius
John Denman—<Clarinet
David Angus—Pianoforte
Robert Hughes
Sebastian Forbes
Conductors
Tickets 80p (Students and OAPs 45p)
obtainable at A & N Guildford,
University of Surrey Music Dept. and at
the door on the night.
Guildford Borough Council would like to
express its thanks to the Red Cross organisation
and the Guildford Philharmonic Society for
their services at ali the concerts throughout the
season.