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Site review by Castor September 16, 2007
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Performance: Sonics (MC): |
Bantock devotees have long waited for a modern recording of this piece and thanks to the courage and enterprise of Chandos it has now arrived in a performance and recording that is unlikely ever to be exceeded let alone equalled.
Omar Khayyám is a work of epic proportions and to commit it to disc is a mammoth undertaking. A photograph of the recording sessions in the accompanying booklet shows the forces involved; a huge orchestra, including such exotic instruments as camel bells, two full string sections placed to the left and right of the conductor, a mixed chorus and three principal soloists. The work, as presented here, does have a few minor cuts that were authorised by the composer, but it still lasts an astonishing 2’51”.
Granville Bantock was an erudite man whose knowledge of Celtic, Greek, Persian and Arabic legends provided the stimulus for many of his choices of musical subject. From his earliest compositions his fascination with exotic and heroic themes is apparent. This culminated in his decision to set the “Rubáiyát” (verses of four lines) of the eleventh century Persian astronomer, mathematician and poet Omar Khayyám to music using the English translation by Edward Fitzgerald (1809 – 1883) which had something of a vogue in late Victorian and Edwardian times.
Bantock’s setting took three years to complete and is cast in three parts, each of which was performed separately prior to the first complete performance in 1910. The music is firmly tonal and the influence of Wagner and Richard Strauss as well as Tchaikovsky is apparent throughout this rich and melodic late-romantic score.
The theme of the work is the transience of human existence and its message of ‘Waste not your hour’ is most certainly a valuable one for all of us.
Not only is the piece ‘operatic’ in length, but also in its treatment of the texts, which are assigned to three ‘characters’, The Beloved (contralto), The Poet (tenor) and The Philosopher (baritone), as well as the chorus.
The reliable Catherine Wyn-Rogers after a slightly tentative start sings radiantly while Toby Spence’s light tenor, aided no doubt by the microphones, sounds suitably heroic and impassioned. The fine baritone of Roderick Williams is also most impressive in his philosophical musings. The BBC Symphony Chorus deserves particular praise for its attack and clear diction.
The recording was made between October 2005 and February 2007 in the spacious acoustic of Watford Colosseum and Ralph Couzens has captured the scale of this massive piece in superb 5.0 channel DSD sound. There is a most convincing terracing between soloists, orchestra and chorus and, as is often the case in the finest recordings, the walls of the listening room seem to melt away and one is transported to the recording location.
Vernon Handley, the doyen of British conductors and a lifelong champion of both familiar and neglected British music, has already made six discs of Bantock with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra for Hyperion (RBCD only) and his experience with the style and idiom of the music is evident here. He handles the huge forces with consummate skill and the participants respond with both commitment and enthusiasm to his inspired direction. I have not heard the BBC Symphony orchestra sound this impressive on record for some considerable time. In the hands of a lesser conductor this sprawling canvas could ramble disastrously, but in this performance the music is excitingly driven forward while still providing many moments of repose in which to luxuriate in Bantock’s writing. With the hectic pace of life today, few will have the time or the inclination to listen very often to the complete work in one sitting, but what I find remarkable is how, even in a choral work of this length, Bantock manages to avoid longeurs by constantly varying both the mood and pace of the music and his multicoloured orchestral pallet.
The three SACDs are presented in a slipcase with a lavish booklet that contains not only Lewis Foreman’s scholarly and authoritative notes outlining the background to the work and guidance to the motifs that Bantock uses in each of the three parts, but also some interesting photographs of the composer. The texts of the fifty-eight quatrains that Bantock set are given in full.
Lewis Foreman tells us that during the recording of Omar Khayyám the music made a considerable impact on the players and singers, the general reaction being amazement that they had not known it before; most saw it as the Hollywood epic of its time. It is to be hoped that this splendid recording will encourage even more awareness of the quality of Bantock’s unjustly neglected music.
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Copyright © 2007 Graham Williams and SA-CD.net
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