In Volume 1 of this enterprising series, I expressed concern over the disparity in style between the music of father and son which could alienate some listeners, but here that issue hardly appears relevant. Regarding performing forces and stylistic parameters, Lennox Berkeley’s Third Symphony and Sinfonia Concertante, late works both, sound perfectly in step with his son’s Concerto for Oboe and String Orchestra and Secret Garden, and all four works receive committed performances captured in terrific sound.
Lennox Berkeley’s Third Symphony, a tightly woven piece in one movement lasting less than 14 minutes, supposedly incorporates 12-tone elements, but its chromatic harmony and buoyant rhythms recall Honegger as much as the Second Viennese School, while the scoring has a transparency and directness (note the skillful use of the harp) that bespeaks the hand of a master craftsman. It’s not “easy listening”, and neither is the five-movement Sinfonia Concertante, with its expertly written oboe line and colorful contributions from the piano–but it doesn’t take long for both pieces to reveal music of considerable dramatic point and expressive intensity. Spiky but characterful perhaps best describes the two works.
The same adjectives apply to Michael Berkeley’s two contributions to this particular family affair. His Concerto for Oboe and String Orchestra probably will strike you as the finest and most original work on the disc, and with good reason. Its structure is unconventional: a scherzo framed by two large slower movements. The opening Moderato has its turbulent moments, but the conclusion is a transfiguring Elegy to the memory of the composer’s godfather, Benjamin Britten, and it achieves an achingly luminous beauty totally devoid of cheapness or cliché. Obviously a labor of love in the composition, oboist Nicholas Daniel, Hickox, and the BBC National Orchestra of Wales relish the music’s special emotional qualities and convey them with touching sincerity.
Secret Garden, a festive tone poem, opens with brilliant fanfares and tam-tam crashes, then works its way through a series of highly contrasting episodes to a jubilant conclusion that in turn recalls the work’s opening. If you care about fine music of the modern British School, then you will want this disc as a matter of course, and it’s worth having solely for Michael Berkeley’s Oboe Concerto. Certainly both concertante works give a big boost in quality to a medium not exactly overflowing with masterpieces, and on that count alone this release qualifies as a significant musical event.
