Study Music April 11, 2019

Today I'm trying a new composer, for me, Sir Hamilton Harty, an Irish composer from the early 20th century. The album opens with his tone poem 'With the Wild Geese' which has you soaring, diving and swimming with occasional fights against the elements. It turns out, the work is prefaced by two poems by Emily Lawless, one about an Irish regiment fighting the French in the 18th century and one about the ghosts of fallen soldiers, so the moods evoked by my images of geese over bonnie Ireland were not what Harty was going for. Either way, the music is beautiful.

The short fantasy 'In Ireland' comes next and is a happy ditty that also soars, with far fewer dives.

The main piece on the album is Harty's 'Irish Symphony' and it certainly lives up to the name. Its four distinct movements take us once again soaring and diving, but in a pleasurable flight over Ireland, both its geography and its iconography. The beauty of land, the dances of its people, the richness of its culture. Its all there in what is a remarkable and delightful symphony.

Following this discovery I turned to one of my favourite composers, the tragically undervalued Ippolitov-Ivanov, and his first symphony. I hadn't heard his symphony before so it was exciting to find it. It is brilliant, especially the sorrowful third movement and the cathartic joy of the fourth, but it feels a bit more formal than his other works. It's as if here he forced himself to conform to more classical notions and lost some of the ethereal beauty and evocative phrases I love in his shorter works. Not entirely, the very structure is a break from the "classical" symphony, and it is a beautiful work, just not as good, in my mind, as his sketches and fragments.

The recording, a 2015 album by the Singapore Symphony Orchestra conducted by Hoey Choo, follows the symphony with one such set of shorter pieces, the Turkish Fragments. There are four fragments: A Caravan; At Rest; The Night; and At the Festival, and each is highly evocative. I prefer an older recording by the USSR Symphony Orchestra which captured the mood that much more - you can hear the winds around the caravan - but this was still a good piece of work. The album closes out with Turkish March, which usually follows the fragments. Ippolitov-Ivanov wrote some good marches, so if you like marches look them up. There's also the Jubilee March and the Georgian March which is the last piece in the second set of Caucasian Sketches.

Swoon Nominations

So nominations for the Classic 100 Swoon are closed and the big list will be put up soon. I nominated more than I can vote for and there were some more obvious choices I might vote for that I didn't need to nominate. Of course, last time I nominated things not one of my nominations made the voting list so it may not be an issue.

Anyway, here's a selection of what I nominated. I was impressed to see someone had already nominated one of Liadov's Eight Russin Folk Songs for Orchestra, the Hymn or Religious Song, so I just nominated the Lament. I also nominated The Enchanted Lake (which has a good chance of making the countdown I think, and The Magical Snuffbox - which unfortunately is called the Musical Snuffbox ... here's hoping they figure that out.

Sticking with great Russians, I also nominated Mussogsky's Dawn on the Moscow River from Khovashchina and The Old Castle from Pictures at an Exhibition. Slipped some Ippolitov-Ivanov in there two, the Introduction to Caucasian Sketches No 2 and At Rest and Nocturne from the Turkish Fragments - the second and third movements.

A Narnia Lullaby by Gregory-WIlliams was my most modern nomination, it has always captured me, every time I hear it I drift to another world. I don't have high hopes for it in the countdown however.

I was a little stunned when I found no Elena Kats-Chernin on the preliminary list when she has some remarkably beautiful Swoons. I put forth Eliza's Aria from the Wild Swans (which was one I thought would be there by default), and a couple of short pieces I find equally swoon worthy, including this amazing Bucharian Melody.

There were a few others I nominated but this is your lot for now.

PS Okay one more, there's a short solo piano piece by Mozart which I first heard on Gerard Willem's Reflections on Mozart album and it is pure swoon. All the genius of Mozart with a heart-wrenching beauty underlying it. This version is Mitsuko Uchida's rendition.

Elena Kats-Chernin: A first look

Okay the year is getting on and things haven't been going to plan, so I may shrink the Australian Composer Survey for now, but it will be an ongoing thing I suspect. But I do want to do one more now, which may also become an ongoing thing since the composer in question is alive and kicking, not to mention quite prolific. Of current Australian composers I think she is my favourite. She has written a hauntingly beautiful ballet, works for string quartet, reimaginings of Bach and much more. She is of course Elena Kats-Chernin.

In a switch from Glanville-Hicks, Elena was born in Tashkent and moved to Australia; but like Peggy she also studied music in Europe. And just as Peggy appears to be popular in Germany, Elena has written music for German/French projects namely some silent film soundtracks.

Probably her most famous piece is Eliza's Aria from the ballet Wild Swans. There are numerous versions of this on YouTube and it's readily available one various ABC albums and others. Originally a wordless aria, she has arranged it for solo piano (performed here by the composer herself) and piano and violin too. It's a remarkable piece with its lilting ups and downs, which I imagine are a considerable challenge to sing. Despite its somewhat staccato nature it flows smoothly, I picture it like a gentle river with ripples. The first movement of her second piano concerto works in a similar fashion - I found it by accident while looking for Clocks, her first major composition but it didn't appear.

To finish for now and to give you an idea of her versatility I'll just mention these two videos. The first is a Bucharian Melody, which reminds me a little of Ippolitov-Ivanov, probably from similar geographic origins I imagine but I'd need to investigate more. It definitely has the feel of Eastern Europe, to me anyway. The second is her Russian Rag, one of her ragtime pieces, played here on a delightful array of instruments I'm not even going to try to guess what they all are.