SHINE AND SHADE English 20th Century Recorder Music “Lead we not here a jolly life Betwixt the shine and shade” We can safely assume that the dramatist Henry Taylor was not thinking of the recorder when he penned these words in 1834. The instrument, once hugely popular, had long since fallen out of fashion, and was not to enjoy a revival for almost a century. It had, in any case, never been considered capable of expressing the extremes of musical light and shade. It is arguably only in the 20th century that the recorder has found its true expressive voice. The music on this album is a testimony to the shining brilliance and soulful emotion which can be coaxed from a simple pipe. Considering the huge upsurge of interest in the recorder in recent decades, it is remarkable that such high-quality music by English composers of stature has largely been neglected in favour of, on the one hand, indifferent baroque sonatas, and on the other tuneless avant-garde experiments. Much of the music here would not exist without the pioneering work of the late Carl Dolmetsch, who commissioned over 50 new pieces for his annual Wigmore Hall recitals between 1939 and 1989. We have chosen five of the best works from this important collection, together with two others of similar merit, to produce a programme which places the recorder firmly in the musical mainstream. As with many 20th century English composers, Norman Fulton was inspired by the folk-song movement. In the Scottish Suite, written for Dolmetsch in 1954, the result is earthy and dramatic, with rustic dances skilfully transposed to the medium of the concert platform by use of piquant harmonies and imaginative accompanimental figures, whilst the slow movements evoke beautifully the solitary loneliness of the Scottish highlands and islands. By contrast, Edmund Rubbra’s Meditazione Sopra Coeurs Désolés (1949) brings to mind the rarefied atmosphere of English academia: one can well imagine the composer conceiving the piece in the cloistered walkways of Oxford University, where he was a professor for much of his life. The pastoral influence of Rubbra’s teachers, Holst and Vaughan Williams, is much in evidence in this work, which takes the form of a series of meditative variations on a 15th century theme, harmonised and developed in a way which preserves the timeless, modal quality of the original. The Sonata by York Bowen, composed in 1946 and premiered by Dolmetsch two years later, is an unashamedly luxurious and romantic work which revels in the certainties of a bygone age, and which surely must count amongst the most significant works in the recorder’s entire repertoire. Bowen was widely known as a virtuoso pianist, reflected as much in the piano part of this sonata as in his once famous concertos and showpieces. His recorder writing is equally idiomatic, notwithstanding a profusion of high notes in the last movement, which require an athletic agility from the soloist! As the two earliest pieces on this album were written either side of the Second World War, it is hard to resist drawing comparisons between the music and the mood of the day. Certainly the opening of Lennox Berkeley’s classic Sonatina (1939) contains little of the optimism of Bowen’s work, its angst-ridden harmonies and unsettled motifs seeming to reflect pre-war tension, as does the sparse, uneasy slow movement. Can one even detect a certain sarcasm in the work’s witty finale? In any case, Berkeley’s style owes little to the English pastoral tradition and more to the existentialist European school of Nadia Boulanger, with whom he studied for many years. One of England’s most respected living composers, Edward Gregson enjoys an international reputation in particular for his brass band compositions, but the work on this album, written in 1993, shows a more reflective side, based on his response to three paintings by Matisse. In the first a simple pastoral melody from the recorder floats over changing chord patterns in the piano part, and in the second the languid, dreamlike quality is strongly reminiscent of Debussy. An ebullient joi-de-vivre characterises The Dance, based on one of Matisse’s best known paintings, striking for its vivid colours. Our title track, Stephen Dodgson’s Shine and Shade, was written for the recorder player Richard Harvey in 1975, and is subtitled ‘Variations in Contrasting Hue’. Dodgson is noted for his refined and civilised style, and his craftsmanship can clearly be discerned in this work, which weaves together elements of contrapuntal classicism, blues and modern jazz in a virtuoso and occasionally humorous display. It may come as a surprise to see the name of Donald Swann on an album of serious classical music. To most he is immortalised as one half of the famous songwriting duo, Flanders and Swann, but it was as a ‘classical’ composer that he strove for recognition in the later years of his life. Rhapsody from Within was written in 1982 for Carl Dolmetsch to celebrate 50 years of musical partnership with the harpsichordist Joseph Saxby. The composer wrote: ‘The title occurred to me at once, as I wished to draw on a lower river of the mind. Shy of the two instruments’ association with another age I appealed to the subconscious to help me “out of time”.’ The result is a charming and unashamedly tuneful work which proudly carries the flag of English eccentricity!