U.S. concertgoers tend to believe that, after Purcell, there are really only two major English composers: Edward Elgar and Benjamin Britten. And most are at least aware of two other remarkable composers, Arthur Sullivan and Ralph Vaughan Williams.
But very few people, in England or America, are aware that World War I marked the beginning of a new explosion of creative energy in England, one that saw exciting modern composers pour into England's concert halls.
The American Symphony Orchestra's program "This England" will showcase the work of four of these unjustly neglected composers: Arthur Bliss, Frank Bridge, Robert Simpson and William Walton at Carnegie Hall on Friday, January 31 at 8:00 p.m.
The reasons for this neglect stem from a perception in the late 19th and early 20th centuries that, despite England's power and reputation, it wasn't actually very good at producing interesting music. Modernist composer Elizabeth Lutyens summed up this attitude when she famously dismissed English music as "cowpat music."
The ASO invites you, then, to discover just how wrong she was.
Their concert begins with an apocalyptic vision of the future, expressed in Arthur Bliss' score to the film version of H.G. Wells' sci-fi cult classic The Shape of Things to Come. Next comes the imaginative (and very rarely heard) piano and orchestra work Phantasm by Frank Bridge, who is better known today as Benjamin Britten's teacher. Pianist Piers Lane will play the tour de force piano solo. A literal creative eruption closes the first half, in the boisterous, but beautifully crafted shape of Robert Simpson's "Volcano."
The entire second half is devoted to William Walton's Symphony No. 2, a work that ASO music director Leon Botstein has called, simply, "one of the great symphonies of the 20th century."
The first three of these composers are almost never heard in America today, and Walton is now generally better-known for his iconic film scores (especially the three Laurence Olivier Shakespeare films, starting with Henry V), than his many classical works.
Botstein dismisses this as the whim of fashion: "Except for Walton, maybe none of the names are very well-known, but they were once very [famous] and very highly regarded."
In fact, these composers are part of a line of creativity in English music that stretches to today and influences their British creative heirs, proof of which might be seen in The New York Times' recent list of modern operas that will surely last. Seven out of the 13 named are by British composers (as were several more of Classicalite's own count).
Botstein will have more to say about this highly creative period in English music during a Conductor's Notes Q&A at 7:00 p.m. in Stern Auditorium before the concert.
For more program notes and ticket information, be sure to visit americansymphony.org.
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