Parry: Symphony No.5, etc.

On this CD:

1. Symphony No. 5 in B minor ("Symphonic Fantasia")
Composed by Sir Charles H.H. Parry
Performed by London Philharmonic Orchestra
Conducted by Sir Adrian Boult

2. Blest Pair of Sirens for chorus & orchestra
Composed by Sir Charles H.H. Parry
Performed by London Philharmonic Orchestra
Conducted by Sir Adrian Boult

3. Symphonic Variations for orchestra in E
Composed by Sir Charles H.H. Parry
Performed by London Philharmonic Orchestra
Conducted by Sir Adrian Boult

4. Elegy for Brahms for orchestra in A minor
Composed by Sir Charles H.H. Parry
Performed by London Philharmonic Orchestra
Conducted by Sir Adrian Boult

Tracks:

Sym No.5 in b: I. Stress (Slow-Allegro-Tempo I)-
Sym No.5 in b: II. Love (Lento)-
Sym No.5 in b: III. Play (Vivace-Tranquillo-Vivace)-
Sym No.5 in b: IV. Now (Moderato-Tranquillo)
Blest Pair Of Sirens
Sym Vars
Elegy For Brahms

Customer Reviews:

A GENTLEMAN'S GENTLEMAN.......2004-01-27

If you like this kind of music, you are not likely ever to hear it better done than this, whatever the later advances in recording techniques. Musically-minded connoisseurs of absolute tedium will have some familiarity with the late-19th century journalistic battles between the respective proponents of Wagner and Brahms. Wagner himself was a participant in this battle, Brahms not. The battle-line was very clear, between perceived progressives and conservatives. Wagner had himself laid out the blueprint in his propaganda to the effect that in the 9th symphony Beethoven had broken the bounds of purely 'absolute' music and set the scene for the next era, in which music required an underlying poetic idea. The battle of the flying inkpots took off from there, and has majored in heat rather than light ever since.

Sir Hubert Parry was the teacher not only of Ralph Vaughan Williams but also of Donald Francis Tovey. The English `professorial' school of composers of which he was the most famous name on account of his `Jerusalem' were widely identified, and to a great extent self-identified, as being of the `Brahms' or `conservative' school. Brahms was possibly the most influential classical composer there has ever been, but for a variety of reasons. The second Viennese school (Schoenberg, Berg, Webern et al) took him as their intellectual inspiration and incidentally viewed him as a radical like themselves. His influence in other directions, which continues to this day more than a century after he died, has been based on the extraordinary power of his personal musical idiom, that based in its turn on both the popular German style and the rigorous German academic manner as espoused by Bach. Composers caught up in these cross-currents either ignored them to all intents and purposes (Debussy, Ravel, Delius, Britten); or were big enough and smart enough and original enough to approach the two blazing flames without being destroyed (Mahler, Strauss, Elgar); or they were like dear Parry.

Shaw got the whole issue basically right, it seems to me. The muse of absolute music was wedded by Bach, Mozart was unfaithful to her and Beethoven abandoned her entirely, and long before the 9th symphony too. For Wagner that was that, -- he never wrote a bar of `absolute' music in his life whether voices were involved or not - when suddenly what should loom out of Hamburg but the most absolute musician since Bach himself, and maybe the greatest harmonist since Bach too. Parry was no doubt a better musician than Shaw, but he was far less of an intellectual and far less of a genius and he fell between the stools. He thought he was some kind of Brahmsian not knowing what that was, and `magna comitante caterua' [with a great throng in attendance] of chatterers since. This is not absolute music, it is the music of a talented self-expresser with a top-class academic training. The Brahms in it is the Brahms that has been so influential - melodious, euphonious, emotional - not the stuff that makes him, in my view, the greatest and by far the greatest composer born in the 19th century.

If you want to know Parry this is where you should get to know him. Sir Adrian was in his time the leading exponent of English music, and I hope I am right in thinking that his successor in that respect is the American Andre Previn, because it should not remain an old-boys' club. The recorded quality is not up to the best modern standards, but then neither is the music.

Edwardiana.......2003-06-07

About as Edwardian as the R.M.S. Titanic--majestic, large in scale, heavily decorated, and supremely confident. Nonetheless, this music is very well crafted and is full of genuine sentiment, and gives a good musical portrait of an era long past (the Pax Britannica of 1814-1914). Recommended.