Green & Pleasant Land
The recordings of British music on Naxos are rightly celebrated as being
amongst the highest achievements of the label. Matching innovative
repertoire with superb performances, Naxos has brought the work of
under-recognised composers such as Bax, Bliss and Rawsthorne to the
musical forefront. In 1999 Naxos received a prestigious Gramophone
Award to mark the label’s commitment to the work of the composers
who have shaped British music over the last century. A second award in
2001, this time for an outstanding recording of Vaughan Williams by
the Maggini Quartet underlined the impact the label has made with
the critics as well as the public at large. Green and Pleasant Land
contains a selection of individual tracks from award winning discs in
the British Music series, united by a pastoral theme. It is the ideal
starting point for newcomers to the Naxos British Music series.
[1] Ernest John Moeran (1894-1950)
Symphony in G minor: Vivace (From Naxos 8.555837) 5:07
Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, David Lloyd-Jones
During the First World War, Ernest Moeran was posted to Norfolk. Having been profoundly affected
by an earlier hearing of Vaughan Williams’ Norfolk Rhapsody, he began to collect folksongs from the
area which permeated through his later music. Always the countryman, Moeran was long associated
with Norfolk, later with Herefordshire, and for the last thirty years of his life with rural Ireland, living at
Kenmare, County Kerry. It was here that he composed the majority of his Symphony in G minor, which
inspired his friend Arnold Bax to comment on “the unworldly Western-Irish lights that seemed to glimmer
down upon [its] pages” and “the delicately distilled suggestions of native folk-idiom heard [there]”.
However the influences of Sibelius are also felt in the first bars of the Vivace where dancing strings are
heard over a pastoral oboe solo, while horns softly add colour. The overall feeling of this movement is
of a rebirth: in the composer’s words, a “spring-like contrast to the wintry proceedings
of the slow movement”.
[2] Gerald Finzi (1901-1956)
Clear and Gentle Stream (From Naxos 8.555792) 4:15
Choir of St John’s College, Cambridge, Christopher Robinson, Christopher Whitton (organ)
Finzi was a composer with a tragic history. In the early years of his life he lost three of his brothers, his
father and his composition teacher, giving rise to a sense of the transience of life which displays itself
clearly throughout his works. It is therefore perhaps hardly surprising that Finzi recognised a kindred spirit
in Thomas Hardy, whose literature shared the same bleak fatalism. Finzi had a deep love for the English
countryside and his move in 1922 to the Cotswolds provided the same inspiration for his music that this
region had done for Elgar and Vaughan Williams. He later settled with his wife in Hampshire where he
enjoyed a country lifestyle, cultivating apples; indeed he is attributed with rescuing a number of rare
species from extinction. The poetry of Robert Bridges provides the text for this almost hymnal setting,
evoking melancholy nostalgia of lazy summer afternoons.
[3] Arthur Somervell (1863-1937)
The Shropshire Lad: Loveliest of trees (From Naxos 8.557113) 2:08
Christopher Maltman (baritone), Graham Johnson (piano), The Duke Quartet
Although Arthur Somervell composed much orchestral music, it is for his songs that he is best known
today. His five song cycles provided an important contribution to English music, including settings of
the poetry of Housman, Tennyson and Browning, and show the influence of Hubert Parry under whom
Somervell studied in the late 1880s. The ten songs of The Shropshire Lad from which Loveliest of trees
is taken are thematically unified and clearly display Somervell’s gift for matching text to music.
4 Frederick Delius (1862-1934)
Two Aquarelles: Gaily, but not quick (From Naxos 8.555070) 2:00
Northern Sinfonia, David Lloyd-Jones
Frederick Delius is often thought of as the quintessential English composer. However he was born
Fritz Delius in Yorkshire to German parents and spent the majority of his life in France. Delius had a
passionate affinity for nature and his love of the green fields and woods of England shines forth both
in the titles and colours of his music. In this, the second of two Aquarelles, the main theme contains
a lively folk-like melody, while the texture is typically lush and Romantic, evoking thoughts of
verdant pastures and running streams.
[5] Arnold Bax (1883-1953)
Summer Music (From Naxos 8.557144) 9:03
Royal Scottish National Orchestra, David Lloyd-Jones
The pastoral influences diffused throughout the music of Arnold Bax were much darker than those
of many of his contemporaries. Bax long had a passion for Celtic landscapes and legends. His music
often contained elements of the ethereal, but the faerie world he portrayed was never a pastoral
idyll. However his Summer Music provides one of the few exceptions to the rule; while never trite,
this work illustrates a much more sylvan scene. Bax himself described it as “a musical description
of a hot windless June mid-day in some wooded place of Southern England”.
[6] Arthur Bliss (1891-1975)
Conversations for Flute, Oboe, Violin, Viola and Cello (From Naxos 8.557108)
In the Wood: Adagio 3:26
Maggini Quartet, Nicholas Daniel (oboe), Michael Cox (flute)
Arthur Bliss was profoundly affected by his time spent in active service. During the years of the
Great War he was wounded and gassed, and his brother was killed in action. However this never
significantly revealed itself, either in his ebullient nature or in the nature of his music which is often
vividly humorous, cheerful or, as here in In the Wood, blissfully tranquil. One of five self-contained
pieces, it provides a sound picture of a peaceful woodland scene, with the various solo instruments
providing intermittent birdsong.
[7] Edward Elgar (1857-1934)
Sospiri (From Naxos 8.555068) 4:32
English Northern Philharmonia, David Lloyd-Jones
Described as the “most English of composers”, Elgar is perhaps best known for his Pomp and
Circumstance Marches, at the very heart of English nationalistic music. However Elgar later
vociferously rejected the use of Land of Hope and Glory as a military anthem. In fact the Sospiri
(literally, Sighs), scored for string orchestra, harp and organ, was written in the years leading up
to the Great War and can be viewed as an anguished lament against the forthcoming turmoil.
[8] William Walton (1902-1983)
As You Like It: Under the Greenwood Tree (From Naxos 8.553344) 2:05
RTÉ Concert Orchestra, Andrew Penny
The score for the film adaptation of As You Like It was written in 1936, the year of the film’s release.
This also occasioned the first meeting of Walton and Laurence Olivier, star of the film, and led to their
collaboration on three further Shakespearean films. Indeed, Olivier commented of Walton’s input: “I have
always said that if it was not for the music, Henry V would not have been the success it was.” As You
Like It actually includes a strong element of satire on the popular pastoral of Shakespeare’s time, with
many of its characters finding themselves exiled in less than idyllic circumstances in the forest. In the
incidental song Under the Greenwood Tree, omitted from the original film, Walton uses a characteristic
Elizabethan melody but avoids direct and continuous imitation of a period style of writing.
[9] Gustav Holst (1874-1934)
Egdon Heath (From Naxos 8.553696) 12:48
Royal Scottish National Orchestra, David Lloyd-Jones
Gustav Holst regarded the impressionistic tone poem Egdon Heath, composed in 1927, as his finest
work. This was not a view shared by his public, who preferred the more accessible conformance of
The Planets, but this did not deter Holst who never allowed critical opinion to compromise his musical
direction. Like Finzi, Holst had a passionate interest in English literature, particularly the work of
Thomas Hardy; it was Hardy’s novel The Return of the Native which inspired the composer to write
Egdon Heath and it is to him that the work was dedicated. The piece itself has a brooding quality
and perfectly captures the bleak moor landscapes of Hardy’s literature.
[10] Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958)
On Wenlock Edge (From Naxos 8.557114) 3:50
Anthony Rolfe Johnson (tenor), Graham Johnson (piano), Duke Quartet
Like Somervell’s Loveliest of Trees, the six songs of the song cycle On Wenlock Edge are taken from
A. E. Housman’s A Shropshire Lad, and are significant as accomplished work from Vaughan Williams’
early compositional catalogue. As well as English folksong, the French influence of Ravel and
German influence of Bruch, under both of whom the composer studied, can be felt here and in
a strange paradox help to shape the truly English style of one of the country’s best known and
best loved composers.
[11] Herbert Howells (1892-1983)
Like as the hart (From Naxos 8.554659) 5:07
Choir of St John’s College, Cambridge, Christopher Robinson, Iain Farrington (organ)
Despite a Welsh name and Celtic background, Herbert Howells always considered himself at heart
an Englishman. He was born in the heart of Gloucestershire and the beauty of his surroundings
clearly affected him and his music deeply. Howells chose to directly reject the then current trend
toward atonality, instead favouring modal harmonies and medieval-sounding polyphony.
The haunting melodies of Like as the hart lend the piece a serene elegance. It is perhaps one
of his most-performed works today.
[12] Benjamin Britten (1913-1976)
Alla Marcia (From Naxos 8.554360) 3:20
Maggini Quartet
Much of the literary inspiration for Britten’s music is grounded in provincial life, from Peter Grimes
to Albert Herring. This can be perhaps attributed to the prolific composer’s love for his native Suffolk;
in his own words, he felt “firmly rooted in this glorious county”. It was to Suffolk that he returned
after an unfulfilling move to America and he later said: “working becomes more and more difficult
away from that home”. However Britten is in no sense of the word a provincial composer and his music
often displays the influences of the avant-garde movement flowering in central Europe at the time.
Alla Marcia, which shows clear overtones of Mahler, was written in 1933 but remained unpublished
until the 1980s.
[13] Charles Wilfrid Orr (1893-1976)
A Cotswold Hill Tune (From Naxos 8.554186) 5:07
Royal Ballet Sinfonia, David Lloyd-Jones
A Cotswold Hill Tune, published in 1939, constituted Charles Wilfrid Orr’s sole departure from the
song genre in his small but distinguished catalogue of works. The piece is scored for string orchestra
and contains a wonderfully lilting melody, while the texture and lush harmonies display many
influences of Delius.
[14] Malcolm Arnold (b.1921)
Four Cornish Dances, Op. 91 (From Naxos 8.553526)
Vivace (1:38), Andantino (3:09), Con moto (2:36), Allegro ma non troppo (2:36)
Queensland Symphony Orchestra, Andrew Penny
During the 1960s Malcolm Arnold settled in Cornwall for a number of years where he became closely
involved with musical activities in the county. The Four Cornish Dances were written during this time.
The movements are characterised by lively, folklike dance themes, full of gleaming colours.