Richard Rodney Bennett - Orchestral Works, Vol. 2 (John Wilson)

Information

Composer: Richard Rodney Bennett

• (01) Concerto for Stan Getz
• (04) Symphony No. 2
• (08) Serenade
• (11) Partita

Howard McGill, saxophone
BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra
John Wilson, conductor

Date: 2018
Label: Chandos
https://www.chandos.net/products/catalogue/CHAN%205212

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Review

This is the second volume of John Wilson’s ‘celebration’ (for that’s what this series surely is) of Richard Rodney Bennett’s manifold gifts as a composer – and once more the choices rejoice in his creative shapeshifting.

The accomplished jazzer is first up. But his Concerto for Stan Getz was custom-made to gift the legendary saxophonist a whole new landscape. It was the classical piece he craved but sadly never got to play. Even as the music was being faxed to him (1990) he was ailing and fading fast. Scored for timpani and strings, this exhilarating work seeks to honour Getz’s free spirit while harnessing it to a new-found symphonic rigour. The first sound we hear from the tenor sax soloist (the excellent Howard McGill) is a howl from street level. This is the tough visage that the instrument less often shows us and it plays against a driving insistency in the orchestra.

But the ‘nighthawk’ crooning is there too, of course, snatching at lyricism, restless to be set free in the cadenza where Bennett finally offered Getz some reflective moments of improvisation. It all points to the swooning enticements of the slow-movement Elegy in which Bennett’s movie credentials (here decidedly ‘noir’) proffer a luscious melody most of us would swear we’d heard before even if we hadn’t.

Symphony No 2 – written in 1967, at the peak of Bennett’s early avant-garde wanderings – is an atonal piece that’s damned if it’s going to be perceived as such. It’s big on dynamic contrasts. The tension between the imperative and the lyric is (like the opening movement of the Concerto) key to its intrigue. It’s taut, concise and fizzing with incident, now propulsive, now reflective, now ethereal. Indeed, its still centre is as beautiful as it is ephemeral. Wilson’s performance with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra is most accomplished and, more importantly, persuasive, full of atmosphere in those distilled moments.

The remaining works – Serenade for small orchestra (1977) and Partita (1995) – are brimful of singing diatonic tunes and an air that is uniquely English even when clearly alluding to other nationalities. What Bennett displays in the Partita is so redolent of William Walton, not least the viola melody in the super-lush Lullaby. There’s that ever-present sinuous touch of the exotic. Walton’s Mediterranean streak.

But most revealing of all – and perhaps the biggest testament to Bennett’s prowess as a composer – is the fact that whether he’s flexing his intellectual muscle in the Second Symphony, schmoozing in the Sax Concerto’s slow movement or simply having a good time in the Partita, this is unmistakably the work of the same composer.

-- Edward Seckerson, Gramophone

More reviews:
http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2018/Aug/Bennett_orchestral_v2_CHSA5212.htm
http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2018/Oct/Bennett_orchestral_v2_CHSA5212.htm
http://classicalsource.com/db_control/db_cd_review.php?id=15668
https://www.allmusic.com/album/sir-richard-rodney-bennett-orchestral-works-vol-2-mw0003183850
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Bennett-Orchestral-Works-Vol-2/dp/B07D51TYB7

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Richard Rodney Bennett (29 March 1936 – 24 December 2012) was an English composer of film, TV and concert music, and also a jazz pianist and occasional vocalist. Bennett studied at the Royal Academy of Music with Howard Ferguson, Lennox Berkeley and Cornelius Cardew, spent two years in Paris as a student Pierre Boulez. He was International Chair of Composition at the Royal Academy of Music between 1994 and the year 2000. Bennett wrote in a wide range of styles, producing over 200 works for the concert hall, and 50 scores for film and television. He was also a writer and performer of jazz songs for 50 years.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Rodney_Bennett

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John Wilson (born 1972 in Gateshead, Tyne & Wear) is a British conductor, arranger and musicologist who conducts orchestras and operas, as well as big band jazz. He studied music at A-level at Newcastle College, and later attended the Royal College of Music, first as a percussionist, and later studying composition and conducting. Wilson is the creator of the John Wilson Orchestra (formed in 1994) and has been Associate Guest Conductor of the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra since September 2016. He has made numerous recordings, both with his own orchestra and as guest conductor.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Wilson_(conductor)
https://johnwilsonconductor.com/

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