Tippett - Symphony No 4 - Corelli - Handel Fantasias

Tippett is one of the most "modern", in the sense of "Enlightenment-modern" and humanist, of musical thinkers. Ian Kemp's biography is well worth exploring. There is an astounding integrity to the man and his music. What is the acme of this humanism in his output? Maybe the shattering "Child of our Time" - or maybe the much later Fourth Symphony, which marries the idea of a symphony as a piece which, in performance, is born and dies in the flow of time, and the timebound unfolding of life itself. The insufflation of breath at the beginning, and the literal "last gasp" at the close (wind machine) are immensely memorable, the latter - if you have worked throught the symphony in its own terms - deeply moving. "In its own terms..." because this is absolute music, or at least music as absolute as human musical logic can be, something deeper than mere analogy, something which declares that a being-born, a growth, and the coming of a time-to-die is fundamental to what we are, and therefore to our music.

Hickox and the Bournemouth Symphony in their centenary year of 1993) do immensely well by such a taxing work, so demanding in terms of the communication of musical truth through sonorities. I have an ancient tape which, though it was my first introduction to this amazing work, and the music spoke thorugh it, well illustrates the danger of flab. None of that here. The power of the score is translated into the power of the performance, and the whole is charged with the unsettling sense of a wrestling with the truth of human existence. How antipostmodern can you get?

The Corelli Fantasy is very good, though maybe not as lapel-grabbing as I have heard very occasionally. The sense of the capture and assimilation of the Corelli themes is very powerful, and the organic integration of what on paper looks sectional - which is Tippett's accomplishment - is completed by a thought-through performance.

The Handel Fantasia I didn't know before. Again the coherence of "sections" into functional "movements", and the ultimate hanging-together of the whole work, discussed in the good programme notes, depend on Tippett's art and craftsmanship, but also on the performance; Shelley joins the Bournemouth SO to deliver the work with luminescence and power, a performance in which the detail (out of which so much of the power arises) is in finely-balanced relation to the overall architectonics.

Tippett is a demanding composer, and one of his demands is active intelligent listening. But one of the ways he coerces you into doing just that is by bowling you over at moments. These performances allow him to do just that.

Strictly, I acquired this disk for the `Variations on a Theme of Handel', which is one of few Tippett pieces that I do not own and know. I certainly was not disappointed. Brimming with the life-affirming and crystalline vivacity of his initial period. The leaping, prancing idiom of his pianism, quite unlike that of anyone else, pre-figuring the heart-breakingly beautiful Piano Concerto soon to follow. The piece just leaves an aching wish that Tippett had generated much more piano music from this period.

So now to the main course. The marvellous Symphony No.4. We've had versions from Solti, and even from Tippett himself, both of which show the piece in its startling originality. However, as with the other Chandos productions by Hickox we are given something smoother and deeper and more polished, with no rough edges left. One can't help but feel that Hickox has completely assimilated the score and determines the way the dynamics are to evolve passage by passage and bar by bar. He's then gone on to convince his players of the sanctity of the task in hand, of presenting this masterpiece in its exquisite perfection. In this form I think we have something that can at last be seen as the perfection of the symphonic form in the post-Shostakovich era. Another aspect of this piece is that the infamous wind machine has been replaced with a far more discreet player breathing at a mike. The result is far less intrusive, and is perhaps even lost at certain points. While I get the philosophic implications of the breathing noises there's no doubt that it put the piece beyond the pale for the more regular concert going public. Maybe this will commence the rehabilitation of the score that this mighty expression of the human spirit deserves.

The other piece on the disc is Hickox's rendition of the beautiful 'Fantasia Concertante on a Theme of Corelli'. Malcolm Sargent decreed this piece unplayable in 1956 and yet by the early 70s Neville Marriner and St Martin's in the Field had given us the version that would remain definitive for decades to come. I have heard other renditions since, even one under Tippett's baton, but none seemed to catch the dynamics and flow of what remained for so long the only real version. Well, there is now a new version by Hickox and I have to say that first and foremost from the recording point of view one can now hear lines and voices that got lost in the sheen of the earlier version. Apart from that it is not possible to say that one version superseded the other. They both perhaps bring to the fore details that weren't perhaps present in the other. However, both pay the respect to the core values of a cool and stately flow that is never diverted despite some of the hugely passionate factors in play above.

So, I would say to the Tippett fan, even if you have other recordings of the key pieces, these versions are highly valid alternative perspectives. For the Tippett beginner then this would surely be as good a place as any to start.