Tippett - Symphony No 2 / Suite From New Year

This is a reliable and exciting performance and excellent recording of a good British symphony. I would like to comment on the Amazon reviewer's remarks about the first performance, which are seriously misleading. Paul Beard, the leader in question, was far from a 'jerk'. He was highly respected, having served under Sir Thomas Beecham and then Sir Adrian Boult, and by 1958 was hugely experienced. He did rebow the very tricky violin parts, but this was not the reason for the collapse, which was caused by a wrong entry from the horns about two and half minutes into the first movement. Boult characteristically did two things - he stopped the performance, which would probably have come together but which clearly did not represent the work faithfully at that point, and he took the blame 'Entirely my fault, ladies and gentlemen.' The restart worked and the piece was securely presented thereafter and then very effectively a few days later in a BBC broadcast, of which I have a recording. Really, what I take exception to is the word 'jerk'! It would be nice if it could be withdrawn. In this very good recording there are no such problems!!

This is a problematic disc in several respects. For me as a reviewer, there is the realization that if this had been a short disc containing only the symphony, I could have defended awarding it three, perhaps even four stars. In other words, including the New Year suite adds a penalty. I think this is justifiable, however, for reviving this execrable work and making it generally available is a disservice to art and music if there ever was one, one which reflects badly on the judgment of Hickox, Chandos or whoever it was who decided to record it. Tippett's New Year suite (I have thankfully never heard the whole opera) might possibly be the most despicable piece of drivel ever written or even conceived of and is one of those enterprises that will forever mar his reputation.

But turn to the symphony; it opens with an exuberant, positive first movement that Hickox takes a little slower and more gravitas-filled than one could ideally hope for. This is music that needs to be played with a certain degree of abandon that the Bournemouth Symphony simply doesn't realize. Part of the result is that the work seems much more laboriously contrapuntal than it ideally should. Still Hickox is impressive in his ability to realize the various glittering textures within a clear vision of the work as a whole. And the finale is superbly done, with the darker, ambiguous reflection of the vivacity of the first movement being impressively realized.

But then we have the New Year Suite. Tippett might have been a gifted composer, but he was embarrassingly helpless as a writer and had some very strange, naive and shallow ideas about other things. His own libretti for several of his operas must rank among the most ludicrously idiotic ever written, ensuring (hopefully) that no one will ever even come near these operas (except, perhaps, for a laugh). But Tippett scored them with deep-felt earnestness, and the end results are usually bizarre at best. Among the most egregious features is perhaps his attempt at staying attuned with popular culture, filling his libretti with popular jargon and themes. And the problem is not only that such attempts don't age particularly well, but that Tippett's understanding of popular culture was consistently both at least twenty years out of date and in any case just a feeble attempt at capturing it by someone whose lack of understanding of it was nothing short of spectacular. Even worse, however, is the New Age themes and ideas whose silliness beggars belief. The fact that you get the sense that Tippett really believed in them doesn't exactly put him in a positive light.

So the New Year suite features electric guitars, wailing saxophones and audio effects e.g. of spaceships landing. It is utter drivel throughout. It is not only musically uninspired - most of it is downright ugly, and apparently unintentionally so. Perhaps the more masochistically inclined can be tempted to listen to it once to derive some of the enjoyment one could obtain from watching an Ed Wood movie. The problem is that it is not only torturously bad music - the earnest silliness of the whole thing is irritating rather than funny. No, this is the kind of score that should have been left languishing in a dusty library and never have found its way onto disc. In that sense, this release is more of a disservice than a service to music, despite the fine performance of the symphony. The sound quality is very good, for all it's worth.