English String Tradition

Still a couple more Christmas related disks to cover but taking a break and going back to the shelf rotation policy, we come to a recording of music by English composer George Dyson. The performers are the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra conducted by David Lloyd-Jones and the main work on the disk is Dyson's Symphony in G major. It dates from 1938 and although superficially a celebratory piece full of pageantry that related to a choral work of his on the Canterbury Tales, it is also clearly a work of troubled times with distant echoes of war. Enigmatic beuty and depictions of icy landscapes alternate with mock courtly dance music and fine orchestral effects. Traces of Sibelius and Rimsky-Korsakov can be discerned as well as contemporaries such as Vaughan Williams. The disk also features an overture, At The Tabard Inn, which prefaced the Canterbury Pilgrims work and a fine Concerto da Chiesa for String Orchestra. This is in the long tradition of English string writing and is maybe the most striking piece on the disk for me. It also coincidentally plays to the seasonal theme by making extensive use, in a very soulful manner, of the theme from the Advent hymn Veni Emmanuel. Dyson is one of that group of early to mid twentieth century English composers who are not major forces but who deserve more consideration than they have been used to getting. A balance may now be on the way to being struck.