Simon Preston

The potential of music as a means of adding dignity and grandeur to state occasions has surely been lost on a few rulers in history. Portraits of antique kings and queens are more often admired (or the reverse) for their artistic qualities, as opposed to the enhancement in the status of their subjects they were originally intended to confer. Similarly, the appeal of ceremonial music from former ages is for modern listeners primarily aesthetic.

This 75-minute collection brings together music heard at a staggering variety of British royal occasions. Zadok the Priest has been included in every coronation service held in that building ever since the coronation of King George II and Queen Caroline in Westminster Abbey on 11 October 1727. There is music for the coronation of King James II in 1685 (Purcell’s I was glad), and a later setting of the same verses by Parry for the coronation of Edward VII in Westminster Abbey on 9 August 1902.

Of course, there’s music for Queen Elizabeth II – Walton’s Coronation Te Deum and Orb and Sceptre for the coronation on 2 June 1953 and Bliss’s march Welcome the Queen, which commemorated the return of the monarch from her Commonwealth tour in 1954.

The British national anthem hardly needs an introduction. Benjamin Britten’s distinctive arrangement was first performed in Leeds on 7 October 1961 and has been heard countless times since.

Johann Michael Haydn, brother of Joseph, was a highly proficient composer in his own right who earned the respect and affection of his contemporaries. A Gramophone reviewer described him thus: ‘He is a man whose character, it seems to me, always comes clearly through his music: he was cheerful, easygoing, unambitious (also, said the Mozarts, inclined to the bottle)’. In recent decades, his music has begun to be more widely appreciated, due largely to the efforts of the American musicologist Charles Sherman, whose discoveries include this Horn Concerto in D major. This collection, originally issued on Decca’s ‘Serenata’ series in 1993, has long been out of circulation, and offers music of incredible charm and warmth. Hidden, as it were, from history, it is now exhumed on Eloquence for enjoyment.

A generous collection of Haydn Concertos, Overtures and Dances, this 2CD set offers the Philips recordings of the Cello Concertos and the Argo recordings of the remaining works. Although issued in various reissues, the Marriner/Argo Haydn Concertos have never before been offered collectively, and this collection offers a great opportunity to explore these recordings from 1966–69. Familiar works such as the E flat major Trumpet Concerto and the two Cello Concertos appear together with the little-known Organ Concerto. Also on offer are two sets of German Dances/Allemandes (both making their first appearance on CD) and a pair of Overtures, of which that for Acide e Galatea is a first-on-CD release.

Westminster Abbey is a royal church, founded in 1065 by King Edward the Confessor, who was buried in the original Norman building only a few days after its consecration. Almost exactly two centuries later, in 1269, his body was ‘translated’ or removed to its present resting-place in the shrine east of the High Altar. It is this ceremony which is commemorated every year on the anniversary, 13 October. The Translation of St. Edward is, in fact, one of the high festivals in the Abbey domestic calendar.

Evensong is the service sung in nearly every Anglican church on Sundays and in cathedrals and collegiate churches several times a week. It is modeled on the pre-Reformation ‘lesser hours’, and in fact a skilful conflation of two of them, Vespers and Compline, made by Archbishop Cranmer for the First English Prayer Book of 1549. The service as here recorded is sung in cathedral as distinct from the parish church style. This in effect means the two Canticles, Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis, are treated as extended choral pieces, while the Versicles and Responses have music more elaborate than is usually heard in parish churches. The music on this recording is by Gibbons, Byrnd, Parry and Purcell, and concludes with Simon Preston’s celebrated recording of the Toccata from Widor’s Symphony No. 5, a regular inclusion at British royal weddings.

Released in its entirety for the first time on CD, this Argo recording is perfectly timed with the forthcoming Royal Wedding to take place in Westminster Abbey.

Frank Martin (1890-1974) was born in Geneva and received encouragement from the great conductor Ernest Ansermet but was primarily self-taught as a composer. Like his compatriot, Honegger, Martin had to try and fit in against the two neighbouring musical traditions of France and Germany. This was very difficult as France was following the influence of Les Six whilst Germany tended towards Schönberg and his students, Berg and Webern. The first work in this collection to be composed was the Mass from 1922/6 which he considered to be “something concerning only God and myself”. This is music of archaic, spiritual purity, which he only allowed to have its premiere 40 years after its composition. The Four Pieces for Guitar from 1933 were the first work in which Martin experimented with Schönberg’s serial technique. During the second world war Martin produced some remarkable work – the Ballade for flute, string orchestra and piano in 1941, the Six Monologues from Jederman in 1943/4 and the Petite Symphonie Concertante for Harp, Harpsichord, Piano & Strings in 1944/5 which established his international reputation. The five Ariel choruses were studies made in 1950 for his full opera which followed over the next five years. In 1956 he settled in Naarden, a little town in the Netherlands to concentrate more on composition although from 1950 to 1957 he did teach in Cologne where one of his students was Stockhausen. The final works in this collection are the Ballade for Viola, Wind Orchestra and Percussion from 1972 and the Polyptyque of 1973 which is a group of six images of the Passion of Christ for violin solo and two string orchestras. It was recorded by its dedicatee, Yehudi Menuhin, in September 1974, two months before the composer’s death.