Grainger: Bold William Taylor

Recording locations: ‘The Maltings’ Concert Hall, Snape, UK, December 1968 (CD 1: 1-14), November 1972 (CD 1: 15-19, CD 2: 1-3, 5-7, 9-10), March 1976 (CD 2: 4); unknown location, May 1927 (CD1: 8); All Hallows, Gospel Oak, London, UK, February 1994 (The Warriors)

A composer with an extraordinary ear for sonority, original in his outlook, sometimes misunderstood, now revered, Percy Grainger is one of Australia’s most unique sons, and, in the words of Sir Peter Pears, one of its “most independent and single-minded spirits”. Many of these recordings, of vocal and chamber orchestra pieces, were made by Decca in 1968 and 1972 and issued, together with a 1927 recording of Grainger playing his Country Gardens and of Peter Pears and Osian Ellis performing Six Dukes wenta-fishin’ in two volumes, with the title Salute to Percy Grainger. The title is retained for this anthology and to it is added Sir John Eliot Gardiner’s Deutsche Grammophon recording of The Warriors, presenting nearly two hours of some of Grainger’s finest utterances in some of their earliest (and best) performances to be captured on record. Ten of these items [CD2: 1-10] make their first appearance on CD.

The performers are a Who’s Who of great Decca artists. Benjamin Britten and Steuart Bedford share the conducting duties on the Decca recordings, and the vocalists include Sir Peter Pears, Anna Reynolds and John Shirley-Quirk, together with the Ambrosian Singers and the Wandsworth Boys’ Choir. The notes are written by celebrities too – Sir Peter Pears and Grainger scholar, John Bird – and include affectionate reminiscences. Complete song texts are included.

"This is an altogether delightful anthology, beautifully played and recorded by these distinguished artists … the recording is an extremely good one” Penguin Guide ***

“the enchantments remain … will surely give pleasure” Gramophone

These recordings, made over the space of a decade from March 1954 to December 1964, capture Peter Pears in the high summer of his career and at the peak of his powers, a period roughly framed by some of the highlights of his partnership with Benjamin Britten: the creation of the character of Peter Quint in the composer’s The Turn of the Screw in Venice in September 1954 and the euphoric response to the first performance in 1962 of the War Requiem, one of the great events of post-war English musical life. The title ‘An Anthology of English Song’ was chosen by Decca for a projected three volumes featuring Pears. The first, with Julian Bream, included Renaissance lute songs by Dowland, Morley and others. The second was presumably intended to included 18th and 19th-century titles but was never made. The third, made in 1955, consisted of 20th-century English song, and much of this material appears on CD for the first time [CD2: 10-21].

A year earlier, Pears and Britten recorded nine of Britten’s folk song arrangements; these particular recordings (made in the same sessions as those for Winter Words) too receive their first release on CD [CD2: 1-9].

More British song was recorded with Britten in 1963 and with pianist Viola Tunnard (who worked closely with Britten in the 1960s, particularly on the Church Parables) in 1964. Of special interest too, will be works Pears commissioned from contemporary composers including the Cycle for Declamation by the South-African-born Priaulx Rainier, a testing tour de force for unaccompanied voice and Richard Rodney Bennett’s dramatic 1961 setting for voice and cello of the anonymous 17th-century ballad Tom O’Bedlam’s Song.

The recorded legacy of the great English tenor Peter Pears is substantial and wide-ranging. It embraces Baroque repertory and Elizabethan songs as well as a vast amount of twentieth-century English music and German Lieder.

This anniversary collection features Pears in a wide selection of this repertory and it also charts his career as a recording artist from landmark recordings such as the first recording of Britten's Serenade for tenor, horn and strings (made in 1944) through to Britten's Canticle V The Death of St Narcissus (composed in 1974), recorded near the end of his career in 1976.

Many recordings included here appear on CD for the first time as international releases. Performances of Vaughan Williams’ On Wenlock Edge, and of Tippett’s Songs for Ariel , are of especial interest, and in a different vein, Pears sings Lutoslawski’s Paroles tissées, which he commissioned.

A true rarity is the first ever release of Schubert's Ganymed.

Packaging is cap box; 28-page booklet features a new essay on Pears by George Hall.

To mark the fiftieth anniversary of Percy Grainger’s death in 1961, we are re-issuing The Grainger Edition, Volumes 1 – 19, in a nineteen-disc box set, which will be available at a very special price: 19 CDs for the price of 4. The box set demonstrates the extraordinary range of Grainger’s compositional styles, including orchestral works, works for wind orchestra and for chorus and orchestra, solo songs, works for chamber ensemble, as well as works for solo piano, here performed by Penelope Thwaites. On Volume 16, Works for Solo Piano 1 (CHAN 9895), Fanfare wrote: ‘Rarely has the precociousness of his [Grainger’s] talent been better demonstrated than on this new disc… the rarities, like the more familiar pieces, are played with unapologetic conviction. Penelope Thwaites paints the music in bold strokes… a major contribution to the Grainger discography.’

Grainger, the Australian-born composer and pianist, was one of music’s most original voices and his compositions, especially his arrangements of folksongs, include some of the world’s most well-loved pieces. He studied piano from an early age and, by the time he reached the age of twenty, had already thought out or formulated the majority of his compositions. The following years saw him feverishly reworking and re-arranging these pieces for different forces; in fact it was Grainger who conceived the idea of ‘elastic’ scoring: a work having an almost limitless number of performable versions, all showing a wonderful sense of instrumental colouring. In his various approaches to a single work, Grainger would explore the possibilities of instrumentation from solo piano to wind band and to full orchestra, harmonic textures varying from simple support of the well-known melody to highly contrapuntal settings involving unusual harmonic progressions.

An enthusiastic participant in the English folksong movement, Grainger collected more than 500 folksongs on which he drew both for his impressive original works and for his imaginative arrangements, ‘Country Gardens’ and ‘Molly on the Shore’ being among the best-known. His involvement with British folksong led Grainger to cherish the voice, which became an essential ingredient in his music, and as an arranger of folksongs he was hard to surpass, Benjamin Britten exclaiming: ‘In the art of folksong arrangements, Grainger is my master!’

Towards the end of his life, Grainger became fascinated with the idea of ‘Free Music’; music not limited by time or pitch intervals. The mechanical devices he created in partnership with the scientist Burnett Cross are today regarded as crude forerunners to the modern electronic synthesiser. Grainger’s huge collection of musical materials, instruments and musical devices were eventually housed in a building in the grounds of the University of Melbourne. The Grainger Museum, as it is now generally known, is today a veritable treasure trove, invaluable for the exploration of Grainger’s vast compositional output.