CDs with online ordering
The Marshes of Glynn and Song of the Prairies (PFCD282) £12.50/£17.50
Compositions by Andrew Downes; Brenden Gunnell (Tenor), Paula Downes (Soprano), Eleanor Minney (Mezzo-soprano), Sam Madden (Tenor), Simon Grant (Bass), Philharmonia Voices, Philharmonia Orchestra, David Trippett (Conductor)
1-3 The Marshes of Glynn, Op. 33 (1985)
Cantata for tenor solo, SATB choir and symphony orchestra
[1] Very slow, very still and calm [13:35]
[2] Allegro [06:15]
[3] Very slow once more [09:29]
4-7 Song of the Prairies, Op. 44 (1988)
Cantata for SATB soloists, semi-choir of high voices, full chorus
and symphony orchestra
[4] Allegro ma non troppo [06:38]
[5] Andante [11:03]
[6] Moderato [04:02]
[7] Moderato, gently [06:55]
Total Time [57:57]
Reviews
"Both these works would, I think, be well received at the Proms, whether for their musical language or the prescient environmental messages they contain, and it is to be hoped that this recording helps to get the word out to a wider audience." Tim Hochstrasser, Plays to See
"These vivid monumental works will give heart to those who discern the death of romantic pastoralism... Choirs and orchestra are all first-rate... the quartet of excellent soloists (especially the soprano, the composer’s daughter, who’s high Bs are memorable) deserve particular praise for negotiating their considerable demands with skill and elegance. A lively recording adds to the recommendation of this fascinating release." Andrew Plant, British Music Society
"Andrew Downes is a composer of refreshing honesty and directness and his natural melodic invention and invariably poetic use of judiciously deployed musical forces constantly elevate the two works presented on Prima Facie’s well-recorded, attractively produced release. This very welcome addition to the recorded catalogue is highly recommended." Paul Conway, MusicWeb International
About this Album
This release features two secular cantatas for choir and orchestra, setting 19th-century American poets (Sidney Lanier, William Cullen Bryant), in praise of the beauty of nature, its unfathomable spaces, the prairies that bear witness to the rise and fall of civilisations, and the vastness of landscapes that encapsulate the story of America.
Downes was preparing a cantata to mark the 1986 opening of the Adrian Boult Concert Hall at the Birmingham School of Music, and set Lanier’s evocative poem for The Marshes of Glynn (1875), his first major composition for voices and orchestra. The cantata’s three movements depict the overlapping environments of the Marshes of Glynn, a coastal area in Georgia, USA.
The work begins in a thick forest of entangled Southern oak trees. Downes evokes the quiet isolation of the shade with two pastoral horns. The eerie ding of a glockenspiel suggests beams of light that poke through the cover of the oaks at sunset, and the movement ends with a radiant, orchestral climax as the speaker pushes boughs of the trees out of the way to exit to a nearby beach. The flute at the start of the second movement depicts that serpentine stretch of grey sand, the thin tissue that connects the sea and the marsh to the land. In the third movement, which lands the listener in the midst of the marsh itself, the humble croak of the marsh-hen can be heard in solos for English horn, while undulating string and choral interludes show the tide gradually flowing into the grassland until “the sea and the marsh are one.”
Downes’s 1988 cantata Song of the Prairies, composed for an annual singing weekend at Shrewsbury Public School led by John Rutter, sets William Cullen Bryant's paean to nature, The Prairies, for the first time. It is a rare piece that flits between energetic choral ensemble, intense lyricism, and fluent minimalism. Downes does not abandon the harmonically rich choral style he was known for. Rather, he develops an elegant conversation between two kinds of music that on their surfaces are inverses of one another: minimalist pieces tend to be rhythmically active but feature a leisurely harmonic rhythm, while 20th-century English choral works are often rhythmically nebulous but constantly leverage expressive, harmonic twists and turns. As musicologist Nicky Swett puts it, “the result of this combination is striking and quite unique—as though the Philip Glass Ensemble has stumbled into a Cambridge Evensong and everyone at the service is open to making it work.”
Credits
Brenden Gunnell Tenor
Paula Downes Soprano
Eleanor Minney Mezzo-soprano
Sam Madden Tenor
Simon Grant Bass
Philharmonia Voices
Philharmonia Orchestra
David Trippett Conductor
The Marshes of Glynn was recorded in St Jude
on the Hill, Hampstead, 26 November 2024
Myles Eastwood (producer)
Jonathan Stokes (engineer)
Song of the Prairies was recorded in Alexandra
Palace, London, 13 August 2024
Myles Eastwood (producer)
Deborah Spanton (engineer)
Tim Burton (assistant engineer)
Photos © Christopher Jonas
You can read the sleevenotes for this album on the Prima Facie Records blog
Andrew Downes
Andrew Downes was born in Handsworth, Birmingham, in 1950, into a well-known Midlands family of musicians. He won a choral scholarship to St John’s College, Cambridge, where he specialised in composition, and in 1974 went on to study at the Royal College of Music with Herbert Howells, who wrote of him as ‘one of the most effective composers coming to me these days’. His emergence as a leading international composer was combined with a strong academic profile as an innovative and inspired educator: he created and was Head of the School of Composition and Creative Studies at the Birmingham School of Music (now Royal Birmingham Conservatoire) for 30 years, and following his retirement, devoted himself solely to composition. His output includes an opera, six symphonies, numerous concertos and chamber works, song cycles, piano music and a large body of choral and sacred music. Over 30 CDs of his music have been issued on a range of labels. His numerous commissions included The Marshes of Glynn, for the Royal Opening of Birmingham’s Adrian Boult Hall in 1986; anthems for the BBC Radio 4 Daily Service; and the overture Towards a New Age, premiered by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. Downes’s Concerto for Four Horns and Orchestra was commissioned for and premièred by the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra in 2002, and recorded by Czech Radio the following year. His Sonata for Violin, Horn and Piano was premièred by the Brahms Trio Prague in 2008, and released on the Czech Philharmonic’s Artesmon label. Downes’s Piano and Horn Concertos were premiered at Birmingham Town Hall in 2009 and 2012 respectively. In 2016, the Artesmon label released a disk of Downes' Symphonies and Overtures, recorded by the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra. He died on January 2nd 2023, leaving a legacy of over 120 works. A prolific composer, he wrote every day until the last week of his life.
Brenden Gunnell
Grammy-nominated Heldentenor Brenden Gunnell is one of today’s most sought-after heroic tenors, admired for his commanding stage presence, clarion diction, and musical intelligence. Equally at home in Wagnerian heroics, Strauss’s towering roles, and the international concert repertoire, he captivates audiences with a rare combination of vocal power, expressive nuance, and insightful interpretation. Recent stage appearances include Lohengrin at the Bolshoi Theatre; Peter Grimes at Cologne Opera; the Prince in Rusalka at Glyndebourne Festival and Bergen National Opera; Jeník (The Bartered Bride) at Garsington Opera; and Loge and Siegmund in a new Ring cycle at Göteborg Opera. Since the 2022/23 season, Leipzig Opera has been his artistic home, where he has built a substantial repertoire including the title roles in Peter Grimes and Lohengrin, Sergey (Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk), Herodes (Salome), Siegmund (Die Walküre), and Hermann (Pique Dame). On the concert stage, Brenden has appeared at the BBC Proms in Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, sung Act II of Tristan und Isolde at Festival Neuschwanstein, and performed Schönberg’s Die Jakobsleiter at the Elbphilharmonie with the NDR Orchestra under Ingo Metzmacher. A graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music, he was an ensemble member at Tiroler Landestheater Innsbruck (2007–2011) and the Norwegian National Opera (2011–2013).
David Trippett
David Trippett is Chair of the Faculty of Music at the University of Cambridge, and a Fellow of Christ’s College. As a pianist and conductor, he has performed in venues from the Liszt Academy in Budapest and the Britten-Pears Festival, Aldeburgh to the Shanghai Conservatory and the Library of Congress in Washington DC. His realisation of Liszt’s Italian opera Sardanapalo between 2017 and 2019 resulted in the work’s first critical and performing editions. Its premiere recording was among the Guardian’s Top 10 Discs of 2019, receiving Gramophone’s Editor’s Choice and Diapason’s découverte. It became the best-selling classical CD in the UK, and has now been performed in seven countries. In academic work, his latest book, Sound in Mind and Body, is forthcoming with Oxford University Press.