1. Part I Beginning		58:13
2. Part I Conclusion & Part II		1:13:07
3. Part III		40:08

Catherine Wyn-Rogers - mezzo-soprano (The Beloved) 
Toby Spence - tenor  (The Poet) 
Roderick Williams - baritone  (The Philosopher) 
Olivia Robinson - soprano  (First Pot) 
Siân Menna - mezzo-soprano  (Second Pot) 		
Edward Price - bass  (Sixth Pot) 
BBC Symphony Chorus
BBC Symphony Orchestra
Vernon Handley - conductor

The recording of Bantock's choral masterpiece has long been at the top of Ralph Couzens's wish list and it has now finally come to fruition with the BBC Symphony Chorus and Orchestra conducted by Vernon Handley. This is a premiere recording and offers three CDs for the price of two. Bantock had a passion for all things Eastern and this interest in the exotic certainly finds an outlet in Omar Khayyám. The overriding philosophy of the rubáiyat of Omar Khayyám, a twelfth-century Persian astronomer, mathematician and poet, was the transience of existence and the insignificance of the individual, whether high-born or lowly. The poetical work of Omar Khayyám was translated into English by Edward Fitzgerald. Bantock uses a large orchestra with two full string complements, arranged to the left and right of the conductor, and in the atmospheric caravan scene he also makes a feature of authentic camel bells. This is our Disc of the Month. ---chandos.net

Granville Bantock (1868-1946) was never one for doing things on a small scale, and his complete setting of Edward Fitzgerald's translation of The Ruba'iyat of Omar Khayyám attests to the scope of his vision. The oratorio, which lasts over three hours and requires a huge orchestra and chorus, is unlikely to find a place on many concert programs, but a recording offers the listener the ideal opportunity to savor it in manageable chunks. It's a very attractive piece that suffered from the bad timing of its premiere, which was very close to that of The Kingdom by the much more famous Edward Elgar. Bantock's style is similar to Elgar's, and any Elgar fan should find much here to appreciate. His music reflects the sound of late nineteenth century Germans, particularly Brahms, but there is a Wagnerian influence as well. Debussy's aesthetic is also in evidence in the harmonic movement of the more "exotic" sections, and there are moments of languid lushness that are similar to the soundworld of Gurrelieder, whose premiere it predates. While Bantock didn't have a particularly original vision, his canny combination of a variety of influences, his skillful orchestration and vocal and choral writing, and the epic sweep of his lyricism make Omar Khayyám a very appealing piece. It doesn't have enough variety to fully sustain interest for three hours, but taken in smaller doses, it has much to commend it. It receives a stellar performance by the BBC Symphony and Chorus, led by Vernon Handley, who lovingly shapes the colorful score. Mezzo-soprano Catherine Wyn-Rogers, tenor Toby Spence, and Roderick Williams sing with warmth, robust tone, and passionate intensity. The sound of Chandos' SACD is full, clean, and spacious. ---Stephen Eddins, AllMusic Review

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The Cyprian Goddess (Symphony No.3):
1. Maestoso e sforzato - Lentamente - Poco largamente - Con piu moto
2. Liberamente - Affrettando -Tranquillo molto sostenuto
3. Animando - Con fuoco - Con moto agitato
4. Lentamente - Lento sostenuto - Poco lentando - Allegretto grazioso - Con fuoco - Con anima
5. Piu moto, affrettando - Tranquillo, e molto sostenuto

Helena (Orchestral Variations On The Theme HFB):
6. Theme: Lento molto
7. Variation I: Allegro molto con fuoco
8. Varation II: Poco tranquillo
9. Variation III: Allegretto scherzando
10. Variation IV: Molto moderato quasi religioso
11. Varation V: Capriccioso
12. Variation VI: Poco agitato
13. Variation VII: Lento molto e sostenuto
14. Variation VIII: Con moto affettuoso
15. Variation IX: Allegro impetuoso
16. Variation X: Non piu Allegro
17. Variation XI: Andante doloroso
18. Variation XII: Finale: Allegro appassionato

19. Dante And Beatrice - Maestoso - Poco largamente - Vivo - Lento - Allegro con fuoco - Appassionato - Sostenuto cantabile - Andante tranquillo, poco rubato

Royal Philharmonic Orchestra
Vernon Handley – conductor

The Cyprian Goddess—which everyone else calls Aphrodite in Cyprus, and identifies as an "ode" rather than a "symphony"—predated the Celtic Symphony by one year. If not a work of comparable strength or thematic distinction, Bantock knew Richard Strauss' orchestra, and reveled in it without descending to mere imitation. Helena Variations of 1899 is the earliest work here, affectionately modest without sounding like Elgar's Enigma, premiered that same year. What commends these pricey disks to those who may also find Bantock an insulin injection after, say, anything by Delius, or the bulk of their contemporaries, is Vernon Handley's red-blooded, almost intuitive conducting, and the gorgeous performances he wins from the Royal Philharmonians. An early cassette set from some German festival (celebrating as I recall the development of BASF recording tape) put me off him for many years: neither Mozart there nor the Dvorák Eighth were distinctive much less distinguished, and the imported London Phil was suffering one of its anemic periods. However, Handley's incomparable recording of the Vaughan Williams Job (back in the EMI catalog again, at midprice, glory hallelujah) provoked a massive reevaluation of his gifts, confirmed by a VW Fifth Symphony finer than any other in the history of disks, an ongoing Malcolm Arnold Symphonies series, and this Bantock project that one hopes will continue to uncover many more buried treasures. --- classicalcdreview.com

The third issue in Hyperion's Bantock Edition contains three substantial works in the GB ouevre, Dante and Beatrice, the Helena Variations, and the 3rd Symphony, entitled The Cyprian Goddess. Absorbing as it is and a vital release for most Bantockians, it would probably not be the best place to begin investigating GB's music. --- Vincent Budd, musicweb-international.com

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1. Celtic Symphony: 1. Lento sostenuto
2. Celtic Symphony: 2. Allegro con fuoco
3. Celtic Symphony: 3. Andante con tenerezza
4. Celtic Symphony: 4. Allegro con spirito
5. Celtic Symphony: 5. Largamente maestoso
6. The Witch Of Atlas: A A lady-witch there lived on Atlas mountain
7. The Witch Of Atlas: B 'Tis said, she was first changed into a vapour
8. The Witch Of Atlas: C And old Silenus, shaking a green stick
9. The Witch Of Atlas: D And every nymph of stream and spreading tree
10. The Witch Of Atlas: E For she was beautiful
11. The Witch Of Atlas: F The deep recesses of her odorous dwelling
12. The Witch Of Atlas: G And then she called out of the hollow turrets
13. The Witch Of Atlas: H To those she saw most beautiful
14. Hebridean Sea Poem No. 2: The Sea Reivers
15. A Hebridean Symphony: 1
16. A Hebridean Symphony: 2
17. A Hebridean Symphony: 3
18. A Hebridean Symphony: 4
19. A Hebridean Symphony: 5
20. A Hebridean Symphony: 6
21. A Hebridean Symphony: 7
22. A Hebridean Symphony: 8
23. A Hebridean Symphony: 9

Royal Philharmonic Orchestra
Vernon Handley - conductor

Bantock flourished in the early years of the twentieth century until the First World War. Many people admired and loved both his music and his character, exceptionally generous, especially to young composers, whom he helped financially and by conducting performances of their works. He belonged to a wing of British music that included Delius, Brian, Holbrooke, and Boughton. His music is very much of its time, and I should say it has, in its extra-musical concerns of orientalia, hothouse sex, and Celtic twilight, links to the literary Decadents of the Victorian Eighties and Nineties. By the Twenties, however, his music had ceased to matter, in a way that Delius's and Brian's, at any rate, had not, and he still had forty years to go.

Bantock characteristically conceives of his music on a grand scale, and he writes gorgeously for the orchestra. For sheer sonic beauty, nobody beats him, not even Ravel. As far as I'm concerned, his orchestra sings more radiantly than Richard Strauss's, the composer to whom most compare him. I find the idioms and the sensibility, however, very different. Strauss's music reminds me of a Gustav Klimt canvas, while Bantock's reminds me of a kitschier Thomas Kincaid, with gilt highlights liberally applied. Moreover, Bantock lacks the ability to invent memorable themes and to tell a tight story. The things he calls symphonies meander like bad film scores. They lack the architectural spine of Mahler or Sibelius or even Richard Strauss. I trace some of Bantock's success with his original audience to extra-musical considerations – part of the general protest against Victorian cultural strictures that led ultimately to Modernism. However, as a poet like Auden finished off Ernest Dowson and Lionel Johnson, so Vaughan Williams, Walton, and Britten sank Bantock, Holbrooke, and Boughton. While the first three transcend their time, the latter trio is very much of their time. For me, their music is, at its worst, an exercise in nostalgia; at their best, a deeper insight into a specific historic milieu.

Of the Bantock orchestral discs Hyperion has so far released, I like this one the best. As with all of Bantock's music, these works present one gorgeous moment after another. My favorite is the opening to the Celtic Symphony, with a I-iii modulation, common in Celtic music but relatively rare in the concert hall. One usually encounters at least triple wind and brass in Bantock scores, so the instrumentation for strings (divided into a rich seven) and six – count 'em, six – harps is comparatively chaste. Throughout the piece I kept wondering whether he really needed all six harps, and it turned out that he does for one great moment toward the end. The mass of harps stands up to the mass of strings at the final climax. On the other hand, structurally, one damned thing follows another.

The tone poem The Witch of Atlas has sturdier architecture – a house of sticks rather than a house of straw – but lacks the Celtic's melodic charm. Even so, it has trouble holding together, despite its use of "character-tags" for various aspects of Shelley's poem. Things wind down and start up again, usually a sign of a weak hand on the tiller. Bantock seems to be an artist fixated on physical beauty, and the snippets of Shelley's poem he chooses to depict are basically painterly, rather than "story." The trap of this is that the music doesn't move with purpose. But, boy! it sounds so good!

The Sea Reivers, at slightly under four minutes, is one of Bantock's shortest and tightest. According to Grove, he originally intended it as the scherzo of the Hebridean Symphony. I prefer it to the scherzo he actually wrote. Unlike the other works on the disc, it jumps, it moves from here to there. It's a grand symphonic paragraph of High Romanticism and shows that Bantock could write symphonically when he put his mind to it. It premièred in 1920 to immediate acclaim. Again, other music crowded it out, to the point where this recording amounts to a revival.

The Hebridean Symphony (1916) had such critical success in its time that the Carnegie Trust published it in full score as an artistic service to the nation. It collects many great sounds. It builds without ever really coming to a boil – what Tovey used to call "a Prélude to a Prélude to a Prélude." Again, it reminds me of a film score. If I were listening while watching, say, Captain Blood, it would catch me up.

Handley and the Royal Phil do a bang-on job. The sound, the most important component of a Bantock score, glitters and roars. It's as if one has sprinkled Disneydust in the delicate passages and had shipped out to sea in the loud ones. One doesn't need to hear Brahms all the time. If you need a good sonic wallow, Bantock's the guy. --- Steve Schwartz, classical.net

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1. Sappho: Prelude
2. Sappho: Hymn To Aphrodite
3. Sappho: 'I Loved Thee Once, Atthis, Long Ago'
4. Sappho: Evening Song			play
5. Sappho: 'Stand Face To Face, Friend'
6. Sappho: 'The Moon Has Set'
7. Sappho: 'Peer Of Gods He Seems'
8. Sappho: 'In A Dream, I Spake'	play
9. Sappho: Bridal Song
10. Sappho: 'Muse Of The Golden Throne'
11. Sapphic Poem

Susan Bickley – mezzo-soprano
Julian Lloyd Webber - cello
Royal Philharmonic Orchestra
Vernon Handley - conductor

Composed between 1900 and 1907, Sappho is a cycle of nine songs for mezzo-soprano and orchestra with a vivid symphonic prologue. One could describe the score as a celebration of Eros, by turns radiant and gloomy, that never quite subverts the cozy decorum of the Edwardian parlor--or, if one prefers, as a celebration of the added-sixth chord. Bantock's musical language owes a lot to the second acts of Tristan and Parsifal; it has points of contact with early Scriabin, Strauss, and Puccini; and every now and then it hints at Rimsky's oriental splendor. But the cycle as a whole is tightly crafted, and the individual songs are set like gems. Bantock knew his stuff. It's hard to imagine the music receiving a finer performance than it gets here. A large share of the credit goes to Handley, a superb conductor all but unknown in this country and sadly underappreciated in his own, who coaxes radiant work from the Royal Philharmonic and partners mezzo Susan Bickley with exquisite aplomb. Bickley, who might just become the next Janet Baker, holds up her end heroically, delivering the taxing solo part with compelling expressiveness. Her voice sounds a little overmiked, carrying over Bantock's heaving textures in a way that would never happen in the concert hall; aside from that, Hyperion's sonics are spectacular. The RPO's seating is crystal clear: violins split left and right, cellos inside the firsts and violas inside the seconds, basses on the far right, winds center, horns and harp back left, and heavy brass and percussion--including a stunningly well-registered bass drum--back right. Solo instruments are beautifully imaged, and the string, wind, and brass tone is glorious. Kudos to engineer Tony Faulkner. The filler, Bantock's lightly scored Sapphic Poem for cello and orchestra, fails to make much of an impression--though whether the fault lies with the composer, or the anemic playing of soloist Julian Lloyd Webber, is hard to say. --Ted Libbey

Ancient Greece was one of Granville Bantock's passions, as evidenced by his Pagan and Cyprian Goddess symphonies. Here, he sets the poems of Sappho to music. This is not an easy task since her poems exist in fragments. The text was fashioned by Bantock's wife, Helena, and is a remarkable achievement. This song cycle is beautifully conceived and is characterized by Bantock's sensitive and colorful orchestral writing. Vernon Handley and the Royal Philharmonic turn in an excellent performance. The song cycle begins with a prelude that presents the themes of the first songs and sets the stage for what is to follow. The songs require a dramatic reading and Susan Bickley is up to the challenge: they require a range of emotion from ecstatic to sad. The Bridal Song is a particularly charming piece, less elegiac in tone than the other songs, and reminds us that many of Sappho's poems were written to celebrate weddings. The Sapphic Poem for cello and orchestra is a magnificent showpiece for the solo instrument. Bantock quoted a fragment of Sappho at the beginning of the score: "and this I feel in myself." The quote sets the tone of the work - introspective, reflective and dramatic. Here, the cello does the soul searching that the voice does in the song cycle. The orchestration includes no heavy brass so the cello can sing out, and it does to great effect. Julian Lloyd Webber is an ideal soloist. This is a journey to an exotic and long-forgotten time and place that Bantock brings life to with his incomparable music. ---D.A. Wend

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