Birtwistle: Gawain

Harrison Birtwistle (Composer), Elgar Howarth (Conductor), François Le Roux (Performer), Marie Angel (Performer), Alan Ewing (Performer) | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Performer: François Le Roux, Marie Angel, Alan Ewing
• Conductor: Elgar Howarth
• Composer: Harrison Birtwistle
• Audio CD (April 9, 1996)
• Number of Discs: 2
• Label: Collins Classics
• ASIN: B000003W1P
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #365,447 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Track Listings

Disc: 1

1. Act 1: Ov - The Orch of the ROH/Elgar Howarth

2. Act 1: The Story Begins 'Night after night' - Marie Angel

3. Act 1: The Court 'They tire me.' - Richard Greager

4. Act 1: Three Riddles 'There was a man.' - Omar Ebrahim

5. Act 1: Arthur's Response 'How can I eat?' - Richard Greager

6. Act 1: Door Knock, Prophesies and Threats 'This is the hour of legacy or loss.' - Marie Angel/Anne Howells

7. Act 1: Mystery of the Open Door - The Orch of the ROH/Elgar Howarth

8. Act 1: Another Riddle 'Something stranger than charity' - Omar Ebrahim

9. Act 1: Door Knock, Prophesies and Threats 'Now is the hour of legacy or loss' - Marie Angel/Anne Howells

10. Act 1: Entrance of the Green Knight 'Now I shall test his strength - Marie Angel

See all 31 tracks on this disc

Disc: 2

1. Act 2: Morgan Le Fay's Prediction 'Now with a single step.' - Marie Angel

2. Act 2: The Journey - The Orch of the ROH/Elgar Howarth

3. Act 2: Glimpse 'Soon...what you most love.' - John Tomlinson

4. Act 2: The Journey Continues - The Orch of the ROH/Elgar Howarth

5. Act 2: A Glimpse of the Future 'Soon...what you want, you'll have.' - Anne Howells

6. Act 2: The Journey Continues - The Orch of the ROH/Elgar Howarth

7. Act 2: A Glimpse of the Future 'Soon you'll see its face.' - Anne Howells

8. Act 2: The Journey Continues - The Orch of the ROH/Elgar Howarth

9. Act 2: A Glimpse of the Future 'This is the hour of vanity or choice.' - Anne Howells

10. Act 2: The Journey Continues - The Orch of the ROH/Elgar Howarth

See all 34 tracks on this disc

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A modern masterpiece, July 15, 2005

By 

Sator (Sydney, Australia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Birtwistle: Gawain (Audio CD)

This is a work of extraordinary power and impact. I think in due course it will be accepted as a genuine modern masterpiece by a composer who is as good as England has ever produced since William Byrd. The music is - as always from Birtwistle - granity and arcane, yet powerful and visionary in the cognnet cohesiveness of the musical argument from start to finish. I found this music to be utterly captivating from the first note to last in a way I rarely find with any operatic work.

The indebtednes to Wagner for the Arthurian setting is something that really captured my attention - I was thinking mostly of Tristan. So in which case Birtwistle is not the first composer to marry ultra-modernity (Wagner was the avant-garde of his age) with an ancient subject. What is particularly striking is the sheer primodiality of Birtwistle's musical language that despite its immense complexity, just hypnotises from the first note and simply engrosses the attention refusing to let go until the very last note is played. The unity of music and text, the way the tale unfolds in a fashion mysterious to the point of being almost surrealistic is all touched with genius - the pace of the story-telling reminded me somewhat of Bartok's Bluebeard's Castle.

This is one of my favourite works of the late 20th century and possibly the most rewarding recording of music by Birtwistle that I recall hearing to date.

Essential listening for all lovers of contemporary music.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An operatic retelling of Gawain and the Green Knight, May 4, 2002

By 

Lawrance M. Bernabo (The Zenith City, Duluth, Minnesota) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (COMMUNITY FORUM 04)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Birtwistle: Gawain (Audio CD)

Sir Harrison Birtwistle's two act opera "Gawain" premiered in 1991 and has been revived by the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, in a slightly revised and reduced form. The story is based on the poem "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight," which tells of how a knight clad in green arrived at the Christmas feast at King Arthur's court and challenged any of the knights to strike him a blow with an ax on the condition that in a year and a day the blow will be returned by the Green Knight. Only Gawain takes up the challenge. However, the Green Knight survives and rides off to return a year hence while Gawain prepares to embark on a quest. In Act II the opera picks up twelve months later when he seeks shelter at the castle of Sir Bertilak de Hautdesert, where he is tempted three times by Bertilak's wife as his appointed meeting with the Green Knight draws nigh.

The libretto by David Harsent who restructures the tale to serve the needs of character motivation, especially of the sorceress Morgan La Fey, who has taken an unhealthy interest in Gawain. Dramatically the opera offers up some fascinating parallels and dramatic irony: Gawain's arrival at Sir Bertilak's castle is a mirror of the arrival of the Green Knight at the court of Arthur, with the pure knight arriving at the evil place of Morgan's spells instead of the pagan knight entering a Christian feast gathering.

This is one of those pieces where divorcing the music from the actual performance is less than satisfying, so familiarizing yourself with the libretto in terms of both story and lyrics becomes important (I have read that the original production involved a mechanical head that blinked after Gawain decapitates the Green Knight). The music is passionate and intense, with unconventional melodies and harmonies, thereby creating feelings of unease and suspense, not to mention evil and foreboding. In fact, there is always music in the background, driving the audience's emotions as well as the character's actions, and there are points where the music becomes almost oppressive in its complexity. Birtwistle employs recurring themes to recall former action without really developing them into full blown leitmotifs. Ultimately, we have the supreme irony of modern approaches to music being used to tell one of the oldest of English legends. "Gawain" should be of interest both to students of Arthurian legends (my prime excuse) and 20th/21st century opera.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Review (from Gramophone), December 22, 2008

By 

Slobberer "Slobberer" (Astoria, NY United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Birtwistle: Gawain (Audio CD)

Birtwistle Gawain.
Mane Angel (sop) Morgan Le Fay; Anne Howells (mez) Lady de Hautdesert; Richard Greager (ten) Arthur; Penelope W^aunsley-Clark (sop) Guinevere; Omar Ebrahim (bar) Fool; Alan Ewing (bass) Agravain; John Marsden (ten) Ywain; Francois Le Roux (bar) Gawain; Kevin Smith (alto) Baldwin; John Tomlinson (bass) Green Knight, Bertilak; Chorus and Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden / Elgar Howarth.

Collins Classics © 7041-2 (two discs: 136 minutes: DDD: 5/96). Notes and text included. Recorded live in 1994. Gramophone Editor's choice.

Gawain marks a climactic point in Birtwistle's output, combining dramatic strategies from his four earlier stage works with a clearer narrative than any of them and drawing together aspects of his musical language that he had been exploring in concert works for 15 years or more. It is an opera of compelling power and grandeur. Opera it most certainly is, and its magnificent opening gesture immediately promises that it will be an epic one. The First Act ends with the characteristic Birtwistle device of a fivefold cycle of the seasons, symbolically portraying Gawain's preparation for his confrontation with the Green Knight, while Act 2 turns on a threefold cycle of lullabies, hunting scenes and seductions in which he leams how few of the knightly virtues for which he is famed he in fact possesses. Another long-term constituent of Birtwistle's style is those long, sinuous, ranging lines that underlie so much of his music.

The very opening gesture, a craggy descent, is one mode that it adopts here; another is the intense, often ornate, wide-spanning lyricism heard soon afterwards as Morgan Le Fay and Lady de Hautdesert begin their plot to subvert King Arthur's court with Gawain as their unwitting instrument. Morgan's lullabies in Act 2, each of them sinking Gawain deeper into enthralment, have a sinister beauty to them that is the very image of witchcraft. Indeed, although none of the characters in this fable is a rounded personality - Gawain is no verismo opera - each of them is boldly and tellingly portrayed. It is an opera whose drama often takes place in the wonderfully rich and strange sounds of Birtwistle's orchestra: massive, striding bass-lines, whooping brass, the prominent cimbalom at times almost as central as it once was in Stravinsky's imagination. The solo singers must achieve extremes of intensity to stand out in relief. Among them John Tomlinson is in outstandingly noble voice as the Green Knight and Francois Le Roux, when not obliged to force, is moving in the title-role. Marie Angel is fearless though often bitingly shrill as Morgan, Anne Howells a voluptuous Lady de Hautdesert. The recording brings the voices forward, which helps comprehension of the text, but does not diminish Elgar Howarth's masterly control of the score's burnished splendours. The whole enterprise is a huge achievement, a worthy and commendably prompt recording of one of the most powerful operas of the late twentieth century.