Customer Reviews

Dyson: Symphony in G; At the Tabard Inn; In Honour of the City

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This mid-price reissue from Chandos comes into direct competition with Naxos's disc of the Dyson symphony, released at the same time. Nevertheless, if you wish to sample Dyson's mildly interesting, very English take on late romanticism and don't wish to start with The Canterbury Pilgrims (which you probably should), then I guess you cannot really find a better place to start than here. George Dyson (1883-1964) was a contemporary of Bax, but his music seems to be cast in the mold of Bantock and Elgar more than his contemporary - but it is all composed at a noticeably lower level of energy and invention. Dyson's music is for the most part more worthy than actually inspired, and I can, to be honest, think of composers equally worthy of a fraction of the revival Dyson's music has received the last decade and a half.

Nevertheless, there is much to enjoy here. At the Tabard Inn is a lively, vigorous and vibrant work of rambunctious spirit, snap and sparkle. Not that any of the themes are at all memorable, but in a performance as precise, thoughtfully molded and colorful as this one, one will overlook that for as long as it lasts. The disc is rounded off by the celebratory choral and orchestral In Honour of the City; a very English, joyous work reminiscent of Elgar and far too long for its material - it is exactly the kind of music you fear encountering when investigating second-rate British composer. I wasn't really bored when hearing it, but have no wish to listen to it again.

In between these two works we get Dyson's only symphony (1937), an ambitious, big-boned work. It opens with an Energico that at least intermittently manages to evoke some of the rapturous drama of post-Wagnerian German late-romanticism - it is a very fine movement, and clearly superior to the slightly nondescript, Eroica-inspired slow movement. The third movement is formally awkward, but contains some very fine ideas and the final movement is a poignant Poco Adagio. Throughout Dyson doesn't quite manage to steer clear of his models (Strauss, Beethoven, Elgar and Tchaikovsky, respectively, in the four movements), and I am not completely sure the work adds up to a convincing whole. Then again, I certainly did enjoy listening to it; the ideas are generally good, and Dyson knew how to create sparkling orchestral effects.

And, of course, the performances are glorious - one wonders what would happen if all second-rate composers received performances like this. The performances are muscular, glittering, vital, vibrant and full of color and momentum (even though the strings are sometimes not ideally full-bodied). Hickox has a profound vision of the symphony, and shapes the melodic lines and climaxes impressively. The sound quality is splendid as well. So to sum up, this is hardly music to shake the world, but it is generally enjoyable, and in performances (and recording quality) like this, there is no real reason not to investigate.