Customer Reviews

Tippett: Cto for Dbl Str Orch / Ritual Dances

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There are quite a few recordings available of Tippett's Concerto for Double String Orchestra, one of a small handful of works for which the composer is best known, however, based on repeated listenings I'm not sure how its place in the canon of 20th century British music was ever secured. While the shadow of Vaughan Williams' Tallis Fantasia falls on most English music for strings that came after it, Tippett's concerto from 1938-39 is on a completely different track. And that's fine, except that it's a track that to me sounds like a disjointed mishmash of sounds, perhaps of interest in an intellectual sort of way, but unsatisfying as music. The anonymously written notes accompanying this disc describe the musical language Tippett employed constructing the Concerto in this way: "Responding to all kinds of folk music, jazz recordings by Louis Armstrong and others, and the works of Stravinsky and Bartok, Tippett became fascinated with what is called 'additive rhythm'; a kind of rhythm whose effect is determined by an accumulation of irregular accents. The energy of the concerto is generated by an interplay of uneven, additive rhythms." No wonder the music bouces like a ping-pong ball back and forth across the net, but never landing twice on the same part of the table.

The Fantasia Concertante on a Theme of Corelli that follows is a two movement work from 1953, and it too suffers from complicated writing that doesn't invite deeper acquaintance. I wasn't surprised to read that Malcolm Sargent refused to conduct the first performance of the Concertante as he thought it "overburdened with notes." The Times agreed: "The excessive complexity of the contrapuntal writing in the earlier part of the work defeated its own ends; there was so much going on that the perplexed ear knew not where to turn or fasten itself." While the Concertante may now be among Tippett's most popular works, I think the original criticism that greeted it is still justified.

Rounding out this disc are six Ritual Dances, which were also of little interest to me.

Overall, this is a disappointing disc and the recording itself, which is dry and distant, doesn't help matters.