Elgar - Froissart
Mussorgsky (Stokowski) - Pictures from an Exhibition
Britten - St Nicholas

James Gilchrist - Tenor

Elgar prefaced the score of the overture Froissart with a line from Keats: ‘When Chivalry lifted up her lance on high' and the opening theme is, perhaps, its musical counterpart. Froissart is not mature Elgar but it holds its place because of its vitality and fascinating glimpses of the greatness to come. The melodic invention is already prolific; tune after tune and all the Elgarian fingerprints are there together with a strikingly beautiful central melody. When the overture was played in Birmingham in 1891, Elgar himself confided to a friend that he thought it was too long. Perhaps he was right, but he was equally right nine years later when he described it to Jaeger of Novello's as ‘good, healthy stuff, shameless in its rude young health.'

Audiences have become familiar with Ravel's orchestration of Mussorgsky's piano pieces, Pictures at an Exhibition, but he was not the only musician to take them as a starting point for a ‘new' work. Leopold Stokowski was born and raised in London. He entered the Royal College of Music in 1896, making him one of the youngest students ever to do so and was a fellow organ student of Ralph Vaughan Williams. His London ‘ecclesiastical' career included posts at St. Marylebone Church, The Temple Church (where he was Assistant to Sir Henry Walford Davies), St. Mary's Church, Charing Cross Road and St. James's Church, Piccadilly. A Fellow of the Royal College of Organists he obtained a Bachelor of Music degree from Oxford University in 1903. He went to America in 1905 to take up a post as organist and choir director of St. Bartholomew's Church, New York and later took up a conducting career. The orchestration of Pictures at an Exhibition has been described as a refreshing change from Ravel's. Stokowski subtitled his version ‘Billboards at an Exhibition'. He did not include In the Tuileries Gardens or The Market Place at Limoges as these did not appear in the original piano solo version. Stokowski suggested that Ravel might have composed them himself! Overall, this version of such a well-known work is probably closer to the spirit of the original. Audiences are, however, still divided about this.

Saint Nicolas was written for performance at the Centenary Celebrations of Lancing College, Sussex in July 1948, though in fact it had already received an unofficial premiere six weeks earlier, at the opening concert of the very first Aldeburgh Festival. St. Nicolas was the patron saint of children (and co-patron of Lancing College) so "a hymn to Saint Nicolas" was a natural suggestion by the College. Basil Handford, a master at Lancing, writes: "Tell me about Saint Nicolas," said Ben. So I told him the legends. Almost immediately he saw it as a series of episodes. "It will have to be a cantata, I think." Britten seems to have had great fun with the choruses. Nicolas' life story begins with a waltz, which includes a bath scene with the orchestral equivalent of water running out of the tub. Pianos and percussion provide marvellous waves in the storm scene. High voices strike lightning, and choir men are the ship's terrified crew. A new and important element in Saint Nicolas was the inclusion of the congregation in the musical action. These hymn tunes were familiar to a generation educated in English public schools, where chapel and hymn singing were daily events. It drew them back to their own childhood, at the same time demanding a level of participation beyond passive listening. This remarkable layering of musical elements provides no small part of the pleasure we have in listening to this work.