Brilliant music Stokowski would have loved and Oramo does proud

Composers generally fall into one of two camps: either they write because they 
choose to, or because they have to. It seems to me that Manchester-born John 
Foulds, a one-time cellist with the Halle, was one of those who had to, and he 
was also something of a musical prophet. Extraordinary how his Dynamic Triptych 
opens, like an unstoppable current swirling around its seven-note mode, a 
tightly-woven study that goes to show how, given the right composer, confined 
harmony can work miracles. The slow second movement is cold but gripping, with 
strings that slide every now and then on a queasy bed of quarter-tones, the use 
of piano and timps fitfully anticipating Bartók's Second Concerto. The finale 
anticipates Martinu in the way that rhythmic patterns meet or converge, 
occasionally even Prokofiev (ie, momentarily, the Eighth Sonata, from around 
2'19") with some brilliant running passagework from Peter Donohoe, who gives a 
superb performance.

April-England is an earlier piece that was later revised, spontaneous and 
wide-eyed a la Copland to start with then quietening for a noble, slower section 
in the manner of a passacaglia. The Music-Pictures Group III is earlier still 
(1912), the first of them prophesying the Sibelius of Tapiola with a huge 
climax, the mostly playful 'Columbine' featuring yet more destabilising 
quarter-tones. The 'Old Greek Legend' has something of an Elgarian tread about 
it and the lively 'Tocsin' finale ends just like the 'March to the Scaffold' 
from the Symphonie fantastique. In fact Berlioz is probably Foulds's nearest 
forebear; both men relished new sounds while holding fast to key aspects of 
tradition, and Foulds, like Berlioz, was a pretty stunning orchestrator.

I kept wondering what the sensual The Song of Ram Dass reminded me of, then 
suddenly it hit me: 'The Troubadour's Serenade' from Glazunov's Middle Ages 
Suite - parallel exoticism, and a similarly winsome melody line. As for the 
gorgeous 'Keltic Lament' (James Horner eat your heart out), fine as Sakari 
Oramo's performance is - fine as his whole disc is in fact - one name kept 
coming back to me: Leopold Stokowski. How he would have basked in this amazing 
music! But, not having Mickey's magic wand to hand, Oramo and his Birmingham 
players will do very nicely. This is a really first-rate programme, a worthy 
follow-up to Oramo's first Foulds CD (A/04) and a revealing window onto an 
unusual and innovative area of English music.

  --Rob Cowan