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Birmingham Post
Orchestra of the Swan, Three Choirs Festival
7 August 2006 4 * * * *

Julian Philips - Masque for Caliban premiere
Refreshing programme

The Three Choirs Festival is not just about preserving tradition in aspic. One of its glories down the centuries has been the platform it has offered to new music, and Monday afternoon’s concert at the charming venue of Wyastone Lees near Monmouth as part of the as part of the current Hereford Festival continued this laudable thread.

A refreshing programme from the Stratford-based Orchestra of the Swan, its earliest offerings here mid-20th century, featured the premiere of Julian Philips’ Masque for Caliban, a substantial 22-minute work in several connected movements which revisit Shakespeare’s The Tempest in the words of the Barbadian poet Kamau Brathwaite.

Caliban rails against the invasion of the new order by new forces from across the seas, and baritone David Stout gave an emotionally gripping account of the taxing, searching solo part. Theatrical in concept (Caliban begins with wordless lamentation at the back of the orchestra, moves front-stage and eventually resumes his lamenting at the back of the auditorium), the piece demands total commitment of communication from the soloist – which it received – as well as from its compact kaleidoscope of players, attentively well-marshalled under the enthusiastic and well-prepared David Curtis.

Here appropriately dishevelled, a Stout more elegantly dressed had earlier delivered a persuasive, sonorous account of Gerald Finzi’s Shakesperian Let us Garlands Bring.

Framing this enthralling account were major works for strings alone, the Music for Strings by Arthur Bliss displaying urbane chameleon tendencies (including an incidental homage to Tippett’s then recent Concerto for Double String Orchestra), and Rudolf Barshai’s string orchestra arrangement of Shostakovich’s despairing and harrowing Eighth Quartet riveting us to our seats

Christopher Morley