Events
The 2024 AGM Event will be held on Sunday 29 September at the Ivor Gurney Hall, which is part of the King’s School, Gloucester GL1 2BG. The afternoon will commence at 2:00 pm with a lecture/recital by one of our Vice-Presidents, Mark Bebbington, on The 20th Century Romantic British Piano Concerto – Mark is at the forefront of promoting 20th century English music, particularly that of Arthur Bliss. The lecture/recital is open to all, and (for ABS members) the AGM will follow. Please do make a note of the date in your diary.
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2023 brought two important and unique occasions in the Bliss calendar where members and friends were able to meet.
The first was at the Barbican Concert Hall in London on 26 March for the sensational screening of the 1936 film Things to Come with Bliss’s score played live by the London Symphony Orchestra. The film’s producer, Alexander Korda, had approached H. G. Wells to write a screenplay based on his recent best-selling novel The Shape of Things to Come. In turn, Wells persuaded Bliss that he was the ideal person to write music which could illustrate and enhance his vision of the future, but Wells’s script wasn’t used, the screenplay was rewritten and Bliss’s symphonic score had to be reworked to fit the action on screen. In this evening’s performance, the limitations of timing the music to the action were handled brilliantly by the conductor Frank Strobel and the immediacy of the sound gave the audience experience an extra edge – an exhilarating musical soundscape with dialogue and visuals to match. The LSO had featured on the original soundtrack and the current line-up of musicians obviously relished the opportunity to shine in this 87-year-anniversary ‘re-run’. A triumph!
A second and very different opportunity came on 10 July at the book event hosted by Presto Classical at their store in Leamington Spa, where Paul Spicer, in conversation with Chairman of the Bliss Trust Andrew Burn, talked about his new biography Sir Arthur Bliss: Standing out from the Crowd. The evening began with a glass of wine and a chance to meet the other members and friends present, before James Longstaffe of Presto Classical, welcomed us and introduced the speakers, whose discussion began with the somewhat unorthodox approach that Paul took in writing this book. He told us that at the outset he was a ‘musical agnostic’ unfamiliar with Bliss’s work and gave a fascinating insight into how he found a way in by studying in depth the music composed during each time-period as he covered it and letting the scores do their talking. We were taken on a journey through Bliss’s life as a composer, with selected musical interludes linked to significant experiences and events, from the experimentation of the 1920s to the ‘late Indian Summer of creativity’ which lasted until his death in 1975 – events so numerous that sadly there was not enough time for a musical quote for all of them. Inevitably the conversation turned to the profound effect that the First World War had on Bliss’s life, and Paul suggested that the horrors of the Somme, where Bliss was wounded and gassed and where his brother Kennard was killed, had a lifelong effect on Bliss’s personality – Morning Heroes (1930) was dedicated to the memory of Kennard – and the chosen excerpt was the last stanza of Wilfred Owen’s poem Spring Offensive read by Samuel West. Paul’s conclusion was that Bliss’s later music spoke to him most eloquently, singling out Meditations on a theme by John Blow (1955) for special attention and we heard an extract from the finale of Meditations before moving on to the works and experiences of Bliss’s later life The event closed with book sales and signing and Bliss CD sales, which offered the tantalising prospect of approaching the book in the same way that Paul wrote it – getting to know Bliss by listening to his music while reading his story.
The AGM Event, held in Harrogate on 28 October 2023, had two contrasting halves. First was Philip Wilby’s lecture-recital Bliss’s Unfinished Viola Concerto, his detailed account of orchestrating the Viola Sonata into a full-scale concerto (a primary element of the ‘50 for 50’ project for 2025 organised by the Bliss Trust and the Arthur Bliss Society to mark the 50th anniversary of Bliss’s death). Almost forty years after the Sonata’s première in 1933, Bliss observed in his autobiography As I Remember: ‘As my Sonata grew, I realised that it was rapidly becoming a concerto for the instrument, and if today I had the energy and patience I would translate the piano accompaniment into an orchestral tissue, taking care that the mellow dark sombre tone of the solo instrument was not obscured by too thick a surround’. With this approval and guidance from Bliss, Philip Wilby has found the necessary ‘energy and patience’ to complete the ‘translation’ of the Viola Sonata.
Philip began by describing the origins of the Sonata, written for Lionel Tertis in 1933, reminding us that Bliss subsequently suggested that Tertis’s name should be coupled with his as joint composers, so close had been their collaboration in writing the Sonata. Observations on the influence on the Sonata by works of contemporary composers were illustrated by David Aspin (Principal viola, Orchestra of Opera North) accompanied by Philip Wilby on the piano, and we were given the opportunity to hear David’s rendering of extracts from the new Viola Concerto with a computer-generated orchestral accompaniment – a tantalising and well-executed performance which made the prospect of its ‘live’ world première next year even more exciting.
(Philip’s adaptation of his lecture is published in the 2023 Winter Journal of the Arthur Bliss Society).
There followed a rousing concert by the Carlton Main Frickley Colliery Band, conducted by David Purkiss. Philip Wilby’s programme notes, reproduced here, open with a reminder of how Arthur Bliss first ‘discovered’ the brass band:
“In 1935, Bliss was asked by The Spectator magazine to write a series of articles on Musical Britain. He was allowed to choose his own locations and subjects, and it is a revealing measure of the man that he chose to make a survey of the country, from Bath to Newcastle, from Cardiff to Glasgow, reviewing the significant amateur musical traditions that were so important between the two World Wars.
In his memoir, As I Remember, he wrote: ‘Near Bolton, at Westhoughton, I came across one of the famous brass bands of this country, the Wingates Temperance Band. I am sure that any musician when he first hears the virtuosity of these amateur players is as astounded as I was. I note that Toscanini and Casals also expressed their wonder.‘
Our concert today begins and ends with pieces by Arthur Bliss, celebrating both Queen Elizabeths, first and second.
PROGRAMME
Welcome the Queen (1956): Arthur Bliss arr. Halstenson
Michael Halstenson’s new arrangement of Welcome the Queen will receive its first performance and it re-uses the music that Bliss wrote for the film made to welcome Queen Elizabeth’s triumphant return from her tour of the commonwealth in 1954.
Downland Suite (1932): John Ireland
John Ireland’s classic Downland Suite celebrates the composer’s associations with Sussex. Composed in 1932 as a set test piece for the National Band Championships, its four movements are Prelude, Elegy, Minuet and Rondo.
Astralis (2023): Philip Wilby (English Première)
Philip Wilby’s Astralis was premièred in Malmö, Sweden in May 2022. It has been chosen as a set test piece for the Scottish Open Championships to be held in Perth in November. The music celebrates the modern brass band in all its colour and power. Inspired by the James Webb Space Telescope, which was launched on 25 December 2021, the largest and most complete space telescope in history, its primary mirror consisting of 18 hexagonal mirror segments made of gold-plated beryllium. Astralis lasts some 15 minutes and has five sections, titled Prologue, Deep Field, Black Hole, Nebula and Epilogue: Ad Astra.
Kenilworth (1936): Arthur Bliss
Bliss’s Kenilworth is a musical portrait of the first Queen Elizabeth’s visit to the castle in 1575. It was composed for the Wingates Band and was used in the National Finals at the Crystal Palace in 1936. There are three separate movements; a heraldic opening represents Elizabeth’s arrival At the Castle Gates, Serenade on the Lake follows, and the suite ends with one of the most inventive of Bliss’s marches.
© Philip Wilby”
In the Winter edition of the ABS Journal one of our members, Kevin Paynes, described the event as a wonderful afternoon of music, inspiring, exhilarating and educational – I’m sure that every member of the audience would agree.
The event was filmed so that it could be made available to a wider audience.
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The Society arranges occasional gatherings of members and friends for informal pub/restaurant lunches or pre-concert suppers whenever Committee members are able to attend concerts where Bliss works are being played. We have enjoyed meeting members and friends in London, Luton, Harrogate, Worcester, Hereford, Shrewsbury and elsewhere.
Other highlights were in May 2011, when Rupert Luck and Matthew Rickard performed the restored Violin Sonata at an event jointly sponsored by the Arthur Bliss Society and the Ivor Gurney Society and in March 2015, when the Society arranged to have a Bliss work included in one of the regular Lunchtime Recitals at Cheltenham Town Hall at which Rebeca Omordia played the Piano Suite. At the Three Choirs Festivals in 2006 and 2015 (both in Hereford) we arranged highly enjoyable social events, each of them taking place before a concert featuring Bliss work – a lunch out in the country setting of Wyastone in 2006 and the Tea and Talk at The Left Bank complex, beautifully situated by the river Wye, in July 2015.
More details of these and other ABS events can be found in the sub items listed under Events on the main menu.