New Music

Ramadhan 25 1429

I'm in the middle of changing the CDs in the car's CD changer. Just about to go in are: Duke Ellington & Johnny Hodges Play The Blues Back To Back, Van Morrison's Down The Road; Camembert Electrique by Gong; The Kinks's Face to Face; Arcade Fire's Funeral; and the first CD of Messiaen's Turangalila Symphony as played by Simon Rattle and the boys from Birmingham.

Coming out after being in there for a couple of weeks are: the compilation CD I got with the issue of The Word; Blur's Parklife; Seven Swans by Sufjan Stevens; Dylan's Infidels (which resolutely refused to play); Fairport Convention's Full House; and the final CD in my set of Tippett's Symphonies featuring Symphony No 4 plus the Suite in D for good measure. For the sake of completion I should add that I've also been listening to Billy Bragg's Don't Try This At Home on the cassette player in between bouts of Joyce's Ulysses in the Book At Bedtime recording by the BBC.

The big surprise for me in all that, as mentioned in an earlier post, has been just how effective the Tippett symphonies have proved in the car. I'd say that the final one, the 4th, has been the best of all to listen to. At 30 minutes it's not all that long and there's no breaks between movements, though you can pick out a sort of slow movement and scherzo. Tippett packs in an extraordinary number of textures in that timespan and so, though it's not exactly melodic, there's always something going on that arrests the ears. This is the only one of the set not conducted by Sir Colin Davis, in this case it being Sir Georg Solti waving the baton and the Chicago Symphony giving it their all. It was also recorded a good ten years after the other symphonies and I get a sense that the quality of sound is just that bit better - a tad more immediate. It seems that the Chicago Symphony commissioned the piece, so it's no wonder they do it so well. Sir Georg is also responsible for the Suite in D (for the Birthday of Prince Charles) which accompanies the symphony in an inspired bit of programming. This is Tippett excelling in an occasional, very public, work, showing how pleasing to the ear he can be when he wants to be. It features at least two stand-out melodies, derived from folk songs, the kind of stuff you can (nearly) hum along to, but recognisably in Tippett's voice. The accessibility of the suite sheds light on what's going on in the symphonies, I feel.

It's been the success of my experiment with the Tippett set that has led me to put the Messiaen in this time round. Let's see what this one does to the old ears.