McCartney Liverpool Oratorio
View record and artist detailsRecord and Artist Details
Label: EMI
Magazine Review Date: 11/1991
Media Format: CD or Download
Media Runtime: 97
Mastering:
DDD
Catalogue Number: 754371-2
Label: EMI
Magazine Review Date: 11/1991
Media Format: Vinyl
Media Runtime: 0
Mastering:
DDD
Catalogue Number: EX754371-1
Label: EMI
Magazine Review Date: 11/1991
Media Format: Cassette
Media Runtime: 0
Mastering:
DDD
Catalogue Number: EX754371-4
Author:
Paul McCartney has not been a Gramophone regular since those far off days when the late Peter Clayton and his colleagues would commend each new Beatles release as Pick of the Crop. Even Carl Davis has more often featured as a conductor than a 'serious' composer. His theme music for Jeremy Isaacs's TV series, The World at War, was a trenchant pastiche of Soviet symphonic sprawl, but he is probably best known for film scores of inordinate length which have helped resuscitate several epics of the silent screen. An odd couple to have concocted this massive secular oratorio? Perhaps so. But, thanks to CD technology and ample index points, it is possible to treat the work as a sequence of 'hit' songs, even if the composers themselves intend it to be taken seriously. And swallowed whole.
It would be unrealistic to look for a fully developed McCartney/Davis 'classical' style sustainable over 97 minutes. McCartney's best work includes straightforward rock 'n' roll, conventional Muzak balladry and those strangely affecting, oddly distanced vignettes of ordinary life which find echoes in this Liverpool Oratorio. And yet, although there are McCartneyish melodies here, the more personal they are—the more characteristically short-breathed in fact—the more they seem inimical to any form of extended development. The most haunting of them, exquisitely sung by Dame Kiri, is ''The world you're coming into'': wisely, this is left as a self-contained aria. A snippet from Jerry Hadley's big number, ''Kept in confusion, trapped by illusion... ghosts of the past left behind'', provides the main point of motivic reference. Revealingly, it dovetails with a simple, rising choral idea that becomes increasingly reminiscent of Carl Orff as Carl Davis fills out the textures. The opening movement, ''War'', is quite dissonant, more harmonically adventurous than you might expect—the inevitable Burgonish passage for boy soloist (Jeremy Budd) has adequate sting in its tail, and the first orchestral theme derives some expressive force from the slow movement of Schumann's Second Symphony—until, that is, the first tenor entry arrives to break the spell.
Sometimes, as in movements 2, 3 and 7, the set pieces work well enough and you have a sense that McCartney is feeling his way towards a larger structure. Elsewhere, the pace flags, the sense of direction less sure. Connoisseurs of Carl Davis will not be surprised to find, alongside five minutes of Vieuxtemps a la Macca for the RLPO leader and much George Martin-style pulsing-till-ready from the strings, a snatch of Boris's Coronation, some Brittenesque pseudo-passacaglia, a climactic dollop of Mahler's Eighth (the sonority if not the substance) and a banal but insidiously memorable ditty, ''Do we live in a world with an uncertain future?'', which hints at the scherzo of Mahler's Fourth but settles into a flattened-out version of McCartney's beloved Carousel. A mixed bag then, skilfully scored, more reliably tuneful than Lloyd Webber's Requiem, but almost always rhythmically square and, incontrovertibly, a long haul.
Edited together from concert performances, EMI's live recording is remarkably successful, given the excessive resonance of Liverpool's Ang- lican Cathedral. The distinguished cast takes a little time to warm up. Dame Kiri sounds uncomfortable at first, although she quickly finds her very best voice for music she clearly finds congenial. Jerry Hadley has his moments of hardness, but he too is heard to great advantage, as are Sally Burgess and Willard White, who has to cope with some awkward corners in McCartney's frankly sentimental text. With microphones placed close, both to contain the reverberation, and, no doubt, to satisfy 'pop' sensibilities, some harshness of tone may be forgiven, and it does mean that words are exceptionally clear. The choirs cope well, except in the fourth movement, ''Father'', which could have done with some remedial patching. Trumpet blare disfigures the orchestral balance now and again, but the big Victorian chorales need the aural excitement this venue provides.
Spread over two luxuriously packaged CDs,Paul McCartney's Liverpool Oratorio is short measure by the standards of EMI Classics. Space could have been found for some more 'classical' treatments of McCartney material. But then the brilliant Baroque Beatles stylizations by Cathy Berberian, Joshua Rifkin and Fritz Spiegl do rather show up the limitations of this well-intentioned, unexceptionable and yet strangely reactionary piece d'occasion. No doubt it will sell, but I don't suppose Peter Clayton would have approved.'
It would be unrealistic to look for a fully developed McCartney/Davis 'classical' style sustainable over 97 minutes. McCartney's best work includes straightforward rock 'n' roll, conventional Muzak balladry and those strangely affecting, oddly distanced vignettes of ordinary life which find echoes in this Liverpool Oratorio. And yet, although there are McCartneyish melodies here, the more personal they are—the more characteristically short-breathed in fact—the more they seem inimical to any form of extended development. The most haunting of them, exquisitely sung by Dame Kiri, is ''The world you're coming into'': wisely, this is left as a self-contained aria. A snippet from Jerry Hadley's big number, ''Kept in confusion, trapped by illusion... ghosts of the past left behind'', provides the main point of motivic reference. Revealingly, it dovetails with a simple, rising choral idea that becomes increasingly reminiscent of Carl Orff as Carl Davis fills out the textures. The opening movement, ''War'', is quite dissonant, more harmonically adventurous than you might expect—the inevitable Burgonish passage for boy soloist (Jeremy Budd) has adequate sting in its tail, and the first orchestral theme derives some expressive force from the slow movement of Schumann's Second Symphony—until, that is, the first tenor entry arrives to break the spell.
Sometimes, as in movements 2, 3 and 7, the set pieces work well enough and you have a sense that McCartney is feeling his way towards a larger structure. Elsewhere, the pace flags, the sense of direction less sure. Connoisseurs of Carl Davis will not be surprised to find, alongside five minutes of Vieuxtemps a la Macca for the RLPO leader and much George Martin-style pulsing-till-ready from the strings, a snatch of Boris's Coronation, some Brittenesque pseudo-passacaglia, a climactic dollop of Mahler's Eighth (the sonority if not the substance) and a banal but insidiously memorable ditty, ''Do we live in a world with an uncertain future?'', which hints at the scherzo of Mahler's Fourth but settles into a flattened-out version of McCartney's beloved Carousel. A mixed bag then, skilfully scored, more reliably tuneful than Lloyd Webber's Requiem, but almost always rhythmically square and, incontrovertibly, a long haul.
Edited together from concert performances, EMI's live recording is remarkably successful, given the excessive resonance of Liverpool's Ang- lican Cathedral. The distinguished cast takes a little time to warm up. Dame Kiri sounds uncomfortable at first, although she quickly finds her very best voice for music she clearly finds congenial. Jerry Hadley has his moments of hardness, but he too is heard to great advantage, as are Sally Burgess and Willard White, who has to cope with some awkward corners in McCartney's frankly sentimental text. With microphones placed close, both to contain the reverberation, and, no doubt, to satisfy 'pop' sensibilities, some harshness of tone may be forgiven, and it does mean that words are exceptionally clear. The choirs cope well, except in the fourth movement, ''Father'', which could have done with some remedial patching. Trumpet blare disfigures the orchestral balance now and again, but the big Victorian chorales need the aural excitement this venue provides.
Spread over two luxuriously packaged CDs,
McCartney Liverpool Oratorio
McCartney Liverpool Oratorio
McCartney Liverpool Oratorio
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