Originally published on February 6
I have been waiting for this. With increasing impatience, recorded May 2024. And then solely on the expectation of revisiting Tristan – still, which made a haunting impression twenty-plus years ago. And now, here it is. Review copies have arrived unusually early – if welcome – in relation to the release date of April 24.
Welshman William Mival (born 1959) is not only a composer, but also a broadcaster, including as a regular guest on BBC Radio 3’s Record Review, and his writing subjects embrace Stockhausen.
To Mival’s music.
From its very opening, Vale – a pastoral symphony is music to hug – it being bountiful and wondrous, evocative of landscape (and with a connection to W. H. Auden), invention with a big appeal, not least for admirers of Copland and Vaughan Williams, I suggest, music that becomes more sinewy as it develops, with section four, marked Lento, being especially lovely, with solo violin, from the heart to the heart, in awe of green pastures, maybe.
Pluen (feather), particularly the three associated with the Prince of Wales, specifically Charles on his seventieth birthday, the commission brining to fruition a “meditation on a Welsh folk song”, generously expressive.
Tristan – still, commissioned by BBC Radio 3 and first-performed by the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Donald Runnicles in February 2003 (Barbican Hall) prefacing Act I of Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde, its three Acts each given a concert back then. Mival has made slight revisions for this long-overdue revival of a transfixing deeply contemplative piece of wonderful harmonies, a perfect fit for the hallowed surroundings of St Jude on the Hill, North London, and Mike Hatch’s expertise with microphones; the producer was Stephen Johns. (A few seconds into track ten there’s a noise-off that I am surprised got through post-production, although the music’s eloquence and the performance’s powerful concentration are not disturbed.)
Throughout, the Philharmonia plays with beauty and focus to reveal fully these scores’ radiance and hypnotic effect, Martyn Brabbins typically a master of the pages in front of him. Signum Classics SIGCD977.
https://signumrecords.com/product/william-mival-works/SIGCD977
From William Mival…
Dear Colin,
Thank you very much for sending this through and thank you also for this exceptionally warm and positive review of this disc.
I am deeply touched.
If I may say one thing – I think that what you refer to as “the noise off” at the start of Track 10, the last track of ‘Tristan – still’ – is actually a part of the piece! It is an unusual and slightly alien moment I admit; it is intended as a brief reminiscence of Bernd Alois Zimmerman’s “Stille und Umkehr” and is a momentary memory of the percussion riff that goes through that piece. I remember in the recording we worked hard to get the right sound!
I hope this explains that moment – for all my romanticism I also retain something of a nostalgia for 1960’s high modernism!
But thank you again for your wonderful review.
Very best wishes
Bill
I am pleased to have the composer’s clarification regarding the noise in track ten and have thanked Mr Mival accordingly. Colin