British Women Composers vol. 1

It came as some surprise during Errollyn Wallen's recent turn as the week's composer that It all depends on you is actually four poems by Philip Larkin. I'm not obsessive enough to pursue 'completism' either of Errollyn or Larkin but this record nourishes two birds with one meal. 

Dealing in stereotypes as one can't help doing, one wouldn't naturally put them together but nonetheless Errollyn is well enough informed to appreciate what's good in the poetry without being put off by the author that wrote them and, anyway, these settings are from 1989 and the Larkin Selected Letters that did so much damage to his reputation weren't published until 1992.

First of the four poems is the very well-known This Be The Verse whereas the other three are earlier and/or not well-known at all. 1989 makes them early Errollyn, somewhat avant garde and might take more application from me than they'll ever get to properly appreciate. While This Be The Verse is scored for clarinets and saxophones in respect of Larkin's enthusiasm for Sidney Bechet and Pee Wee Russell, it doesn't follow that his favourite choice of music suits his poems. I'm not convined that Diana Ross & the Supremes would be the best choice for any settings of my poems. It's not often that music does much for poems at all since ideally they already have music of their own. And I'm aware that other attempts at seeting Larkin to music have done little to enhance them. However, if one of one's favourite living composers has set one of one's favourite poets one shouldn't be without such things. I do have more faith in the programme of Errollyn's own songs at Wigmore Hall on Saturday, though.

Lindsay Cooper's The Road is Wider Than Long is more immediate in its appeal but all of this album is 'art music' of late C20th contemporary persuasion, demands concentration, commitment and isn't as easy listening as Tuesday's Haydn in Chichester. I'd have loved it all circa 1973 when The Faust Tapes constituted a large part of my musical ideals along with a deliberate searching out of the weirdest things I could find on Sounds of the 70's or Radio 3 but Bach and Handel feel more comfortable by now.

There might be a better way of listening to music like this, which is eyes closed and partially drifting off to let the otherworldliness of Elizabeth Maconchy's My Dark Heart recreate in you whatever it triggers whether that is Synge's translation of Petrarch yearning to join the dead Laura or not.

Nicola LeFanu's The Old Woman of Beare takes us on an excursion to wilder shores yet, not always a bad thing, but there are a lot of discs lined up with the Complete Mozart Piano Concertos, Yuja Wang's Rachmaninov and the recent Elgar acquisitions and not enough time for them all. I'm a mainstream sort of boy these days and having given this two outings today it's not obvious that it's going to be keeping those off the turntable but there's things you have to have even if it's for the sake of having them.