The second of Bliss’s four ballets, Miracle in the Gorbals – a biblical allegory, set in a slum near the Glasgow docks (‘an area now completely transformed’, as the composer tactfully acknowledged) – grew out of an idea by Robert Helpmann who went on to choreograph (and dance the role of the Stranger in) the first production, at Sadler’s Wells, under Constant Lambert in October 1944. The following year, Bliss compiled a seven-movement concert suite which he premiered with the LPO at the first Cheltenham Festival in June 1945. If not quite as consistently inspired or memorable as Checkmate (its 1937 predecessor), Miracle in the Gorbals still contains a healthy quotient of top-notch Bliss, not least the lilting grace of ‘The Young Lovers’ (track 10 on Naxos’s copiously indexed disc), the wistful sarabande which accompanies the appearance of the Young Girl’s dead body (track 14), the haunting progress of the Christ-like Stranger’s ‘Variations’ (track 15), not to mention the immediately ensuing (and irresistibly catchy) ‘Dance of Deliverance’.
On their extensive (and sumptuously engineered) 1976 selection for EMI (10/88 – nla), Paavo Berglund and the Bournemouth SO offered us 10 numbers (nearly 26 minutes in all), so Christopher Lyndon-Gee’s premiere recording of the work in its 37-minute entirety is both long overdue and very welcome. The Queensland SO responds with discipline and real gusto, and Lyndon-Gee conducts with plenty of fire and drama. The engineering, too, on this 1995 co-production with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, is more than acceptable, though I did miss the hugely effective, ominous ship’s horn that immediately follows those grinding chords at the climax of ‘The Killing of the Stranger’ (track 22). Now, I wonder whether Naxos also has a complete Checkmate in the pipeline?
The collection kicks off with Discourse, an amiable, typically colourful 18-minute essay originally written in 1957 for Robert Whitney and the Louisville Orchestra but comprehensively overhauled eight years later. Lyndon-Gee’s is a lively, but altogether bluffer conception than that of Vernon Handley (EMI, 8/80 – nla). Neither performance benefits from ideally tidy string playing, but Handley’s CBSO section just has the edge over the Queenslanders. Also, the 11-minute suite from Christopher Palmer’s masterly reconstruction of Things to Come is erroneously labelled as a first recording: enthusiasts will fondly recall Sir Charles Groves’s splendid 1976 selection with the RPO, which originally shared an LP with his superb Colour Symphony (EMI, 11/77 – nla). No matter: Lyndon-Gee and his hard-working band give another spirited display, and the disc as a whole can be warmly commended.'