“Who could forget the tingling anticipation of a new Umbrage for Eleven Instruments by Humphrey Searle?” That was Stravinsky’s (or was it Robert Craft’s?) ironic put-down in the last of their volumes of conversations, Themes and Conclusions (Faber & Faber: 1972). It was unkind, but it pretty well sums up the current reputation of a deeply unfashionable composer: Searle the dour, austerely grey disciple of Webern. As the excellent note accompanying this recording reminds us, though, Searle was knocked sideways by Wozzeck years before encountering Webern and by the music of Liszt long before either. I haven’t heard any of his music for a very long while, but memory suggests that it wasn’t really Webern-like at all: fundamentally late-romantic, rather, highly coloured and dramatic. That memory was confirmed by these performances, but I wasn’t expecting quite so much variety in a trio of symphonies composed within a matter of no more than seven or eight years.
The Second is the most lyrical and the most directly expressive of the three, and for all that it uses serial processes it is both audibly ‘in D’ and uses that fact to dramatic purpose. It is symmetrical in structure, a slow introduction returning transformed at the end, the first movement’s ‘development’ continuing after the haunting elegy that is the work’s centre. The Third, which immediately followed, is quite different in form, colour and manner: in effect a trilogy of symphonic impressions of the Mediterranean world, of the savage conflicts of ancient Greece, of a village festival interrupted by storm winds in the hills north of Trieste and of night on the Venetian lagoon. The Fifth is a rondo-like single movement, with crystalline music that may well be a homage to Webern (the symphony is dedicated to his memory) alternating with what we will by now recognize as Searle’s own spare but often eloquently linear manner. The orchestral colour, striking and at times almost lurid, is also Searle’s own, and all three works impress with their strong, dramatic gestures.
The performances and recordings are so good that a companion disc of his First and Fourth Symphonies would be welcome. And that might lead to a demand, which I would certainly support, for recordings of his strikingly original trilogy of melodramas for speaker and orchestra, Gold Coast Customs, The Riverrun and The Shadow of Cain. Dour and grey Searle certainly wasn’t; there’s even a brief hint of jovial humour in the Fifth Symphony. Indeed this disc demonstrates that among British symphonists of his period (Arnold, Frankel, Fricker, Lloyd, Rawsthorne, Simpson) Searle stands higher than most.'