For the past 16 years Sir Colin Davis's recording of Tippett's Second Symphony has etched into the mind the way the work's opening Allegro vigoroso should sound, launched as it is on a joyous wave of exuberant and affirmative energy. Given this precedent, Richard Hickox's reading is initially disconcerting: the pulse is slower, the texture weightier. Two questions immediately arise: is this vigorous enough? and, won't Hickox get bogged down in laboured contrapuntal exposition?
Fortunately, the questions can be answered 'yes' and 'no'. It may be that, in the symphony as a whole, Hickox lacks something of that risky spontaneity which almost made it seem as if Davis were conducting the score at sight. But the balance Hickox achieves between attention to detail and large-scale symphonic sweep is exemplary, and especially impressive in the tricky finale, where he conveys the essential ambiguity of an ending which strives to recapture the optimistic elan of the work's opening without ever quite managing it. The Chandos recording, too, puts the remastered 1968 Argo disc firmly into the vintage category. It gives us much more of the symphony's contrapuntal detail, although I wish the upper strings could have been gently boosted in the interests of a better (even if frankly unnatural) textural balance.
The first recording of music from Tippett's latest opera New Year, premiered in 1989, is thoroughly welcome, though the whole opera should have been made available (on video, too) before now. The music of this suite may seem over-emphatic to anyone who hasn't experienced the opera in the theatre, and the recording relishes the booming electric guitars and wailing saxophones, as well as the taped spaceship effects. Yet there are many imaginative moments, like the use of the 'paradise garden' sarabande borrowed from The Mask of Time, and the exotic arrangement of Auld Lang Syne near the end. This is Tippett firing on all cylinders, with a performance and recording to match.'