In my review of the CD transfers of the Davis/Solti recordings of Tippett's symphonies (7/90), I hoped it would not be too long before new CD versions ''by one orchestra under one conductor'' would be made. That call is now being answered by Richard Hickox and the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra. Symphony No. 4 has already been issued (11/93) to high praise, and a comparably warm welcome should be forthcoming for this new release.
The Third Symphony, first heard in 1972, is one of Tippett's most complex and highly charged attempts to create a convincing structure from the collision between strongly contrasted musical characteristics. The work evolves from a purely orchestral drama—fast first movement, slow second movement, both large-scale, followed by a shorter scherzo—to a less extended but also tripartite sequence of blues settings, the whole capped by a huge, climactic coda in which the soprano voice finally yields the last word to the orchestra.
The first two movements (Part 1, as Tippett calls it) remain a considerable technical challenge, especially to the strings, but this performance manages to sustain an appropriate level of tension without sounding merely effortful, and without skimping on the opportunities for eloquence of phrasing. It could well be that Tippett has over-indulged the percussion in the slow movement, but this vivid and well-balanced Chandos recording lets us hear ample detail without exaggerating the bright colours and hyper-resonant textures.
The later stages have the advantage of a superbly characterful singer in Faye Robinson. Heather Harper did marvels with this difficult music, but she was always more Ellen Orford than Bessie Smith, and Robinson has the power, the edge, and also the radiance, to make Tippett's progression from idiosyncratic blues to Beethoven-quoting peroration utterly convincing. Not even Robinson can make Tippett's words more than intermittently audible, but she rides the incandescent orchestra, including a well-played flugelhorn descant in the first blues, with effortless authority.
The work ends, famously, on a question-mark, dismissing the unrestrained affirmation of Beethoven's Choral finale in favour of the unresolved opposition of loud brass and soft strings. Will that ''new compassionate power/To heal, to love'' which the text ''senses'' actually be achieved? Twenty years on, the jury is still out on Tippett's great humanist challenge. Meanwhile, there can be no questioning the achievement of this performance and recording, coupled strikingly with the highly characteristic Praeludium for brass, bells and percussion of 1962. Sir Colin Davis's account of the symphony, first issued on LP in 1975, will always be admired as a magnificent pioneering effort—perhaps he should record the work again?—but Chandos have given us the version for our time.'