William Alwyn is a leading member of the 'lost' generation of British composers, who wrote important music in the central decades of the twentieth century. Critical opinion and the enormous later influence of the BBC ensured that Alwyn and many of his contemporaries, who worked using traditional frameworks and harmonic developments, were passed over in favour of the avant-garde fraternity (one thinks of Frank Bridge, John Ireland, George Lloyd and the late William Mathias and many others, who are only just beginning to re-emerge from relative obscurity). These views still hold considerable sway in determining what is played; but fortunately not what is recorded.
The Alwyn symphonies are harder nuts to crack than the concertante works offered by Chandos (see above), but nothing like as thorny as a good deal of the music of Tippett or Maxwell Davies. Alwyn had the advantage of writing orchestral film music over a period of 25 years and that gave him the inestimable advantage of being able to try out and refine his orchestration and hear how the results actually worked; his sound-world is both individual and very experienced in handling balances and colours. His symphonic style is in a post-Sibelian tradition, with motives and ideas appearing in embryo, cogently argued and always finding some kind of apotheosis, inspiring or with an element of disillusionment, which surely reflects human experience.
The Second Symphony (1953) is in two movements, and brings a steady organic growth from the opening bassoon idea through the changing moods of the first movement, bubbling with the ideas which are to fulminate much later. The work's first section closes with an eloquent Adagio; the scherzo which opens the second throws off sparks, but has lyrical elements too, until the passionate cry of the strings (8'35'') punctuated by timpani is taken up by the brass and (at 9'52'') a very Sibelian melody finally evolves from the lower strings, moves to the violins, horns and trumpets resplendently, and then later dissolves enigmatically, although the work ends with a firm, sustained bold final chord. The Third Symphony (1956) was the result of a sympathetic BBC commission from the then Controller of Music, Richard Howgill, and even enjoyed a first performance under Sir Thomas Beecham. It is an even more closely argued piece, opening in nervous agitation with busy strings, brass interjections and horn calls. A restless string theme emerges (2'00'') and one notes a marvellous shaft of light on the horns later (5'28''). The second movement opens with a horn theme, a little reminiscent of Holst's melody for ''Venus'' in The Planets, but soon the music becomes more animated and a kind of quick march appears, but (at 3'04'') the ethereal strings return to the opening idea, which is then taken up gloriously by a pair of horns (4'54''). The movement ends in peace as it began, with strings and cor anglais confirming the basic darkness of the main idea. The third movement is strong and rhythmically bold. Again there are Holstian allusions, this time to ''Mars'' for the composer was concerned by events of his time, and the threat that another world war might be looming. However, the lyrical idea gives hope, carolling on clarinets, horns and strings (3'51'') and later the brass becomes ecstatic, with the music finally resolving matters confidently and triumphantly.
The compact, powerful single-movement Fifth dates from 1973 and its source of inspiration is an unlikely one, the seventeenth-century Sir Thomas Browne's Urn Burial or Hydriotaphia—a Discourse of the Sepulchral Urns lately found in Norfolk! Each section contains a quotation from the book, yet without programmatic intent, for it is Browne's prose that Alwyn found so remarkable. The dramatic opening (''Life is a pure flame'') with sidedrums and fanfares mixed like Licorice Allsorts, evolves into a fragmented, chirpy idea and a more melancholic wandering restlessness. Moods change chimerically: a lovely, delicate passage with strings and harp (''sad and sepulchral pitchers expressing old mortality, the ruins of forgotten time''—5'54'') is very different from the violently aggressive scherzo (''iniquity comes at long strides upon us''—7'03''); then hammered chords (7'38'') are used to introduce a woodwind interlude and at the close (''Man is a noble animal, splendid in ashes'') there are misterioso bells (10'00'') and a lyrical idea flowers on the strings, with the brass echoing sombrely behind. There is a sense of acceptance of nemesis, but also perhaps a hint of disillusion that man is so very flawed.
I have written at length about this music, because it is for me so much more immediately rewarding than the Boulez school, and I hope to tempt you to explore it further. The performances are passionately authoritative and the vintage recording, from the 1970s, splendidly engineered by a Decca team, sounds superb in its CD format.'