Can these really be the same Symphonic Sketches to which I reacted in such lukewarm fashion when reviewing Neeme Jarvi’s Chandos recording last April? In the immensely sympathetic hands of Jose Serebrier and the Czech (formerly Brno) State Philharmonic, Chadwick’s orchestral set now sounds utterly transformed, its warm-hearted, tuneful inspiration emerging as freshly as the day it was conceived. Serebrier’s beautifully affectionate, flexible manner pays altogether more handsome dividends than Jarvi’s bluffer, more sanitized approach, with the fine Czech orchestra obviously revelling in the sheer enjoyment of discovering this music. In the last few months, I have also heard Howard Hanson’s recently restored 1956 Mercury recording – a typically vibrant performance (and still sounding astonishingly full-bodied four decades on), if without quite the gorgeous home-spun charm of Serebrier’s characterful conception.
When the impressive Melpomene overture was first heard at a Boston Symphony concert in December 1887, the response was just as enthusiastic as it had been almost exactly a year earlier for the premiere of Chadwick’s engaging Second Symphony. Taking its name from the Muse of tragedy, Melpomene is a fine, often eloquent achievement, whose slumbering, neo-Wagnerian character invites (and well withstands) comparison with, say, the tone-poems of Franck or Dukas’s early Polyeucte overture. The work did much to further Chadwick’s cause abroad and Serebrier does it proud, its thunderous, gong-topped climax at 10'57'' brought off with superb aplomb (and shatteringly caught by the microphones).
But the real discovery on this enterprising CD comes in the shape of Chadwick’s last important score, the 1915 symphonic poem, Tam O’Shanter. The adventures of Burns’s “blithering, blustering, drunken” rogue are depicted in music of the utmost vividness and local colour. Chadwick’s orchestral mastery is evident throughout, the wit and confidence of the writing at times reminiscent of Dukas’s L’apprenti sorcier and (to a lesser extent) La mort de Tintagiles, the decadent tone-poem written in 1900 by Chadwick’s fellow Boston-based colleague, Charles Martin Loeffler (aficionados should hear John Nelson’s Indianapolis SO account of the latter on New World, 11/88). Again, Serebrier’s performance is not only strikingly well prepared but also conveys all the necessary vigour and commitment, making this a thoroughly enjoyable disc of late-romantic music not to be missed by inquisitive readers.
With some glowingly sumptuous, excitingly wide-ranging engineering (much of this material is demonstration-worthy) and a marvellously detailed booklet-essay from Boston SO programme annotator, Steven Ledbetter, you have a very desirable collection indeed.'