Hubert Parry
's
Scenes from Shelley's Prometheus Unbound
, from 1880, here receives its world-recorded premiere. Perhaps recording companies thought there wouldn't be much of a market for a heavy 19th century choral work with, it must be said, a ponderous text by
Percy Bysshe Shelley
(Prometheus was a play intended to be read, not performed, just to give an idea). How wrong they were. This release made classical best-seller lists in the summer of 2023, and it is altogether enjoyable. At the time,
Parry
was under the spell of
Wagner
, whom he traveled to Bayreuth to meet. That influence certainly shows up in
, with its basically declamatory text, partly through-composed music, wind-and-brass-heavy orchestration, and splashes of chromaticism. Yet what is remarkable is that the music does not come off as an imitation of
at all. Rather, it uses elements of his style to match a specific kind of English literary text. The work gradually disappeared, but it would be surprising if
Elgar
, whom it clearly prefigures, did not know it well. The performances here are luminous, with
William Vann
using the lighter-than-expected
London Mozart Players
to create transparent textures against which he can set the substantial voices of
Sarah Fox
,
Sarah Connolly
, and other soloists.
did write some shorter pieces that remain in the repertory; one of these,
Blest Pair of Sirens
, is included here as a finale. However, the
are the main news here, and this performance, showing how this kind of thing should be done, may generate a new life for the work. ~ James Manheim