A New John Pickard Album

PICKARD: Symphonies Nos. 2 & 6. Verlaine Songs: I. Chanson d’automne; II. Spleen; III. Marine; IV. Le squelette; V. L’heure exquise; VI. Le soleil d’or* / *Emma Tring, sop; BBC National Orch. of Wales; Martyn Brabbins, cond / Bis SACD-2721, also available for free streaming on YouTube starting HERE

Here is a wonderful CD, ostensibly distributed by Naxos of America but without any fanfare or availability to reviewers. It was issued in May, but wasn’t listed in the Naxos New Release catalog until June, and even as of this writing is not available for streaming on the Naxos Music Library website. I had to put on my Sherlock Holmes cap and play detective in order to track it down, but fortunately I was able to do so and thus could review it.

The second symphony, we are told, was written when Pickard was only 23 years old and is based on a book by John Hersey about Hiroshima after the atom bomb was dropped on it and how quickly vegetation regenerated amidst the ashes of the city. The opening is thus rather weird and strange, not merely bitonal but, it sounds to me, tritonal, with different sections of the orchestra playing in three different keys and using highly unorthodox close chord positions to indicate the feeling of tension felt in the city at that time. Yet simultaneously there is a sort of lyricism in the melodic line despite the harmonic congestion, possibly indicating the desire for life to return to normal after such a life-shattering event. As usual with Pickard’s music, however, it morphs as it develops, eventually having the bases play out-of-tonality double time figures underneath which gives the music propulsion, and after this both the overall tempo and volume increase as the tension builds to an almost unbearable climax, with a further doubling of tempo as the brass plays quirky figures above it all. In this manner, Pickard tightens the screws as the symphony progresses.

It’s hard to say if the rapid string figures around the 8:25 mark are meant to indicate the growth of vegetation, but if they are it is clear that the vegetation was evidently changed in molecular structure by the atomic blast. At 12:22 the volume decreases as we get what amounts to a “scherzo” section in this one-movement symphony, a rapid but continually halting motif played by the violas with wind interjections. Yet, strangely, there really does seem to be a bit of black humor going on in this section. Even so, things gradually become more intense as the music continues to develop, including downward string passages, brass triplets, and further layered rhythms and harmonies to increase the tension, almost as if the vegetation were growing wildly and out of control, similar to the rapidly multiplying walking mops and pails in Dukas’ The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. Eventually a rather sinister ostinato rhythm assets itself, then ebbs, leaving the strings to continue the musical journey via both sustained chords and rapid, shifting passages with the whole orchestra now chiming in, particularly the percussion. In some ways it’s a bit of overkill, but then again, Pickard was only 23 and at the beginning of his musical career. The ending, which decorates and drops in volume, is excellent and completely unexpected.

Having Pickard symphonies is certainly not unusual, but having a song cycle by him is. According to the notes, the poems were “chosen for their broad range of expression” and “grouped in an order that provides dramatic contrast and an overall progression of mood. The cycle was composed for the soprano Emma Tring, with her particular vocal characteristics very much in Pickard’s mind.” Once again, then, as so often happened throughout musical history, we encounter music written for very specific voice types, meaning than the composer wanted a singer who sounded as much like this as possible to sing his or her music. And this is something that the classical world nowadays pays absolutely no attention to as they pretend to be “historically accurate” with their whiny straight-tone string playing—which we don’t really know for a fact is what they wanted. (One for-instance: Edouard Colonne heard Berlioz conduct his own Symphonie Fantastique in person, but never told the first violist of his orchestra, Pierre Monteux, to use straight tone when playing it, and thus when Monteux became a conductor he himself never insisted on his string sections using straight tone when playing it…but of COURSE we today want it!)

Happily, Ms. Tring has a fine voice with a particularly interesting high range, placing many notes in the head as well as being able to sing crescendo on some of them. The interesting thing, I thought, was that Pickard used her voice much more as an instrument, i.e. working around its very specific tonal quality, more than focusing on word-specific interpretation. In this way, Tring suggests the meaning of the poems rather than a word-specific interpretation. In this respect, Pickard’s approach is purely musical and not poetic in the strict sense of the word. One will find no parallel here to Janet Baker singing Chausson but, rather, more like the way Maggie Teyte sang French chansons, removing her personality and any sense of interpretation from the texts, which was the French style engendered by Debussy which lasted into the mid-20th century. The music itself is bitonal but not forbidding except, perhaps, for the third song, “Marine” with its edgy, fast melodic line and rapidly-moving bitonal harmonies. The words, in English, are as follows:

The resonant ocean
Throbs under the eye
Of the grieving moon
And throbs still.

While a flash of lightning,
Brutal and sinister,
Splits apart the bistre sky
With a long and bright zigzag!

The fourth song, “Le squelette” (“The Skeleton”), is also a bit strange, but not orchestrally congested. On the contrary. here Pickard uses primarily xylophone and piano to produce a sort of “skeletal” sound in a series of rising , widely-spaced notes as a motif, and even when the strings enter, they maintain a low-volume profile, again with the piano mixed in. By contrast the fifth song, “L’heure exquise,” a poem set to music by other composers but most famously by Reynaldo Hahn, sounds very much like the French school of Hahn or Ravel…a real outlier in Pickard’s output, and sung really exquisitely by Tring. The sixth song, “Le soleil d’or,” is also relatively tonal in nature and includes, believe it or not, a few rapid staccato passages for the soprano to sing. Overall, this is an outstanding song cycle, but you can bet that if any of it is ever performed in public concerts it will be these last two songs because they are more “audience-friendly.”

The Symphony No. 6 was written at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic and is dedicated to Robert von Bahr, the founder of Bis Records but, alas, no longer its owner since he sold the label a few months ago. Speaking even as a music critic who only had occasional email contact with him, I can attest that von Bahr is one of the truly nice people in the classical music business who really loves the music and the performances he issued on his label. We had a few disagreements over the years but really very few. Most of the time we saw eye-to-eye because we both have good taste and are passionate about music. This symphony is, like the others I’ve heard after No. 2, more sophisticated and highly developed. Here, as in The Flight of Icarus and the Fourth Symphony, Pickard fuses his themes and sections of the music seamlessly, creating a continually evolving structure that holds the listener’s attention from start to finish. This symphony is divided into two sections which are numbered but not titled. In the first, Pickard utilizes some surprisingly smooth lines created by both brass and strings, using modulations of volume to create expression until jut before the middle of the movement when things become more upsetting, suggesting physical and mental unease at this time of stress. It is even an advance on his Fourth Symphony, the “Gaia Symphony,” conducted by Andreas Hanson and issued on Bis SACD-2061. Like the second symphony, as things become more tense and dramatic Pickard ups the volume, the tempo, and the use of percussion. These may seem like stock items for him to use in his music, and to a point they are, but the variety of both the thematic material and the clever way he manipulates it keeps the listener from accusing him of sameness. Moreover, in this symphony he actually backs off from these tense moments quicker than in the Second Symphony and, more importantly, integrates them into the continuing musical discourse in a much smoother fashion.

The second half of the symphony opens with an instrumental clash so strange that I couldn’t tell exactly which instruments he used to create it without seeing the score, which I don’t have, but following this is a sad, desolate yet very lovely “Adagio” section that evokes conflicting emotions in the listener. Is Pickard suggesting that we should take the panic and loses of life from the pandemic in stride? Perhaps, but only for a while; eventually, an ominous ostinato beat creeps into the music beneath angst-ridden strings and brass, although this, too, ebbs and flows. Ten, suddenly, the music pulls back in speed, volume and intensity as we reach a passage played by soft, sustained strings with glockenspiel and tuba in the background. This section is developed slowly and carefully, holding the listener’s interest via the little internal movements of the winds (primarily, I think, clarinets in their lower range) within the orchestral texture. Eventually, this fades into nothingness.

This is an outstanding entry into the Pickard discography, very highly recommended!

—© 2024 Lynn René Bayley

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