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Musical Opinion

The most attractive piece on this CD is A Hymn to the Thames with solo oboe and strings. At times it’s almost English pastoral as the oboe/wanderer wends his way along the river. Saxton composes from associations with names, people and places. The Hymn draws on he musical letters in the river’s name – BEAE♭ – as well as letters taken from the names of the oboist, conductor, Saxton’s wife Teresa Cahill, and some of these performers on the staff at Trinity Laban at the Old Royal Naval College, right by the great river.

The continuity of the four movements flows without a break, as one would expect. In later sections there are quotes from Tallis, who is buried with his wife at St Alphage’s  Church, Greenwich, which is the base for the St Paul’s Sinfonia and there are also quotes from John Taverner who was Director of Music at Christ’s Church, Oxford, where the Thames flows.

All these are further associations within Saxton’s interesting mechanism. James Turnbull delivers a confident and expressive performance throughout.

The Fantasy Pieces for piano trio consists of five fragmentary studies. A surprise is when the violin and cello double and extended melody in the fifth piece plus piano chords and the aggressive last one just stops dead. Time and the Seasons is a song cycle to poems by Saxton himself. Local connections figure in its celebration of the Norfolk coast which meant so much to his family and the cycle draws on ideas over some fifty years. The fourth piece is for piano alone and the fifth one for solo voice recalls childhood games on the coast. The final song is again reminiscent, about Saxton’s wife Tessa, who laughs. The use of solo piano and solo voice for two numbers undermines cohesion but the songs are admirably sung by Roderick Williams with Andrew West.

Finally there is another suite of short pieces, this time for violin and piano. These are demanding but again fluent and inventive. The struggle between Jacob and the Angel in the Old Testament story is particularly striking. All these pieces were written in the last decade although their sources of inspiration cast a long shadow backwards. The CD is altogether an ingratiating portrait of a composer well worth attention, although there’s nothing like his popular hit Lullaby for Rosa.