|
伊瑟．史密絲夫人:交響曲(監獄) 首次錄音
莎拉·布雷利 女高音
詹姆斯.布拉克利 指揮
體驗管弦樂團暨合唱團
August 18th marks the 100th anniversary of the 19th Constitutional Amendment, granting women in the US the right to vote. A fitting time then for our release of the World Premier Recording of Ethel Smyth's late masterpiece The Prison.
Smyth left home at nineteen to study composition in Leipzig. In the company of Clara Schumann and her teacher Heinrich von Herzogenberg, she met and won the admiration of composers such as Tchaikovsky, Brahms, Dvorak, and Grieg. Smyth was the first woman to have an opera performed at the Met, in 1903. (The second was Kaija Saariaho, whose L'Amour de loin appeared there in 2016!) Smyth later became central to the Suffragette movement in England, writing the March of the Women. Her gender politics and sexuality were cause for attacks by critics, and she famously went to prison herself for throwing a stone through an MP's window.
Composed in 1930 and premiered in 1931 in Edinburgh's Usher Hall, The Prison is a Symphony in two parts, 'Close on Freedom' and 'The Deliverance', set for soprano and bass-baritone soloists, chorus, and full orchestra. The text is taken from a philosophical work by Henry Bennet Brewster and concerns the writings of a prisoner in solitary confinement, his reflections on life and his preparations for death.
DAME ETHEL SMYTH
The Prison (1930)
Part I. Close on Freedom: 31:07
1.The Prisoner communes with his Soul: 'I awoke in the middle of the night'.7:10
2.Voices sing of immortality: 'We are full of immortality'.4:29
3.The Prisoner asks the secret of emancipation: 'I was alone with sorrow'.2:27
4.His Soul (echosed by Voices) replies: 'There is no secret'.3:26
5.He asks in what shape emancipation will come ('Who are our saviours?'): 'Will it return to me with the same face'.1:36
6.The Voices reply: 'Others are elsewhere, under other names'.3:38
7.Orchestral Interlude: The first glimmer of Dawn, Andante -3:12
8.The Prisoner understands his own immortality: 'In the faint grey morning I hear'.5:06
Part II. The Deliverance: 32:49
9.Chorale Prelude in the Prison Chapel (The Prisoner awakes.).3:59
10.His Soul tells him the end of the struggle is at hand. 'The struggle is over; the time has come'.2:51
11.He hears his guests (the elements of his personality) moving to depart. 'I hear them overhead moving to depart'.2:13
12.Pastorale: Sunset calm.2:45
13.He disbands his ego. 'I disband myself'.3:06
14.Voices sing (in Greek mode) the indestructibility of human passions. 'The laughter we have laughed'.2:01
15.Death calls him (The Last Post); gloring, he obeys the summons. 'For years you have been conning your lesson'.5:13
16.His farewell; his triumph; his peace. 'This is no leavetaking'.10:38
Total time: 63:50
Dashon Burton bass-baritone (The Prisoner)
Sarah Brailey soprano (His Soul)
Experiential Chorus (Voices)
Experiential Orchestra
James Blachly |
|
