Innate theatricality: composer Adrian Sutton definitively moves out of the theatre with a challenging yet engaging concerto for violinist Fenella Humphreys

Adrian Sutton: Violin Concerto, Short Story, A Fist Full of Fives, Five Theatre Miniatures, War Horse Suite; Fenella Humphreys, BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, Michael Seal; Chandos
Reviewed 2 October 2024

Best known for his music for the stage, Adrian Sutton turns to pure music with an imaginative response to the image of seagulls flying alongside a repurposing of theatrical cues to create an engaging satisfying and thoughtful disc

Composer Adrian Sutton is perhaps best known for his music for War Horse, the stage adaptation of Michael Morpurgo’s story though his output is far wider than that, crossing over to concert music. This latest release from Chandos features Michael Seal conducting the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra in a programme of Sutton’s music. War Horse is there, but the focus remains firmly on concert music and the centrepiece is the large-scale Concerto for Violin and Orchestra with violinist Fenella Humphreys, alongside a selection of shorter pieces, Short Story, A Fist Full of Fives, and Five Theatre Miniatures, plus the War Horse Suite.

When Sutton was asked to write a work as a response to RVW’s The Lark Ascending, his imagination turned to the images of the flight of seagulls, whilst Richard Bach’s Jonathan Livingston Seagull found its way there as well. The resulting concerto is a long work, some 25 minutes in three movements which are intended to play as one long journey, Thermals, Far Cliffs and Life Force.

The work virtually begins with Fenella Humphreys’ solo and her elegantly lithe violin line is a guiding force throughout the piece. The first movement moves between the elegantly coasting to something more dramatic, but the violin is virtually always to the fore. Sutton’s influences are English, recognisably so, but though you can understand this was written by a man who knows and loves RVW’s The Lark Ascending, there is a different feel here. However, I have to confess that quite a lot of the melodic writing for the violin, the sort of intervals and shapes that Sutton uses, had me reaching back to Korngold’s Violin Concerto, though Sutton’s orchestra is more discreetly English than Korngold’s lushness. The sense of Englishness comes over in the meditative slow movement, Far Cliffs, where the melodic material has an almost song-like quality. With the final movement, things take a livelier, perkier turn, with a greater sense of onward movement and violin writing that moves from the challenge of long sustained lines to something more virtuoso. There is a clear sense of programme to the music, and it is quite explicitly defined in the booklet notes for those who want to follow. Perhaps, if you do not follow the story, the music occasionally wanders somewhat though the onward impulse of the finale movement is refreshing. And whilst there are occasional reminiscences of earlier movements, the ending is as bravura as we would want a concerto to be.

For the soloist, the concerto is no mean play, 25 minutes where the violin is to the fore and the performance from Fenella Humphreys is terrific. She premiered the work in 2023 and clearly has a fondness for it. 

Next comes Sutton’s Short Story, a single movement from 2022. There is no explicit story, listeners are invited to add their own, but the music, with its very English sense of emotion and affect, clearly has something happening behind it. Written on a more compact scale than the Violin Concerto, Sutton crams a great deal of imagination into a little of eight minutes. You can hear influences, there are moments when the drama develops that suggest Sutton has been listening to RVW’s symphonies and film music. But Short Story is totally ingratiating and definitely a concert pleaser.

A Fist Full of Fives dates from 2016 and is again a single movement. Five features heavily, fifths in the instrumental lines, five main themes, a use of a wind quintet, and asymmetrical rhythms arising out of uneven time signatures. It starts with plenty of rhythmic energy and a hint of Malcolm Arnold, and thereafter we have a whirlwind of ideas, and colours. The BBC Philharmonic plays a wonderful rhythmic energy which makes the music feel as if it is impelled forward. 

For anyone who knows War Horse in any of its incarnations, the suite provides an excuse to revisit favourite moments. In fact, the suite comes from Sutton’s 2016 concert work, War Horse: The Story in Concert [see my 2017 interview with Adrian Sutton chatting about this]. If you do not know the story then the six movements make for a sequence of characteristic pieces, each mining a particular sense of emotion and colour. From the touching Devon at Peace through the excitement of First Gallop, the lowering colours and underlying drama of Crossing the Channel, the gentle beauty of Emilie’s Theme, the sheer excitement of The Charge, and ending with gently emotional Joey and Albert Reunited.

We stay with Sutton’s life in the theatre with Five Theatre Miniatures, each repurposed from a theatre cue but here expanded and re-written for a concert orchestra. The Departure (from ‘Murder on the Orient Express’) is pure train music and exciting too, though Sutton is here up against Richard Rodney Bennett and that waltz. Intermezzo (from ‘Husbands and Sons’, an adaptation of three D.H. Lawrence plays) makes a touching contrast, with a rather lovely, aching melody. Gigue (from ‘Coram Boy’) takes us to another of Sutton’s stage hits, the theatrical adaptation of Jamila Gavin’s novel Coram Boy. The Gigue has a delightfully Rococo English feel to it, understandable given Handel’s central role in the early Foundling Hospital. Polperro Beach (from ‘The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time’) takes us to another theatrical adaptation of a novel. The music has a role to play in the stage work, but shorn of its context the result is engagingly affecting. Finally comes Tarantella (from ‘Dr Semmelweis’). The result makes a lively and vivid finale, tightly played by the orchestra.

Throughout Michael Seal and the orchestra give performances which do full justice to Sutton’s musical language, with its melodic felicities, sense of orchestral colour, clear influence of English composers and innate theatricality. The result is a disc that is engagingly listenable but also rather thought provoking.

Note: There are significant extra-musical circumstances in Adrian Sutton’s life surrounding this disc and particularly the Violin Concerto [see the article on the Classic FM website], however I feel that any composer would far prefer their music to be listened to for itself, rather than desperately trying to link to external events in any way

Adrian Sutton (born 1967) – Concerto for Violin and Orchestra (2023) [25:25]
Adrian Sutton – Short Story (2022) [8:11]
Adrian Sutton – A Fist Full of Fives (2016) [10:22]
Adrian Sutton – War Horse Orchestra Suite (2023) [14:44]
Adrian Sutton – Five Theatre Miniatures (2005, 2023) [15:32]
Fenella Humphreys (violin)
BBC Philharmonic Orchestra
Michael Seal (conductor)
Recorded at MediaCityUK, Salford, Manchester; 14 and 15 January 2024
CHANDOS CHAN 20349 1CD [74:21]