Misha Mullov-Abbado on harp, Belgian roots & Finizi anniversaries: CD launches this week

It has been a busy week for live CD launches. On Wednesday harpists Oliver Wass and Lise Vandermissen had a joint launch at St Pancras Clocktower for Wass’s Musica per arpa on Tactus and Vandermissen’s Our Roots on Etcetera. Then on Friday, tenor Nick Pritchard and pianist Ian Tindale launched their disc of songs by Gerald Finzi, The Dance Continued on Signum Classics, at St Clement Danes.

Wass and Vandermissen’s launch event was a delight because it involved two harps, both played on a modern harp but Vandermissen also played some repertoire on a 1911 Erard. For her latest disc, Our Roots, Vandermissen has turned to her own roots as she is Belgian, with a disc of music by Belgian composers Jeanne Adrienne Kufferath (1874-1919), Felix Godefroid (1818-1872), Jacqueline Fontyn (born 1930) and Vandermissen’s own pieces. The styles proved interestingly varied with Kufferath’s more salon-like pieces alongside Godefroid (known as the Paganini of the harp!), Fontyn’s piece (which was had direct from the composer) which was a catalogue of advanced harp techniques and Vandermissen’s own more personal works.

By contrast, Wass’s two-disc set on Tactus, Musica per arpa, contrasted three large pieces by Misha Mullov-Abbado with mainly Italian Baroque works by Travaci, Palestrina, Cacini, and Barbara Strozzi, along with works by Tarrega and Elsa Respighi, plus a concerto by Luigi Molinom with Wass being joined by his Pelleas Ensemble (Oliver Wass – harp, Henry Roberts – flute, Luba Tunnicliffe – viola), and Ensemble APM (Luca Vacchetti – conductor).

Mullov-Abbado has written three pieces for Wass over the years and all three are heard on the disc. At the launch we heard Red Ruth for solo harp along with a work for the Pelleas Ensemble, Three Meditation Songs which was written for the ensemble some ten years ago. The Pelleas Ensemble also played two Barbara Strozzi vocal works in imaginative and free arrangements by the ensemble’s viola player, Luba Tunnicliffe. As a finale, Wass and Vandermissen gave us a taster of a future project with a work by Oliver Davis for two harps which was written for them.

Earlier this month I chatted to tenor Nick Pritchard and pianist Ian Tindale about their latest disc, Gerald Finzi: The Dance Continued [see my interview] on Signum Classics reflecting the fact that this year is a double Finzi anniversary. 

So it was a delight to hear some of the music from the disc performed live at St Clement Danes (in an event supported by Finzi Friends). The church is now the central church of the Royal Air Force, a rather apt venue as Gerald Finzi’s friend, the composer Howard Ferguson served in the RAF during the war. 

After Finzi’s death (in 1956) Ferguson and Finzi’s wife Joy created the posthumous song cycles Till Earth outwears Op. 19a and Oh fair to see Op. 13b both of which Pritchard and Tindale performed at the launch. The disc also includes Finzi’s 1933 cycle A Young Man’s Exhortation, both this and Till Earth outwears are settings of Thomas Hardy.

By contrast Oh fair to see features settings of hardy, Ivor Gurney, Christina Rossetti, Edward Shanks, Robert Bridges and Finzi’s close friend Edmund Blunden. The cycle ends with Finzi’s last song, a setting of Robert Bridge’s Since we loved. But alongside this are two very early songs, and more early songs feature on the disc, all unpublished. All five of these were included in the recital. As Ian Tindale explained, the songs are unpublished for a reason but sufficient time has elapsed that we can explore how these songs reflect both Finzi before his style fully developed along with the moments that look forward to his mature style.