Doreen Carwithen: Suffolk Suite (1964) The Premiere

The school journal, The Framlingham had announced that H.R.H. Princess Alice, Countess of Athlone, who was Visitor to the College “has graciously consented to open the new Assembly Hall on Friday, June 26th, 1964.” This event was part of the school’s Centenary Celebrations held over the period 26-28 June.  To remind readers, Princess Alice was the last surviving grandchild of Queen Victoria. She was born in Windsor Castle on 25 February 1883, and died 97 years later at Kensington Palace on 3 January 1981. The significance of this must be recalled. The College was dedicated to Prince Albert, the Prince Consort, when it opened in 1864. 

The day’s events included the Centenary Service, a Dramatic Retrospect and the Concert. The review in The Framlingham, suggested that “it was not too fulsome praise to affirm that the three presentations represent a trilogy of triumph for all concerned” and especially for Mr Cox, the musical director, “who inevitably bore the heaviest burden.” 

The Concert, naturally enough, began with the National Anthem, in the arrangement by Benjamin Britten. This had been premiered at the 1962 Leeds Festival. The concert proper opened with Britten’s Psalm 150, op.67, which was also composed in 1962. This was followed by Carl Maria von Weber’s Concertino in E flat for Clarinet and Orchestra, op.26. The soloist was S.P. Llewellyn. The work, before the interval, was Doreen Carwithen’s Suffolk Suite, which as the programme noted, was “written at the invitation of the College, especially for this concert.”

After the break, G. M. Coomber was the soloist in the first movement of Robert Schumann’s Piano Concerto in A minor.  Purcell’s Suite in D major followed, possibly in an orchestral arrangement? The first movement of J.S. Bach’s Violin Concerto in A BWV 1041 was then given, with the soloist K. Holmes. Camille Saint-Saens’s The Carnival of the Animals was played with the two pianos played by G. M. Coomber and S.G. Coles. This long concert concluded with Malcolm Arnold’s rarely heard, and still professionally unrecorded Toy Symphony. The Framlingham College Orchestra and Choral Society was directed by Deryck Cox, the school’s Director of Music.

The Framlingham reviewer considered that “the highlight was undoubtably the first performance of a new work specially commissioned for the occasion, the Suffolk Suite by Doreen Carwithen…” He adds that this “is a tone poem of varied facets of Suffolk life of which…the most attractive was the second movement, a seascape of Orfordness, with the sun playing on the bright water and the sails filling the fitful breeze. But the whole work made joyful listening, yet not without its moments of pastoral melancholy. How well it was orchestrated, and how well the orchestra gave its inaugural performance.”

The school magazine reports that an LP record of the Centenary Events was made, priced 45/- (£2.25). That is about £45 with inflation! I wonder if any have survived?    

Princess Alice displayed “vivacious energy that seemed to contradict those…reference books, which ungallantly give her octogenarian status, she spent nearly twelve hours at the school; meeting, talking, inspecting, appraising; only briefly resting and all the time charming. Her Royal Highness was supported by the Earl of Stradbroke, who was Lord Lieutenant of the County and President of the College Corporation.” 

Interestingly, the following month (July), Doreen Carwithen and her husband, the composer William Alwyn acted as adjudicators for the end of term musical competition. This included categories for piano, organ, senior instrumental, essay and composition. The Framlingham reported that “Everyone who took part in the competitions should value and act upon their well informed and constructive criticisms.” Winners of each category included instrumentalists who had performed at the Centenary Concert.  G M Coomber won first prize for playing Debussy’s La Cathédrale engloutie, Rheinberger’s second prize for Fugue from the Organ Sonata No. 3 and the composition prize with his Sonata in A minor for organ. S G Coles was equally talented, coming first in the organ category with the opening movement of Felix Mendelssohn’s Sonata No.2 in C minor, second in the Senior Instrumental section with Eric Coates Saxo Rhapsody and first in the Composition category with a movement from a Clarinet Sonata. I wonder what happened to these two students and their works?

With many thanks to the staff at Framlingham College, Suffolk for their assistance in locating relevant details from The Framlingham.