All this was around 1972. When I got the LP home, I listened to both works. Surprisingly, it was Bliss’s Symphony that really impressed me. Especially so, was the powerful, sparkling, Scherzo (red) and the evocation of water lapping against a stone jetty in the slow movement (blue). A Colour Symphony remains one of my favourite pieces of English music. That said, although I understand the “theory” behind the composer’s colour scheme, I never really “got it” as a listener.
Bliss had been largely ignored by the record firms during the mid-1950s. All that was available at that date on LP or 78rpm disc was the Piano Concerto, Music for Strings, the ballet suites Miracle in the Gorbals and Checkmate, as well as the String Quartet No.2, and Welcome the Queen.
On 23 November 1955, Sir Arthur Bliss walked into the Kingsway Hall, Holborn, London to record two of his most popular works: A Colour Symphony and the Introduction and Allegro. It was the first of a two-day session with the London Symphony Orchestra (LSO). Seven months later, both pieces were released on Decca LXT 5170 (mono). The cover presented a striking abstraction of the four “colours” of the movements in order, top to bottom – Purple, Red, Blue and Green. On the rear of the sleeve were printed programme notes devised by the composer, and which incorporated musical examples.
Two weeks previously, (9-11 November 1955) Bliss had made a recording of his Violin Concerto and the now largely forgotten Theme and Cadenza, at the same venue. The soloist was Alfredo Campoli. This was issued during April 1956 on Decca LXT 5166 (mono). Both albums were to have been the first instalment of Decca’s ‘Bliss by Bliss’ series.
Lionel Salter (The Gramophone, August 1956,
p.81) noted that in “this full-blooded performance under [Bliss], one is
conscious of his disciplined exuberance at thirty years old, and of the
distance he has travelled since: there are moments nevertheless – the dissonant
syncopated passage in Red, [and] the optimistic second fugue in Green
which point to his fully mature style.” Interestingly, Salter considers that if
Bliss were writing it today, he would “probably thin out the scoring.” This
tendency was also seen in the other work on this album, Introduction and
Allegro, which was written for Leopold Stokowski in 1926. Sadly, this had
all but disappeared from the concert repertoire during the mid-1950s. It is a
situation that it has not recovered from, nearly 70 years later. Salter wonders
if the Introduction and Allegro has simply been eclipsed because “Elgar
has made the title peculiarly his own.”
Overall, the critic considered that Bliss “secures a convincing
performance from the LSO” despite some moments when the “ensemble could have
been better.” Finally, he is impressed by the “perfectly respectable”
recording.
Edward Greenfield, (The Manchester Guardian 13 August 1956, p.3) began by wondering if it “is the fate of Masters of the Queen’s (or King’s) Music that something (perhaps their cloaks of respectability?) apparently conceals them from the eyes of the record companies.” Fortunately, Decca had “at last made up for any neglect…with [the present disk] and the recent Violin Concerto and the Theme and Cadenza…” He concludes by stating that “this is all finely wrought music with many exciting moments.” If one occasionally loses concentration during the performance, “it is partly due to the similarity of idiom to film-music.” Greenfield’s sting in the tale is that “Sir Arthur’s part in establishing this genre may have done a nasty trick on him.” This is not a sentiment that would be levelled against Bliss in 2023.
Other notices included Desmond Shawe-Taylor’s review in the Observer (23 September 1956, p.10) where he notes the “flamboyant” performance and the “fine recordings with the composer at the desk.” The Truth’s (28 September 1956, p.1118) newspaper correspondent, Trevor Gee reported that “Sir Arthur Bliss is another of our composers who has been making headway in the gramophone repertory lately…” He commended the “exhilarating performance of his early Colour Symphony…The time is long overdue for this full-blooded music to take its proper place in the concert hall beside Elgar and Vaughan Williams.” Sadly, in the 2020s Bliss’s orchestral works are rarely heard ‘live.’ Finally, Percy Cater in the Daily Mail (3 October 1956, p.8) stated that the “symphony shows that even back in 1922, Bliss could sustain ideas through rich textures.” Another back-handed comment, perhaps?
Listeners had to wait until the following year for The Times critic (possibly Frank Howes) to pass judgement on this record (June 8, 1957, p.9). This was a major assessment of several important recordings of British symphonies, which encompassed Edward Elgar’s Second, Robert Simpson’s First, and Ralph Vaughan Williams’s Eighth. Turning to Bliss, he reminds readers that A Colour Symphony was a commission for the Three Choirs Festival and “was received with some doubts at its first performance in 1922.” It was revived at the Hereford Festival in 1955, “when it caused no head shaking, but was recognized as a work as rich in imagination as in orchestral colours.” Examining the new LP, he suggests that “it was high time that a symphony so characteristic of Bliss in its mettlesome but disciplined exuberance should be recorded.” The result is good with “depth and transparency” obtained in the performance and by the engineers. That said, he felt that the “colours come up well, though the scoring is heavy and the texture thick.”
To be continued…
With thanks to The Arthur Bliss Society Journal where this essay was first published
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