I was delighted to hear Marcus Dods' delightfully evocative Highland Fancy on Classic FM the other
day. It is rare to hear music that muses on the landscape of Scotland unless it
is Hamish MacCunn’s ubiquitous Land of
the Mountain Flood Overture, Mendelssohn’s great ‘Scottish’ Symphony or the
Northampton composer Malcolm Arnold’s ‘Scottish Dances’ or ‘Tam O’ Shanter
Overture’.
Marcus Dods was born in Edinburgh in 1918, but like many Scots he moved
‘furth’ of the border. Educated at Rugby School and King’s College, Cambridge he
was later to graduate from the Royal Academy of Music. Dods was best known as a conductor, holding posts
at the Sadler’s Wells Opera Company and the BBC Concert Orchestra. Between 1947
and 1951 he was assistant music director for the Rank Organisation where he
worked under Muir Mathieson. Between 1972 and his early death in 1984 he was
chief conductor of the London Concert Orchestra.
There appears to be little original music by Dods in the music
catalogues. Most of the entries are for arrangements of folksongs and Gilbert
& Sullivan. This may not be the full story, and perhaps there are many manuscripts
hidden away in someone’s loft. However around 1965 he wrote his Highland Fancy for his wife, Deirdre
Lind who was at that time principal oboe in the BBC Concert Orchestra. Hardly surprisingly, it features her instrument.
The Penguin Guide to Compact Disc Yearbook 2000/1 describes this piece
as 'amusing'. Colin Scott-Sutherland on MusicWeb Internationals refers to it as a ‘frivolity.’
It is an opinion with which I disagree. I accept that there is a touch
of humour here and there, but to my ear the general tenor of this piece is one of
gentle melancholy. I accept that from the opening bars the oboe is busy with a
jaunty tune. Yet as this short work progresses, there is some romantic moments
that paint a lovely picture of distant hills and mountains seen in the gloamin’.
It is very much a Scotsman’s view of his
native land viewed from afar –in Dods’ case the streets around the Angel of
Islington.
Marcus Dods Highland Fancy is
given an excellent performance ASVWHL 2123 ‘The Land of the Mountain
and the Flood’ with the Royal Ballet Sinfonia conducted by John Wilson. It may
well be that this recording has been deleted but it is still available second-hand
(at a price).
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