The Musical Times reviewer (November 1929) wrote that:
‘The novelty on September 26 was
Victor Hely- Hutchinson's 'Carol Symphony,' a composition on a large scale, and
with some thematic organization, yet giving the impression of a suite rather
than a symphony. It is music spun agreeably round excellent material whose
associations, however, only too readily hold out temptations to fall into mere
picturesqueness. Mr. Hutchinson avoids this in the first movement by rather
desperately building on the rocky foundation of Bach's embellished chorales,
but later he succumbs to influences which do not help him much to withstand the
besetting danger. This composer is resourceful, lucid, effective, very
respectably conservative and complaisant to a not too sophisticated audience.
An English Humperdinck, shall we say? As a personal utterance his work suffered
perhaps unduly from its vicinity to Vaughan Williams's infinitely more
distinctive 'Concerto Accademico,' the crack work of the evening, in which Miss
Jelly d'Aranyi played the solo violin part with something just a shade below
her usual form; in other words, very well.’
The reviewer of The Times (19 December 1930) noted that
the Amateur Orchestra of London had furthered their ‘commendable policy’ of
presenting works that are outside the usual repertoire. On Monday 15 December 1930 A Carol Symphony was presented at the Kingsway Hall in London . The reviewer
stated that ‘any competently written work employing carol tunes must make a
strong appeal, especially at this time of year, and whether such a work is
called a fantasia or a symphony or a suite ought not to affect one’s enjoyment
of the music.’ He feels that this distinction is more problematic than a first
glance would suggest. He suggests ‘it has often been demonstrated that
folk-tunes do not readily lend themselves to symphonic development’ and he
believes that Hely-Hutchinson has stretched ‘their capacities to the utmost by
making his symphony in cyclic form.’ Furthermore, the reviewer then suggests
how the composer ought to have written the work. He should have allowed one
carol or wassail song to ‘suggest another, and let that suggest a counterpoint
and so on.’ The problem seems to be that
Hely-Hutchinson has given the impression of ‘stopping at the end of each bit of
tune to think what he could do next with it.’
The fundamental issue seems to be that the texture and the scoring of
the work are perfectly appropriate – it is the thematic treatment that lets the
work down.
Jürgen Schaarwächter in his magisterial
Two Centuries of British Symphonism
(2015) suggested that the Carol Symphony is a ‘lightweight…and somewhat obscure
piece’. He further describes it as ‘clearly a third-rate piece of light music (similar
to Anthony Collins’s First String Symphony). This latter piece is one that I
enjoy! He quotes Benjamin Britten’s view that the work was ‘utter bilge’ (Britten’s
diary 22 December 1922) Schaarwachter provides a lengthy quote from D. Millar
Craig (‘The Younger English Composer – XV Victor Hely Hutchinson’, in the Monthly Musical Record 1930):-
‘The Symphony is in four
movements, played continuously: all are based on Christmas tunes, and the work
sets forth different aspects of the festival – its solemn grandeur, the mystery
and romance of the manger, and its rollicking joy as Dickens shows it to us…[The]
work reveals the spirit of nearly all Hely-Hutchinson’s music: gloom does not
appeal to him. But youth’s good spirits are held in check, and a fastidious
restraint as well as an instinctive sense of shapeliness sees to it that
exuberance and gusto do not break bounds.’
Some years later, The Times (27 November 1951) in a review of a recently
released record (Paxton GTR 123/4/5, mono, Metropole Symphony Orchestra/Dolf
Van der Linden) of the Symphony suggests
that this is ‘not only a work brimming over with gaiety but refutes the
accepted and not unjustifiable generalization that folk tunes are rcalcitrant
to symphonic development’. The reviewer
is suitably impressed with the way that the composer has taken ‘the half dozen
best known and most hardly worked carols and symphonizes them by dissolving
them in ostinato figures, of which the chief is a cross between Bach’s Wachet Auf …and an English country dance
tune’.
In 1930 an extract (3rd movement, ‘Noel Fantasy’)
from the Carol Symphony was released by HMV (C1968). The Royal Opera House
Orchestra, Covent Garden was conducted by the composer.
This entire work is currently
available on three CDs. The first is a reissue of a recording made by Barry
Rose and the Pro Arte Orchestra made in Guilford Cathedral in September 1966 (EMI Classics CDM 7 64131)
A more recent version appeared on Naxos 8.557099
in 2002 with the City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Gavin
Sutherland. This is also available as an MP3 download. The above noted
performance by the Metropole Symphony Orchestra is currently available on the Guild Light Music
Series GLCD 5233.
All the recordings are interesting, although the Sutherland
one has the edge on sound quality. On the other side of the coin, as Neil
Horner at MusicWeb International has pointed out, the EMI recording does have
fine couplings with R.V.W.’s Fantasia on
Christmas Carols, Roger Quilter’s Children’s
Overture and Ernest Tomlinson’s Suite of English Folk Dances.