BBCSSO/Brabbins - Tippett symphonies Nos 1 and 2

The Guardian 80

Hyperion

With a handful of exceptions, Michael Tippett’s works have fallen into some neglect since his death 20 years ago. Surprisingly few show signs of becoming repertory pieces, and the four symphonies appear too rarely on concert programmes. But Martyn Brabbins has been working his way through them in concerts with the BBC Scottish Symphony orchestra, and those performances are now appearing on disc, to join the existing cycles, conducted by Richard Hickox for Chandos and shared between Colin Davis and Georg Solti for Decca.

Brabbins and the BBCSSO give buoyancy and a real sense of purpose to the sometimes congested textures of No 1, in which echoes of the English pastoral tradition collide with Hindemith-like neoclassicism. They also capture all the exuberance of No 2, with its springing, pounding rhythms and pools of delicate lyricism. That was the work in which Tippett signalled a change of musical direction, away from the enchanted, florid world of his first opera The Midsummer Marriage (which is recalled in the second movement) towards something much more concise and harder-edged, and Brabbins captures that shift perfectly.