William Wordsworth - Orchestral Music Volume I

The Guardian 80

Leipāja SO / Gibbons
(Toccata Classics)

The great-great-grandson of the poet’s brother Christopher, William Wordsworth (1908-88) belonged to that mid-20th-century generation of British composers whose works are almost entirely forgotten today. Even during his lifetime, he sometimes struggled to get the attention he thought his music deserved, though after he settled in Scotland in 1961, Wordsworth seems to have enjoyed more success and recognition.

He had studied with Donald Tovey in Edinburgh in the 1930s, and apart from a period working on the land as a conscientious objector during the second world war, Wordsworth was able to devote his life entirely to composition. His output included a wide range of instrumental works, including six string quartets, but it was his orchestral music that attracted most attention, especially his eight symphonies. Toccata Classics begins its series with two of them, the single-movement Fourth Symphony, from 1953, and the two-movement Eighth, subtitled Pax Hominibus, which was his last completed work, in 1986.