Tippett - Symphonies Nos 3 & 4; Symphony in B flat review | Andrew Clements's classical CD of the week

The Guardian 80

Nicholls/BBCSSO/Brabbins
(Hyperion, two CDs)
He may be unfashionable now, but Tippett’s Third Symphony still sounds robust and his B flat symphony is rarely heard, making an interesting survey

First performed in 1972, Michael Tippett’s Third Symphony was written during what was perhaps the most successful period of the composer’s career. The premiere of his third opera, The Knot Garden, at Covent Garden in 1969, had been a huge success. He had also tapped into a totally new audience in the US, which he first visited in 1965, and where he returned regularly for the rest of his life. The Third Symphony reflects his new enthusiasm for American culture, with its vocal finale in which a soprano soloist, partnered by a flugelhorn, sings a series of blues. It’s intended to offer a 20th-century response to the expressions of universal brotherhood proclaimed by the finale of Beethoven’s Ninth, which Tippett quotes in his own last movement.