{"id":8249,"date":"2012-12-06T09:30:20","date_gmt":"2012-12-06T14:30:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/?p=8249"},"modified":"2012-12-06T09:30:20","modified_gmt":"2012-12-06T14:30:20","slug":"daily-album-review-21-andrew-davis-and-edward-elgar-reintroduce-adults-to-childhood-wonder","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/2012\/12\/06\/daily-album-review-21-andrew-davis-and-edward-elgar-reintroduce-adults-to-childhood-wonder\/","title":{"rendered":"Daily album review 21: Andrew Davis and Edward Elgar reintroduce adults to childhood wonder"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
Sir Andrew Davis leading the Scottish Chamber Orchestra in one of the recording sessions for The Starlight Express<\/em> at Usher Hall in Edinburgh last May.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Before the 3-D movie and Andrew Lloyd Webber’s roller-skated mega-musical, The Starlight Express<\/em> was a forgotten Edwardian melodrama about a group of children exploring the gentler side of human nature through a fantasy game involving the stars and a cave near a Swiss village.<\/p>\n

As edited, rewritten and rearranged by conductor Sir Andrew Davis, music by Sir Edward Elgar’s (1857-1934) and story by Algernon Henry Blackwood (1869-1951) become nearly two hours of magic on this 2-CD Chandos release.<\/p>\n

This is one of those child-centred works that is really all about the grown-ups. Specifically, it is about recovering some of the lost wonder of childhood and treasuring the ability to imagine something other than the often hard reality of the day-to-day.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>The father of a cozy family, a writer by day and dreamer by night, introduces his children to a magical, nocturnal world of anthropomorphised constellations where a blue-eyed fairy sets things right and where the dustman sprinkles the tired eyes of the insomniac elderly with the very best stardust.<\/p>\n

The work opens with a song that sets the tone for the whole piece, sung as perfectly as anyone might be able to imagine by baritone Roderick Williams:<\/p>\n

O children, open your arms to me,
\nLet your hair fall over my eyes;
\nLet me sleep a moment, and then awake
\nIn your garden of sweet surprise!
\nFor the grown-up folk are a wearisome folk,
\nAnd they laugh all my fancies to scorn…<\/p>\n

O children, open your hearts to me,
\nAnd tell me your wonder thoughts.
\nWho lives in the palace inside your brain?
\nWho plays in its outer courts?
\nWho hides in the hours tomorrow holds?
\nWho sleeps in your yesterdays?
\nWho tip-toes along past the curtained folds
\nOf the shadow that twilight lays?<\/p>\n

O children, open your eyes to me,
\nAnd tell me your visions too;
\nWho squeezes the sponge when the salt tears flow
\nTo dim their magical blue?
\nWho brushes the fringe of their lace-veined lids?
\nWho trims their innocent light?
\nWho draws up the blinds when the sun peeps in?
\nWho fastens them down at night?<\/p>\n

O children, I pray you sing low to me.
\nAnd cover my eyes with your hands.
\nO kiss me again till I sleep and dream
\nThat I’m lost in your fairylands…
\nFor the grown-up folk are a troublesome folk,
\nAnd the book of their childhood is torn!
\nIs blotted, and crumpled, and torn!<\/p>\n

According to Davis’s notes in the booklet, which also includes the full libretto, playwright Violet Pearn (1890-1947) took Blackwood’s 1913 book, A Prisoner in Fairyland<\/em>, and began turning\u00a0 it into a melodrama in 1914. There were problems of all sorts, which led to the first composer, Clive Carey (1883-1968), being replaced by Edward Elgar.<\/p>\n

Elgar, keen to underline the text’s emphasis on restoring sympathetic relations between people during the darkness of World War I, wrote a gorgeous score — one he loved so much that it was the first thing he recorded for the gramophone in 1916.<\/p>\n

Davis has replaced huge chunks of dialogue with narration, beautifully read by actor Simon Callow.<\/p>\n

The second CD also includes a 45-minute orchestral suite of Elgar’s music, arranged by Davis, as well as the conductor’s orchestration of three tossed-aside songs set by Carey, the original composer.<\/p>\n

Davis leads the Scottish Chamber Orchestra in a clean, transparent performance, recorded this past spring. Baritone Roderick Williams is joined by wonderful soprano Elin Manahan Thomas.<\/p>\n

This is magic from beginning to end, musically as well as textually. It’s best savoured near a crackling fire, in a comfortable chair, with a warming drink in hand.<\/p>\n

These are two-hours of imagination-fuelled therapy good for pretty much anything that ails the grown-up mind.<\/p>\n

For more details on this disc, click here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

+++<\/p>\n

Davis concludes his notes with with a 1917 letter to Elgar from a British officer stationed in muddy Flanders:<\/p>\n

Although unknown to you, I feel I must write to you tonight. We possess a fairly good gramophone in our mess, and I have bought your record Starlight Express: ‘Hearts must be soft-shiny dressed,’ being played for the twelfth time over. The gramophone was anathema to me before this war, because it was abused so much. But all is changed now, and it is the only means of bringing back to us the days that are gone, and helping us through the Ivory Gate that leads to Fairyland, or Heaven, whatever one likes to call it… Music is all that we have to help us carry on.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Here is Charles Mott singing the “Curfew Song” from that 1916 recording, with Elgar himself conducting:<\/p>\n

The sun has gone:
\nThe tide of stars is setting all one way.
\nThe Pleiades call softly to Orion
\nAs, nightly, they have called these million years:
\nThe children lie asleep; now let them out;
\nAnd overhearing,
\nWe waft the fairy call into your dreams,
\nThat you may swim upon that tide of gold
\nAnd, list’ning in your hearts,
\nJust overhear
\nThat deep, tremendous thunder
\nSignalling reply:
\nAll’s well!
\nOrion answering the Pleiades!<\/p>\n