Elisabeth Lutyens - And Suddenly it’s Evening

Описание: And Suddenly it’s Evening (1967)

Herbert Handt, tenor
Members of the BBC Symphony Orchestra
Herbert Handt

And Suddenly it’s Evening was commissioned by the BBC for the inaugural concerts at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in 1967. It is simpler in texture and form than some of the composer’s works of the period, and this leads to a special poetic immediacy. Much of the work’s character, for instance, stems from the block chordal writing for brass whose resonant harmony echoes strongly the valedictory quality of the poems by Quasimodo which the composer has set. The work is scored for tenor solo and three instrumental groups, a quintet of brass and double bass, a trio of celesta, harp and percussion, and one of violin, horn and cello. Their deployment articulates the sectional blocks of the work’s structure: four songs each introduced and rounded off by instrumental pieces. --Anthony Payne

Words by Salvatore Quasimodo, translated by Jack Bevan:

ON THE WILLOW BOUGHS
And we, how could we sing, with a foreign foot in our heart, among dead abandoned in the squares, on the grass hard with ice, to the lamb bleat of children, the black howl of the mother going towards her son crucified on a pole? On the willow boughs as an offering even our lyres were hung and swayed light in the sad wind.

IN THE JUST HUMAN TIME
In the wind of deep light she lies, my loved one of the time of doves. Alone among the living, love, you talk of waters, leaves and me, and your voice consoles the naked night with shining ardours and delight. Beauty deluded us, vanishing of every memory and form, the lapse and slide revealed to feelings mirroring the inner splendours. But from the deeps of your blood with no pain, in the just human time we shall be born again.

ALMOST A MADRIGAL
The sunflower bends to the west and day precipitates in its ruined eye and summer’s air thickens, curls already the leaves and smoke of the builders’ yards. The last trick of the skies fades with the dry glide of clouds and lightning’s creak. Once more, love, as in other years we are held by the changing trees clustered inside the encircling canals. But the day is ours still. It is still that sun that takes its leave with the thread of its friendly beam. I have no memories, no wish to remember; memory springs from death; life has no end. Each day is ours. One day will stop forever and you, with me, when our time seems to grow late. Here on the canal bank, like children with feet swinging, we watch the water, the first branches in its darkening green. And the man approaching in silence hides no knife in his hand, but a geranium flower.

AND SUDDENLY IT’S EVENING
Everyone is alone on the heart of the earth pierced by a ray of sun: and suddenly it’s evening.

Art by John Atkinson Grimshaw