Page 425 - Liverpool Philharmonic 22-23 Season Coverage Book

Sir Charles Groves was the first to make a recording of Morning Heroes – yet
another example of the invaluable pioneering work of this excellent but sadly
underrated conductor. Since then, there have been two more, the most
recent of which was the one conducted in 2015 by Sir Andrew Davis
(review). Bliss wrote the work in tribute to his brother, Kennard, slain in the
First World War at the age of just 23. Moreover, Bliss himself had all-too
direct experience of that conflict: he served as an army officer and, for his
bravery, was Mentioned in Despatches.

It’s often the case, I think, that one develops a particular affection for the
first recording of a particular work that one hears. For me, that’s certainly
the case with the Groves recording of Morning Heroes and especially for the
contribution of the speaker, John Westbrook (1922-89). His style may seem
a bit patrician to some but I think that very quality is ideally suited to the
recitation of the passage from The Iliad (‘Hector’s Farewell to Andromache’)
which is the text for Bliss’s first movement. The words are delivered in an
English translation by one W Leaf and Westbrook’s calm, modulated tones
suit the language well. Also, it’s worth remarking that Westbrook’s voice is
nicely recorded in the acoustic of Liverpool’s Philharmonic Hall. Again,
Westbrook’s calm delivery of Wilfred Owen’s ‘Spring Offensive’ has an air of
detachment as if he were viewing the field of battle. It also means that his
cry of “Exposed!” is all the more dramatic because it seems to come out of
nothing. His inflection of certain lines from Owen’s poem – “Some say God
caught them, even before they fell”, or “Why speak they not of comrades
that went under?” - seems to me to be so right.

The Liverpool Philharmonic Choir, trained at that time by Edmund Walters,
sing very well. They’re spirited in ‘The City Arming’ and I like the delicacy
with which the ladies of the choir sing in ‘Vigil’. They really rise to the
occasion in the closing chorus, a setting of Robert Nichols’ ‘Dawn on the
Somme’. They have a lot of words to sing, especially in ‘The City Arming’,
and it’s a shame that this latest incarnation of the EMI Classics booklet didn’t
include the texts, as had been the case previously. The RLPO plays very well;
there’s power where needed but also finesse in the many delicate episodes.
Groves conducts the work skilfully and with evident empathy. Looking back, I
see that when the performance came out on CD in 1991, the late Michael
Kennedy, writing in Gramophone, commented “the performance is
wholehearted, like the conducting (and the composing)…” I completely
agree.

The booklet includes the notes which accompanied the 1975 release
of Morning Heroes. The author was Felix Aprahamian who says of Bliss’s
composition that it is “a symphony more on heroism than on war”. The same
could not be said about Britten’s War Requiem but, despite their manifold
differences, the two works make a very apt coupling.

The City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra has a long history with Britten’s
masterpiece. Famously, it was the orchestra which played at the premiere in