If you wanted to categorise Joseph Horovitz's music, the most obvious comparison you could make is with Malcom Arnold – whimsical, sometimes spiky and always melodically inventive. It's not a style of contemporary music that gets a lot of attention but, like his late colleague, Horovitz is a master craftsman who always entertains and there's a quintessential Englishness about the pieces on this new release from Dutton Vocalion.
Horovitz was born in Vienna in 1926, so he's an adopted Englishman but, moving to the UK as long ago as 1938, this is where his long and distinguished career has flourished. He has produced a wealth of works for ballet, film and the concert hall and has a fair number already on record. "Four Concertos" is a welcome addition to the catalogue, bringing together four three-movement works dating from the late forties through to the early seventies.
The Concerto for Clarinet & String Orchestra was written in 1948, when Horovitz was studying with Gordon Jacob at the RCM (he also went to Paris at this time under Nadia Boulanger's tutelage). The chirpy sonata-form first movement, agilely played by Fiona Cross, has its wistful passages and this combination of moods characterises the works on this CD. More searching is the Largo, which meanders towards a sequence of eloquent cadenzas. There's a touch of Finzi hovering around the first two movements (Finzi's own Clarinet Concerto dates from around the same time), less so in the closing Allegro, which breaks into jazzy rhythms that take over from the classical formality.
The Concerto for Euphonium and Chamber Orchestra (1972) is noticeable for bringing an under-used solo instrument to our attention. To non-enthusiasts, the majority I imagine, the sound may not be that familiar but very pleasant it is, elegiac and mellow. Steven Mead (dubbed "the euphonium's foremost ambassador") is the virtuosic soloist. The mournful theme of the second-movement Lento haunts while barely suppressing the natural buoyancy of the instrument. The third movement (marked Con moto) bounces back charmingly and altogether this is a great advert for this surprisingly expressive member of the brass family.
As with all these pieces, the Concerto for Violin and String Orchestra gives its soloist a lively if gently demanding part and here Andrew Haveron cruises elegantly through the smooth and easeful lines.
Much is made of the influence of jazz on a number of contemporary composers but, even in the case of such as Adès or Turnage, this is usually over-stated. That certainly can't be said of Horovitz's Jazz Concerto for Piano, Strings and Percussion, a full-blown tribute to the genre that could be mistaken at times for a Jacques Loussier arrangement of Bach. Dating from 1966, it started life as a harpsichord piece and here, with David Owen Norris on piano, it is toe-tapping stuff that has in fact been used for a ballet in the States.
Horovitz conducts the Royal Ballet Sinfonia himself in the varied and lyrical pieces on the disc, in the sympathetic acoustic of Cadogan Hall. Sound quality is bright and alive and this is a delightful light-hearted programme, with some bite, that bears repeated listenings.
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