Sappho's songs and Sapphic Poem

Bantock Sappho. Sapphic Poem. Susan Bickley (mez); Julian Lloyd Webber (vc); Royal Philharmonic Orchestra / Vernon Handley.
Hyperion CDA66899 (75 minutes:DDD). Text included. Recorded 1997. Gramophone Editor's Choice.

Sappho was the fourth in a series of exotic song-cycles with piano accompaniment Bantock composed from 1898 to 1905. The orchestral version (subtitled “Prelude and Nine Fragments”) lasts around an hour and Bantock would appear to have scored individual songs as and when they were first heard in the concert-hall. Sappho derives its text from the tiny, but enormously influential output of the eponymous Greek poetess - or rather, from a free refashioning of the fragments by the composer’s wife, Helen, into a dramatically effective sequence of nine poems. Prefaced by a magnificently imposing orchestral introduction, it is a hugely ambitious, yet curiously compelling outpouring, by // turns yearningly passionate, ecstatic, sensuous and darkly jealous to mirror the capricious emotions of the lovesick Sappho herself. Elsewhere, it’s difficult not to he hugely impressed by the positively Wagnerian intensity and profound emotional scope of Bantock’s writing in the fifth song, “The moon has set”. Note, too, the psychological insight in the last stanza of the second song, “1 loved thee once, Atthis, long ago”, where Bantock’s colouring of the phrase “Thou art nought to me” acutely conveys the resignatory self-deception of the poetess’s true feelings. Certainly, Sappho can be viewed as an intoxicating celebration of love in all its guises. Some may find Bantock’s inspiration too relentlessly wan and lacking in truly memorable thematic invention; others will revel in its endearing decadence. No praise can be too high for Susan Bickley’s remarkable assumption of what sounds like an exceedingly tricky vocal part (with its demandingly wide tessitura); Handley and the RPO, too, cover themselves in glory. The 15-minute Sapphic Poem for cello and orchestra acts as a wholly charming pendant to the main work. Delicately scored (with some lovely touches for the woodwind in particular) and beautifully conceived for the medium, it is a richly melodious, sweetly expressive outpouring, raptly performed here by Julian Lloyd Webber, who in turn receives exemplary support from Handley and the RPO.