Gavin Higgins: The Faerie Bride | Horn Concerto
Lyrita

Referring to his 2019 debut album Ekstasis, Limelight Magazine described Gavin Higgins (b. 1983) as “one of the most interesting voices of his generation,” and his new double-CD release will certainly not alter that assessment. In featuring works for French horn and The Faerie Bride, the eighty-four-minute release provides a fascinating, bifurcated account of the composer's music. The Gloucestershire-born Higgins has accomplished much in his four decades on the planet. Since studying French horn and composition at Chetham's School of Music, The Royal Northern College of Music, and the Royal College of Music, he's written ballet scores (2012's What Wild Ecstasy, 2015's Dark Arteries), an opera (The Monstrous Child, 2019), and concertos for percussion, trombone, and horn. Orchestras, ensembles, and soloists are currently knocking on Higgins' door, eager to commission new material from the composer.

There are reasons why his music so captivates listeners. It's meticulously constructed but not bereft of feeling; it's authentic in its personalized expression yet also capable of connecting broadly. His music doesn't disavow that which came before but also sounds contemporary. Clarity and lucidity characterize the decisions made and the directions taken, but his music's also unpredictable. Like any genuine artist, his works are deeply influenced by the people and places that were integral to his development. As Gillian Moore writes in liner notes, Higgins grew up “in a working class former mining community in the Forest of Dean,” which exerted a profound impact on the music he would come to write. A clear line, for example, can be drawn from the boy who played in a brass band conducted by his grandfather to the adult whose works for horn appear on this new release. It doesn't wholly surprise that a recent work would be titled Cortège for a Coal Mine (2025).

The album opens with the half-hour Horn Concerto (2023) featuring soloist Ben Goldscheider with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales and Jaime Martín conducting. The work won Higgins the Best Orchestral Composition Ivor Novello Award, his second Ivor Novello win following 2019's for the trombone concerto, The Book of Miracles. Higgins' three-part creation is an original and impeccably crafted statement that both evokes the forest and traditional hunting calls. In fact, the first two movements, “Understorey” and “Overstorey,” literally refer to the animal and plant life forms close to the forest floor in the former and the treetops of the forest in the latter.

An allusion to another composer emerges during the entrancing opening of “Understorey” in its woozy, Wagner-esque flow of horns and strings (think the opening of Das Rhinegold). With the mass gradually swelling and the orchestra erupting, a path is cleared for the soloist's entrance. Like some thick forest vine, the orchestra and horn entwine thereafter, at one point playfully throwing fragments of melody back and forth and Goldscheider riding the mercurial, percussion-sprinkled orchestral wave with aplomb. As the movement nears its end, the murkiness of the opening reasserts itself, as if to suggest entities re-embedding themselves into the soil. With high strings and piccolos initiating “Overstorey,” the notion that we're high above the forest floor is clearly conveyed, even if the music slowly falls like leaves thereafter. A stately, contemplative episode follows that evokes the timeless mystery of the setting, before the music builds to an explosive climax, then decompresses for a meditative, almost mystical outro executed with poise. “Mycelium Rondo” brings about a dramatic change when the exuberant finale bolts from the gate with pulsing rhythms, dance gestures, and the horn in full hunting mode. While the concise suite Fanfare, Air and Flourishes (2021) might seem a mere supplement to the concerto, it isn't without merit; further to that, it provides a terrific showcase for Goldscheider in being scored for solo horn. Aptly titled, “Fanfare” allows for all manner of brassy bluster; “Air” by comparison finds the horn inhabiting a more plaintive and introspective space.

As commendable as the horn pieces are, it's the forty-seven-minute oratorio that strikes these ears as the grandest statement. Higgins reunited with his The Monstrous Child librettist Francesa Simon for The Faerie Bride (2021), which in this iteration couples mezzo-soprano Marta Fontanals-Simmons and baritone Roderick Williams with the Three Choirs Festival Chorus, BBC National Orchestra of Wales, and conductor Martyn Brabbins. Anyone familiar with “The Lady of the Lake” will also therefore know the story of The Faerie Bride, the legend having to do with a water spirit who agrees to leave her realm to marry an earthly man.

Recorded live in July 2023 at the Three Choirs Festival in Gloucester, the work is structured in two parts, two movements in the first and five the second. A brooding, even ominous “Prologue” sets the scene with low instrumental pitches suggesting music rising from watery depths until the voice of the unnamed man appears, his words indicating that he's come to the lake to grieve his lost wife and keep watch in case she returns. Suddenly a second voice appears, that of a woman, also unnamed, who intones the haunting Welsh air “Dacw ‘Ngharad” that she wooed him with long ago. It's at this moment that the work leaps back in time for the two to recount their first meeting. Her father had warned her not to let those on land see her, yet she couldn't resist when she saw the man's “sad face, … strong arms, [and] crooked smile.” He too was enchanted when he first saw her, and the intensity of the music mirrors the rapture of their initial encounter. As the characters share their interactions, the music advances sinuously as it reflects their fervent emotional trajectories. As he extends a piece of bread towards her, she rejects the offering, stating,” It's not easy to catch me / I'm from the Otherworld” and clarifying that were she to take the bread she would become part of his world. When she accepts the final offering, however, the music grows rhapsodic as they declare their love for each other. However, when she agrees to leave the water to join him above ground, she does so on one condition, that if he should strike her three blows (of the emotional kind, in this case), she must return to the lake forever.

January 2025