Penelope Thwaites: Gardens, Fables, Prisons, Dreams
SOMM Recordings

A more comprehensive account of Penelope Thwaites' art would be hard to come by than Gardens, Fables, Prisons, Dreams. All but one of the chamber pieces were written by her, but she also plays piano throughout and wrote in-depth liner notes too. It's hardly her debut, however: it's but the latest Thwaites release to have appeared on SOMM Recordings, with her musical (co-written with Alan Thornhill) Ride! Ride! and Choral Music and Songs appearing earlier. The UK-born daughter of Australian parents made her London debut at Wigmore Hall in 1974 and in the years since has performed in more than thirty countries and appeared as a soloist with orchestras across the globe.

In saluting “the heroes, the witty wordsmiths, the dancers, the poets and the visionaries; and two great composers” who have musically influenced her, the eight selections, all of them first recordings, consistently charm, whether it be the eight-part treatment of Oscar Wilde's fable The Selfish Giant, the enchanting A Lambeth Garland, or her arrangement of Delius's In a Summer Garden. Enhancing the presentation, she's joined on different pieces by pianist Benjamin Frith, double bassist Laurence Ungless, and the Tippett Quartet. The latter inaugurates the set with Jan Palach's Theme, which Thwaites wrote for the film Letter to Wollongong and memorializes a twenty-year-old student who immolated himself in protest against the Soviet Union's 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia. Thwaites' distinctive melodic voice is already evident in this dignified and graceful expression, which also shows how easily accessible her material is.

The mood quickly lightens with the advent of A Lambeth Garland, a thoroughly engaging travelogue written for a fund-raising concert at Lambeth Palace. The six-part piece originally appeared as a song cycle for vocal quartet and piano duet but appears here in a piano duo version pairing the composer and Frith. “The Lambeth Waltz” having set a gleeful, harmonious tone, the work proceeds without pause to “A Gardener's Song,” as jovial but also rousing, ruminative, and even a tad bluesy. While longing initially dominates the endearing “Song of a Scotsman,” joy and affection surface too. “The Wildlife Garden” is suitably adventurous and playful; the closing reprise of the opening part reinstates the carefree joy of the work's beginning.

While on tour in India in 1971, Thwaites met dancer-choreographer Vijaylakshmi Subramaniam, who subsequently used the composer's music for her dance-drama Vijay's Fable. A revised piano trio version derived from the score was created in 2019, and it's that iteration that's featured on this recording, with Thwaites accompanied by violinist John Mills and cellist Bozidar Vukotic. As expected, the style of the writing in Vijay's Fable is leagues removed from A Lambeth Garland, with the trio evoking the dreamlike allure of the East with lilting rhythms and sinuous phrases. The trio configuration remains in place for the subsequent Mazurka: Au Tombeau de Chopin, the three delivering the piece's dance rhythms enticingly and its funereal homage with heartfelt grandeur.

The recording's longest single-movement piece is her arrangement of Delius's In a Summer Garden. Pushing past eleven minutes and performed by her and Frith, the work is intensely impressionistic and instantly identifiable as the album's sole non-original. That doesn't make the material, especially when dressed in the texturally sumptuous garb of the two-piano arrangement, any less beguiling, however. The Tippett Quartet returns midway through to perform a solemn setting inspired by Russian poet Irina Ratushinskaya, who survived imprisonment in the Soviet gulag but died of cancer in 2017. Having read about her plight in the book Grey is the Colour of Hope, Thwaites actually was able to meet her in person and, moved by the poet's indomitable spirit, wrote the dignified elegy For Irina in her honour. The quartet makes a third and final appearance on To the Hills, accompanied on this sweetly uplifting expression by double bassist Ungless for a string quintet rendering of Thwaites' 1964 choral setting of Psalm 121.

Based on one of Oscar Wilde's most famous fairy tales, The Selfish Giant was written in the late ‘60s as a ballet score and performed in an arrangement for two pianos by Thwaites and a pianist friend. Decades later, she revisited the material and recast it as a concert work for two pianos, the treatment included here. Charm is abundant in the eighteen-minute-plus presentation, beginning with the spirited “Overture” and jubilant “Children's Dance and Games.” The giant makes a threatening entrance in “The Chase” and then, well-chuffed for having sent the children away, cavorts wildly in “Giant's Dance.” But with the children now gone, “Frost, Wind and Snow” overtake the garden and, overcome by the severe change in the weather, the giant stumbles and falls. Immobilized, he eventually hears spring returning and, newly empowered, rescues a little boy from a tree, a gesture that in turn returns the garden to full bloom. A joyful “Celebration Dance” finds the children and giant playing together, after which the work concludes with the tenderness of a sombre “Evening Dance.”

One comes way from Gardens, Fables, Prisons, Dreams struck by the variety of the material and the commanding stylistic range and melodic invention of the composer. Anyone coming to her music for the first time will leave this generous sixty-five-minute release thoroughly enlightened about who she is and the character of her music.

September 2023