CLASSICAL

Tippett: Symphonies Nos 1 & 2

Hyperion

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The BBC SSO have been performing Michael Tippett’s symphonies as a thrilling and enlightening live series in Glasgow this season – something to cheer about, given that they’ve sadly gone out of fashion since his death – and now they are becoming available to a wider audience as the SSO, under Martyn Brabbins, releases the first of its recordings, containing Nos 1 and 2. The passage of time allows us to rethink our responses, but suffice to say that Brabbins works faithfully with the scores, giving each a surety of direction, a freshness of response and a generous appreciation of Tippett’s complexity of texture and rhythm, and the idiosyncratic personality of his lyricism.

There’s a delicious adherence to the snatches of English nostalgia in No 1, offset by Tippett’s more combative harshness and underlying mystery. It works well beside the transitional Second Symphony, again solidly convincing in Brabbin’s hands and a teasing appetiser to the next release.