Summary for the Busy Executive: "I like a man whut takes his time" –Mae West.

Kenneth Leighton's career rose "meteorically" (so say the liner notes) in the 
Fifties. The music was conservative and extremely strong and well-made. As time 
went on, however, he moved along more radical paths, including serialism. French 
composer Olivier Messaien proved the most lasting influence, however, and in his 
later music Leighton achieved a personal synthesis of all his different styles. 
However, he never had a "hit," on the order of Walton's Façade, Vaughan 
Williams's Lark Ascending, and certainly not Holst's Planets. Furthermore, like 
Holst, he preferred to stay out of the spotlight. Consequently, while he had the 
deep respect of his peers and continued to receive commissions, he faded 
somewhat from public consciousness after his too-early death from cancer at 59. 
Following the up-and-coming, very few labels rushed to record his work, which 
also heaped oblivion upon him.

Fortunately, the enterprising Chandos has taken up his cause with a series of 
CDs, and we (especially in the United States) get to hear what the fuss was 
about. He certainly deserved the fuss. Both the symphony and the concerto 
operate at the architectural level of a Robert Simpson – major statements based 
on a radical brevity of structural components. Obviously, Leighton mastered 
variation technique, but he impresses even more as a shaper of symphonic 
narrative.

Leighton made two abortive tries at his first symphony before he found his way, 
since took the symphony as a form very seriously indeed. His three symphonies 
lie roughly ten years apart from one another. The First comes out of the Walton 
Wing of British music, but it speaks with a new, greater intensity than Walton's 
followers usually do. As I say, I find major affinities, not least in 
intellectual focus and force, with Simpson's symphonies. Both men interest 
themselves with complex counterpoint, although Simpson gravitates toward 
"learned" counterpoint and Leighton's seems more "organic." Leighton has 
stripped down his basic materials to about two main themes, varied throughout 
all its three movements. Furthermore, this is no mere exercise in pattern-
manipulation, but an argument of huge span that grips the listener from first 
measure to last. Overall, the score resides in an austere, even dour 
neighborhood. The first movement grows intensively from a single thread to a 
maestoso climax leading directly to the scherzo, which the composer stated 
"loosens the reins, and in a spirit of rebellion seeks to arrive at an 
affirmative answer by sheer force of will." This is no hale Beethovenian 
scherzo, however. It emphasizes protest and force, reminding me somewhat of the 
scherzo in Vaughan Williams's Fourth, and one can debate how affirmative 
Leighton's answer. It comes across to me as angry, obsessional (mostly due to 
the sparseness of the material), and desperate.

The finale begins with a rhetorical regroup, a scaling-back of forces. The first 
section declaims a new beginning, but it's a difficult one. Much of it consists 
of two lines very close together – half-steps, whole steps, here and there a 
minor third – and the effect is that of a screw tightening. As more voices 
gradually join in, the music begins to relax, although it never loses its worry. 
About halfway in, we even get some genuine cantabile. The music laments its way 
to an emotional highpoint, which I hear as some sort of jeremiad. This symphony 
doesn't weep for an individual, but for a civilization, another Age of Anxiety. 
Since Beethoven upped the stakes in the symphonic finale from entertainment to 
enlightenment, composers have had trouble finding some sort of resolution in 
their work. The music quickly winds down to two flutes and a pizzicato bass, 
ending the symphony in the middle of nothing. Some may find that unsatisfying, 
but not me. I believe it the only resolution possible, given what happens 
before.

Leighton lived long in England's North. He also taught at the University of 
Edinburgh. Oxford, however, appointed him to succeed Edmund Rubbra. Apparently, 
the comparatively warm weather – and it's only comparatively warm in the south 
of England – inspired him to write his Piano Concerto #3, "Concerto estivo" 
(summer concerto). The composer describes it as more "lyrical" than his first 
two, by which he seems to point to a less severe contrapuntal texture, but the 
concerto lies far from the pastoral implications of a summer day, even with a 
slow movement titled "Pastoral." If anything, Leighton has pruned his material 
even further than in the symphony. We don't get anything so mundane as a theme. 
Instead, Leighton derives his material from a chord and a small kit of intervals 
– rather Spartan. Actually, like Britten's "Lachrymae," the concerto goes 
through its three movements (fast-slow-fast) working up to the full statement of 
its theme as the score's apotheosis. The psychological skies aren't as dark as 
in the symphony, but they're by no means sunny. The first movement starts slowly 
by playing around with intervals until it breaks into a driving toccata. The 
second mostly flirts with stasis until interrupted by another toccata section 
(and the transition from one to the other is masterly). It breaks down into 
torpor again and we arrive without pause at the finale, a set of variations. 
Remember, there's no real theme here; the movement works toward revealing one 
through variation – a pretty audacious move. Fast sections frame the central 
slow one. After a full cadenza, we finally get the expression of the Ur-theme, 
which turns out to be the concerto's opening, regularized. An exciting coda, and 
we're out.

No orchestra would regard either score as a walk in the park. Brabbins and his 
Welsh players have the measure of both, with crisp rhythms, clear textures, a 
sure grasp of structure, and emotional commitment. Howard Shelley is an 
excellent soloist, negotiating the muscularity of Leighton's piano writing 
(Leighton was a virtuoso himself) and delivering from the score that grand 
Romantic intellectualism characteristic of Brahms as well. I love both 
Brabbins's and Shelley's work here, a composer's champions at a level seldom 
encountered. After all, one can't call Leighton a known quantity or the 
performing tradition deep and robust. That they have spent so much effort on 
someone who rewards it just warms me up.

  --Steve Schwartz