Norton Poetry

Mr. Bernstein kicks off with Ravel's Rapsodie Espagnole, 4th Movement, to illustrate a total unawareness of a tonal crisis. The bigger and greater the ambiguities, the more immortal is tonality. There is still Rosenkavalier to be written, some operas by Puccini and Firebird. But 1908 breathes an air of disturbance indicating that tonality cannot last, nor figurative painting, nor syntactical poetry, nor the seemingly endless growth of colonial wealth or imperial power. A hint of social collapse. Marinetti's "Manifesto of Futurism" is to appear. Mahler, writing his 9th Symphony, agonizes over his reluctant and protracted farewell to tonality. Scriabin does so in his Prometheus. Sibelius in his 4th Symphony

Hyperion have come up trumps again with another delightful disc of out-of-the-way music. The brainchild of Graham Johnson, it is subtitled "150 Years of English Women Composers", with notes by Sophie Fuller, author of a book due out next year entitled The Pandora Guide to Women Composers. In the course of the programme the performers uncover a host of imaginative, impassioned and/or joyful songs that have lain for too long literally unsung, and revived others that were hugely popular until very recent times. Let me say at once that they couldn't have more perceptive or loving or enthusiastic interpreters than Johnson and Johnson, who excel even their own high standards of singing and playing.

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