The Marco Polo catalog acquired some years ago by the Naxos label continues to yield musical gems and even commercial successes, as evidenced by this album of incidental music and other miscellaneous pieces by
Arthur Sullivan. The music remains very rarely played, although the incidental music was popular enough in
Sullivan's own time. The two pieces of incidental music for Shakespeare plays date from the 1870s, in other words, from the first part of
Sullivan's better-known career as half of the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta-writing team. They do not comprise full sets of incidental music but are intended for specific scenes in The Merchant of Venice (the masque scene, complete with an Italian-language song) and Henry VIII. In a way, they occupy a very satisfying middle ground between the operettas and the composer's big operatic and orchestral works that never quite emerge into a distinctive voice. They are full of
Sullivan's melodic gift, and they are imaginative and fresh programmatic pieces. There is also a reconstructed bit of
Sullivan's lost early opera The Sapphire Necklace (it must be out there somewhere, antiquarians!), which survives only in a fragment arranged for brass band and has been reconstructed from that. This is strong enough that other organizations might easily pick up and perform the work as realized here. The album closes with an Overture in C major, composed as a memorial for
Sullivan's father; it contains much of the composer's characteristic joy despite its somber subject. The performances by the
RTÉ Concert Orchestra under the baton of
Andrew Penny, with tenor
Emmanuel Lawler, are ideal and reflect the group's history as a light music ensemble.
Sullivan's non-Savoy music has been gradually emerging from obscurity, but this early example of the trend remains an unusually strong entry in the catalog.