William Mival: Vale – a pastoral symphony; Tristan – still; Pluen (Streaming Review)

by Karl Nehring

Philharmonia Orchestra; Martyn Brabbins, conductor. Signum Classics SIGCD977

This is another instance of a chance encounter with music by a composer previously unknown to me. One of the TV streaming services to which I subscribe is Amazon Music, and a couple of weeks or so ago, after watching either some British mystery or perhaps Mystery Science Theater 3000 late one night, I decided to switch to stream some music while getting ready for bed (I have a reasonably good sounding Roku Pro Soundbar – no longer manufactured, alas – with subwoofer and four surround speakers). Something that Amazon Music does that I enjoy is recommend new releases based on its perception of your listening preferences; on this fateful evening one of its suggestions was this new Signum release highlighting a work titled Vale – a pastoral symphony by William Mival. Who?! What? I had no idea who William Mival was or is, but I’m a sucker for pastoral symphonies ((Beethoven, RVW), so even though it was getting late, I fired it up to see what it was all about. Entranced, I wound up not getting to bed until a good hour later, having listened to the whole program and now excited to have stumbled across a fascinating new composer.

 

Of course, one of my first orders of business the next morning after downing my usual Rich Chocolate High Protein SlimFast for breakfast was to find out just who in the heck is this composer of the music that had so captivated me the night before. Naturally enough, as I began my quest, I started playing this music again to see whether it would still appeal to me. A quick web search yielded the information that William Mival (pictured left) is a composer, broadcaster, writer, and teacher who was born in Wales in 1959. From 2004 through 2022, he was Head of Composition at the Royal College of Music in London. As I continued to audition and enjoy his music, I was mildly surprised that a contemporary composer with such an academic background (one of his major publications, for example, is a book on Stockhausen, for instance) could write such accessible music. But that is not to say that his music is simple, shallow, least-common-denominator stuff; instead, what we encounter on this new Signum release is satisfying music of substance.

The program opens with Vale – a Pastoral Symphony, which consists of six relatively brief movements, for which I have indicated the timings: I. Senza ironia [4:39]; II. Fluido, bucolica e espressivo [2:48]; III. Fluido, bucolica e expressivo (cont.) [5:23]; IV. Lento [5:50]; V. Piu mosso, fluido [6:49]; VI. Meno messo – rubato e molto espressivo[1:47]. The CD booklet explains that Mival’s program notes for the symphony refer to the Vale of Clwyd, an area of great natural beauty in Wales. However, Mival goes on to explain that “there is nothing in the symphony that directly refers to the Vale of Clwyd. In fact, it’s far more German Romantic-centered in many places. Firstly, it’s symphonic; this was something I wanted to attempt for myself. I’d heard an especially moving performance of Vaughan Williams’s Fifth Symphony, which I think is an absolute masterpiece, and I wondered whether that language could somehow be revisited – the directness and apparent simplicity of it, and a quality that is unmistakably British.” From the opening measures, there is at once a sense of direct musical communication by subtle yet heartfelt means. Like nature itself, there is peace and calm coexisting with underlying energy and unrest, the music building momentum through the first three movements before the more tranquil, reflective Lento fourth movement, which is warmly welcoming. The fifth and longest movement begins peacefully, but about two minutes in, the energy level begins to increase, with Mival then bringing the symphony to a peaceful, if slightly enigmatic conclusion in the brief final movement. Although the six-movement structure is somewhat unusual for a symphony, Vale is still a deeply moving and appealing work, a worthy addition to the roster of pastoral symphonies.

 

Next on the program is Tristan – still, which is the earliest of the three compositions on this release, having first been performed early in 2003. It was commissioned by the BBC, with the original idea for it to serve as a counterpoint to a concert presentation of Act III of Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde – thus the unusual title. The BBC requested that Mival use the same instrumentation that Wagner had used, which Mival did, adding only a bass drum. The resulting composition is much easier to listen to than to describe. It consists of four movements that grow progressively longer, with a total duration of nearly 19 minutes. The music has a ghostly Wagnerian presence about it, like hearing Wagner in a dream. If in Vale we were musically transported to the Vale of Clwyd, we are now being taken in some dark, mythical, enchanted forest. It’s a fascinating journey. 

 

For the composer, however, the road ahead was not so smooth. According to the liner notes, “Mival’s audacity in writing a large-scale romantic orchestral score in 2003 would trigger another creative crisis. ‘The audience loved it, he recalls – it went down incredibly well in the hall, and it was nominated for a British Composer Award. But it was either too much, or too little for some I think – the words “time travel” were used on several occasions. I was taken aback. A lot of things dried up for me after that. So I concentrated on my teaching, taking virtually a ten-year break from composition. The piece that going again was Correntandemente, an ensemble piece, in 2015, and then Pluen came along.”

 

Pluen (the Welsh term for “feather”) was commissioned by the Laurence Madiano Charitable Trust in celebration of the 70^th birthday of a noted British music lover, Prince Charles, now King Charles III. According to Mival’s official program note for its premier in 2019, the piece “is a meditation on a Welsh folksong, found in an arrangement for choir by Gustav Holst; Y Glomen, ‘The Dove.’ Barely recognizable fragments of the original melody are woven into three extended variations followed by a conclusion. The durations of each variation deriving from the relative proportions of the three feathers in the emblematic heraldic badge of Prince of Wales.” Mival goes on to explain how, “I’d originally met Laurence Madiano at a fundraiser for the RCM; I sent him a bootleg recording of Tristan – still and he immediately commissioned this little piece. I thought – let’s write a folk song, basically, and see where I can go with it. I’ve always had a huge interest in Mahler, as you can probably hear in places – I’m fascinated by the way that Mahler takes simple ideas and then moulds them into something more complex. So I had a go at that with Pluen, but at the same time, I wanted to make something direct. Aaron Copland said that as a composer you need to have a language in common with the people you’re writing for, so directness has always been a part of what I do.” Over four brief movements spanning a total of approximately 11 minutes, the music of Pluen exhibits a kind of pastoral charm and a warmly British ambience that is beguiling to the ear. 

 

I have lost count of how many times I have played this recording over the past couple of weeks, but I have no doubt that I have listened to it more often than any other recording thus far in 2026. And the more I listen to it, the more I have come to enjoy and appreciate it. William Mival may well be, in the final analysis, a minor composer with a limited body of work; however, he, Maestro Brabbins, and the musicians of the Philharmonia Orchestra have produced a recording worthy of my very highest recommendation.