Elizabeth Maconchy’s Overture, Proud Thames was premiered during a gala
concert at the Royal Festival Hall on 14 October 1953. Sir Malcolm Sargent
conducted the BBC Symphony Orchestra.
The Times (15 October 1953) felt that it was a strange concert
being ‘eventful for personal as well as musical reasons.’ Apart from Maconchy
receiving her award in person, and the Overture’s first performance, it was a moving
farewell to the concert platform by the Norwegian superstar, the soprano
Kirsten Flagstad. However, she did continue to make records until 1958, when
she made her valedictory performance of Fricka in Decca’s celebrated recording of
Rhinegold.
The evening’s programme was to
have included Maurice Ravel’s La Valse,
but at the last moment Sargent substituted Richard Wagner’s Prelude and Liebestod
from Tristan and Isolde. Flagstad’s
main performance was the equally beautiful and poignant Five Wesendonck Lieder. Other music heard at this concert included
Hector Berlioz’s Overture: Benvenuto
Cellini and Jean Sibelius’s inscrutable Symphony No.4. The
Times reviewer believed that Elizabeth Maconchy’s Proud Thames was a ‘splendid little piece.’ However, there was a
downside, which is ‘as commendable as it is rare’: the work is too short.’ He notes the little trumpet theme from which
all the music of the overture derives. Yet we ‘leave the upper waters [of the
River] too soon, and in a flash we are past Henley and a moment later the ebb
is bearing us out past the towers of London.’ It is certainly a valid
complaint. This review concludes by suggesting that ‘it is a proud journey and
the overture is rightly named.’
The Daily Telegraph (15 October 1953) suggests that it ‘is rare for
the outcome of a competition to be as successful as Miss Maconchy’s new
overture.’ It is ‘an agreeable and effective composition…done without
pompousness but wittily, with pleasing fancies and clever scoring.’
Eric Blom writing in The Observer (18 October 1953) felt that
Proud Thames is an ‘appropriate work
to be commissioned for the Royal Festival Hall, where the river looks so
splendid.’ No one who has looked out over the Thames from the ‘Members’ Bar’
will need to be convinced of that statement. Once again, the brevity of the
overture is commented on: ‘the work is short to the point of abruptness, but
this was felt to be a fault only because the music is so vital, shapely,
tellingly orchestrated and individual, that one wants it to develop at greater
length.’
Finally, Donald Mitchell
considered some first performances heard during 1953 (Musical Times, December 1953). I cite his thoughts on Proud Thames in full. He wrote that: ‘The
overture's motto (an ascending major third) was an adequate initiating
flourish, but certainly not a substantial musical thought; and Miss Maconchy's
piece-no more, indeed, than an overture to an overture-did nothing but deck out
this preliminary motto in an elaborate orchestral setting, or contrast it with
atmospheric episodes (' gently rippling figures ', according to the programme).
The overture, in fact, was over before anything of any musical consequence had
occurred. It is typical of our time that the work to win a prize should so
completely lack a decent tune. The impoverished brevity of Miss Maconchy's
'Proud Thames' represents the stage where, so to speak, composers have given up
trying to compose.’
Interestingly, Mitchell also
included comments on Eugene Goossens’ Pastorale for string orchestra, op.59
(1942), Bernard Steven’s Fantasia on a theme of Dowland, op.23 (1953), Malcolm
Arnold’s Violin Sonata No.2, op.43 (1953) and John Gardner’s ballet suite Reflections, op.14 (1952). All these works have largely disappeared into
musical footnotes. At least Elizabeth Maconchy’s Overture: Proud Thames is to be given an outing at the Last Night of this
year’s Proms.
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