Elizabeth Maconchy: Overture, Proud Thames (1953) Part II: The Premiere

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.