Promenade Novelties Reaching their Century: Edgar Bainton’s Three Orchestral Pieces

The Promenade Concert season of 1919 witnessed several premiere performances of music that remain in the public domain to this day. Naturally, there are several works, large and small that have slipped by the wayside. This is one of them. 

Edgar Bainton (1880-1956) is chiefly remembered for his anthem ‘And I saw a New Heaven’ which is a ‘standard’ of ‘choirs and places where they sing.’  Despite the superb quality of this choral work it is unfortunate that his wide-ranging catalogue of music is rarely explored these days. Bainton produced a choral symphony, two instrumental symphonies, a Fantasia for piano and orchestra, several operas and many piano pieces, chamber works and songs.

The Three Pieces for orchestra were composed towards the end of the Great War and were subsequently revised between 1919-20. There are three movements: ‘Elegy’, ‘Intermezzo’ and ‘Humoresque’.  The entire piece lasts for just over 10 minutes. At the Promenade Concert on 20 September 1919 the audience heard only the first two movements.  

Much could be written about the genesis of these Three Pieces. However, the important thing to recall is that Bainton was at the time of composition a prisoner of war in the Ruhleben Camp, near Berlin. He had been arrested by police in 1914 whilst en-route to that year’s Bayreuth Festival, an event he had attended for many years. Other inmates at Ruhleben included the composers Benjamin Dale, Frederick Keel and Ernest MacMillan as well as the cellist Carl Fuchs of the Halle Orchestra.

The work originated as ‘incidental music’ for camp performances of Shakespeare’s The Merry Wives of Windsor and Twelfth Night.  The opening movement, an ‘Elegy’, reflects on Viola hearing of her brother’s death. It is the heart of the work. Ernest Newman writing in The Guardian (24 September 1919) suggested that it has ‘a good deal of emotional subtlety underlying its apparently simple musical idiom.’ The mood lightens a little with the ‘Intermezzo’ evoking Windsor Forest on a hot summer’s day. The finale seems to portray the antics of that loveable hero, Sir John Falstaff.  The entire work has, as Rob Barnett (MusicWeb International, 8 May 2008) suggested, ‘an Arden-like pleasantry’ with music that is ‘both gently magical and bluffly celebratory - a touch of Korngold in the last piece…’

The Three Pieces for orchestra was eventually played in its entirety at Bournemouth on 6 January 1921. At the same concert the audience heard Bainton’s Concerto Fantasia (1917-20) for piano and orchestra. The composer was the soloist.

The work has not been heard at the Promenade Concerts since.

Listeners are fortunate that Edgar Bainton’s Three Orchestral Pieces (in their final version) were recorded by Chandos (CHAN 10460) in 2008. The CD includes the Pavane, Idyll and Bacchanal (1924), The Golden River (Suite after [John] Ruskin, op.16 (1908, rev 1912) and the delightful Concerto Fantasia (1917-20) for piano and orchestra. All were premiere recordings. The BBC Philharmonic is conducted by Paul Daniel with Margaret Fingerhut as piano soloist.

Finally, for the record, in 1934 the composer left these shores for Australia, where he became the Director of New South Wales State Conservatorium of Music.

Edgar Bainton’s Three Pieces for orchestra have been uploaded to YouTube.