This concluding review of Proms Novelties (Premieres) from a century
ago looks at three rarities. None of these pieces has completely caught the
musical public’s imagination with only one having had a professional modern
recording. To be sure, Montague Phillips Piano Concerto No.2 did have a certain
caché in the pre-Second World War years, and had a revival in the early 1960s,
under the baton of Vilem Tausky. A
recording of Tausky and the BBC Concert Orchestra dating from December 1963 has
been uploaded to YouTube.
Over the past 25 years or so, many ‘romantic’ piano concertos by
British composers have been recorded. I guess that the initial impetus to this
was the novel CD issued by (Hyperion CDA66820) which featured Hubert Parry’s
Piano Concerto in F sharp major and Charles Villiers Stanford’s Piano Concerto
No.1 in G major, op.59. Since then
concertos by Alexander Mackenzie, Donald Tovey, Josef Holbrooke, William Alwyn,
Haydn Wood, Stanley Bate, William
Sterndale Bennett, Francis Edward Bache, York Bowen, Howard Ferguson, Julius
Benedict, Walter MacFarren, Arthur Somervell, Frederick Cowen, Cyril Scott, Cipriani
Potter and Roger Sacheverell Coke have been recorded by Hyperion or other innovative
record companies such as SOMM, Dutton Epoch, Lyrita and Naxos.
On September 9 1920 Montague
Phillips conducted the first performance of his Pianoforte Concerto at the
Queen’s Hall. The Musical Times (1 October 1920) reported that the work
‘has many attractive qualities and boasts at least two good tunes, which is
quite an ample ration for a Concerto in these days. It suffers rather from an
attempt to say too much and to make the foundation bear a superstructure too
heavy for its strength. The orchestration is rather too voluptuous and too
thick…but there are several places in which particularly good use is made of
violoncello tone. The pianoforte part is brilliantly written, but there is a
certain sameness in the making of the patterns for the passage work. Mr.
William G. James played it very effectively.’
In 2008 Montague Phillips First
and Second Piano Concertos were issued on the Dutton Epoch label (CDLX7206).
They were coupled with a rarity by Victor Hely-Hutchinson, The Young Idea:
Rhapsody for piano and orchestra. Rob
Barnett, reviewing this disc for MusicWeb International (8 July 2008)
suggested that ‘The Second Concerto…[had] a slightly more tangy harmonic edge
[than the First]. The music is still high on rhetoric with good ideas not in
short supply. Some stock romantic gestures will be recognised but there is
plenty to engage the attention and the heart. Phillips' writing in this work
sometimes recalls the Bliss Piano Concerto. The second movement is more relaxed
but still has a lean energetic charge. The finale has a mariner's swagger and
something of Elgar's sweeping ‘nobilmente’ but with more of a surrender to
sentimentality and a redolence of Harty's Piano Concerto.’
Frederick Laurence’s The Dance of the Witch Girl for orchestra
was premiered on 12 October 1920. It was its first and last Prom
performance. There is no recording of
this work available. The press reported that the music was ‘clever and on
modern lines’ (The Strad, October 1920). The Musical Times considered that ‘Mr
Frederick Laurence is another young English musician who has all ultra-modern
music at his fingers’ ends, and in his Dance of the Witch-Girl he made
effective use of his knowledge. It is well put together, and some of the
orchestral effects are fresh and picturesque. Here too the music affords no
grounds for prophesying as to his future. The public liked the work extremely.’
I wonder if the score of this work is
lurking in an archive somewhere. Looking at the information available on the
composer suggests that there is considerable unearthing of his life and work to
be undertaken.
Landon Ronald’s Orchestral Suite The Garden of Allah began life
as incidental music for a melodrama adapted from Robert Hitchens’s eponymous
novel. The plot of the play would barely pass muster one hundred years on. Stories
of recusant monks setting off in search of life experience and enlightenment
seem passé, although some of the stage effects may still have some appeal. There
were umpteen live animals on stage including sheep, goats, and camels. During
one performance, the special effects creating a sandstorm failed. The front
rows had to be ‘dug out.’ Clearly play, scenery, props and music reflect
contemporary received notions of what life and times were like in ‘mystic’
Arabia. The derived Suite of music contains four movements: ‘Prelude’, ‘In
an Eastern Garden’, ‘Kyrie Eleison’ and ‘Dance of the Ouled Nail’. The Musical Times (October 1920)
reported that ‘it is good incidental music - that is to say, it is picturesque
and intelligible - and goes along very easily. It is difficult now to say
anything new in the Oriental idiom, and the composer himself would probably be
the first to disclaim any ambitious intentions in that direction.’ The first
concert performance of this suite was given on Tuesday 14 September at the
Queen’s Hall. A performance of The
Garden of Allah played by the Royal Albert Hall Orchestra conducted by
Landon Ronald has been uploaded to YouTube. The violin
soloist in the second movement is played by Arthur Beckwith. The recording was made
on Saturday 17 July 1920. This Suite is probably worth the occasional revival,
and possibly a new recording, if only for the subtle echoes of Gustav Holst’s Beni
Mora written ten years previously in 1910.
Concluded.
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