Promenade Concert British Novelties for 1920 Part 4

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.