The Recordings. The March
1953 edition of The Gramophone (p.xxvii) carried an advert for several
new Argo ‘long playing microgroove’ records. Interestingly, these included a
recitation of T.S. Eliot’s ‘The Waste Land and other poems’ by British actor Robert
Speaight, and records of music by Bartok, Debussy, Rawsthorne, Arensky, Bloch
and Wolf. Humphrey Searle’s Piano Sonata, played by Gordon Watson was coupled
with Peter Racine Fricker’s Sonata [No.1] for violin and piano, performed by
Maria Lidka, violin, and Margaret Kitchin, piano. It was issued on ATC 1002. This was reviewed in The Gramophone (June
1953, p.16). Lionel Salter begins congratulating Argo for displaying ‘courage’
for being ‘willing to risk its arm by publishing two ‘advanced’ British works’,
which are described as ‘tough nuts.’ The critic reminds the reader that both
composers are still in their thirties, and both owe their training to foreign
musicians. In Fricker’s case it was the Hungarian émigré Mátyás Seiber at
Morley College, and for Searle, Anton Webern in Vienna. Sadly, both composers have
in common little save that their works are better known in Germany than in this
country.’ Turning to Searle’s Sonata,
after introducing the piece, Salter thinks that:
‘The massive
piano writing makes a pleasant change from the coy keyboard pecking usual with
the dodecaphonists, though I feel that Searle overdoes the perpetual growling
semiquavers in the bass. Gordon Watson…plays the sonata in masterly fashion and
is completely at home in its challenging idiom: it is unfortunate that he does
not get a better recording - this is both shallow and rather rattly.
Nevertheless, this disc is a valuable one for all interested in the art of our
time, and Argo 's enterprise is much to be applauded.’
A major
review was included in The Record Guide (1952, rev.1955, p.693). Desmond
Shawe-Taylor considered that ‘the sonata is a most arresting piece, which could
not fail to create a majestic impression in a concert hall.’ The pianist,
Gordon Watson, ‘must be congratulated on the aplomb with which he tackles the
difficulties of the work.’ However,
there was a problem. The recording ‘is too ill managed’ …and the soloist could
have been ‘better served by the engineers.’
Otherwise it would have been ‘a wholly praiseworthy contribution to the
catalogue.’
The critic concludes with a short footnote. Since he wrote this review in 1952, Argo announced that the record has been withdrawn with the intention of a new version. It was never re-released, and listeners had to wait until 2014 before another edition of Searle’s Piano Sonata was issued on Naxos.
The
Malcolm Smith Memorial Album was the result of a bequest. Smith (1932-2011)
was head of the Promotion and Hire Library at Boosey and Hawkes. A vice
president of the British Music Society, Smith bequeathed a sum of money to
facilitate this recording, which includes Robin Holloway’s six-handed Grand
Heroical March, Leslie Howard’s Sullivan-inspired Ruddigore Concert Fantasy,
and Humphrey Searle’s Sonata.
Malcolm Smith had a passionate interest in British music, with his job allowing him to know most of the composers of the post war generation. Composer and academic Peter Dickinson provided the assessment of this somewhat unusual CD for The Gramophone (March 2015, p.75). Commenting on the Searle Sonata, Dickinson notes that the composer was a ‘devotee of Liszt, not the obvious enthusiasm for one of the first British 12-note composers.’ Perhaps Dickinson was thinking of the Hungarian composer’s ‘romanticism’, rather than as a progenitor of ‘thematic transformation’. Dickinson continues by insisting that ‘Julian Jacobson puts this taxing, but impressively rhetorical piece through its paces brilliantly – just the kind of gesture [Malcolm] Smith would have admired, bringing something unknown to a wider audience.’ Peter Dickinson subsequently explained to me that Jacobson told him what a dreadful time he had learning the Sonata: ‘The point is that if you have rapid arpeggios based on note-rows, every single one is a different layout, unless you’re very careful – which Searle wasn’t. That means that every bar must be separately fingered, and nothing repeats. This is virtually impossible.’
David Denton (David’s Review Corner, October 2014) provides a short but apposite comment on the Sonata: '...if you can imagine Liszt’s B minor sonata being rewritten by Schoenberg, you will have Humphrey Searle’s Piano Sonata. Composed in 1951 it received critical acclaim at the time but has since fallen by the wayside, this being the first modern recording. The magnificent performance comes from the much-experienced Julian Jacobson who makes light of its demands.’
Finally, Mark L Lehman in the American Record Guide (March/April 2015. p.200) gave a crisp review of this performance: ‘Searle's 1951 sonata, a frenetic, jagged, dissonant, tormented excursion into extremes of dynamics, tessitura, and emotion, that combines Schoenbergian chromaticism, Mahlerian weltschmerz, (world weariness) and Lisztian cataracts splashed up and down the keyboard, is the most ambitious item on the [CD’s] program. Listeners who find Allan Pettersson optimistic and genial and Harrison Birtwistle pastoral and folk-like are sure to cosy up to this porcupine. Others beware.’
It seems strange that one of the most important post-war British Piano Sonatas has ‘fallen by the wayside.’ This work can be regarded as entry level into Humphrey Searle’s compositional style. The balance between Serialism and Lisztian romanticism is skilfully crafted. It is a Sonata that surely deserves its place in the canon of 20th century music, no matter how tentative its hold.
Bibliography:
Searle, Humphrey, Quadrille with a Raven: Memoir of a Composer Unpublished Autobiography, 1976-1982.
Searle, Humphrey, ‘Programme Note’ for Wigmore Hall concert 22 October 1951.
Searle, Humphrey, The Music of Liszt, Second Revised Edition (New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1966)
Files of The Times, The Guardian, The Musical Times, The Stage, Music and Letter, The Gramophone, The Record Guide, MusicWeb International, David’s Review Corner, American Record Guide, etc.
2. Searle, Humphrey, Piano Sonata, op.21 Julian Jacobson (piano) with works by Georg Frederic Handel, Robin Holloway, Leslie Howard and Robert Matthew-Walker, Mark Bebbington, Leslie Howard and John Lill (piano). Naxos 8.571354 (2014)
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