Elizabeth Maconchy: Epyllion for solo cello and strings (1975) Two Concert Reviews

Elizabeth Maconchy's Epyllion was commissioned for the Cheltenham Festival and was first performed there on 13 July 1975. The performers were Kenneth Heath and the Academy of St Martin in the Fields conducted by Neville Marriner.

Stephen Walsh (The Times 14 July 1975, p.8) began his review by lamenting that the Cheltenham Music Festival was “not now the force it used to be in modern music” however, the previous evening “ended…on a high contemporary note with the first performance by Kenneth Heath and the Academy of St Martin-in-the-Fields, under Neville Marriner, of a fine new work, Epyllion for cello and strings, by Elizabeth Maconchy.”  He continued: “strings always bring out the best in Miss Maconchy. Her ten quartets are a genuinely considerable and serious contribution to the genre in which a lot of composers merely affect seriousness.” Walsh may also have been thinking of her the Theme and Variations for string orchestra (1942-43), Serenata concertante for violin and orchestra (1962) and most pertinently, the Symphony for double string orchestra (1952–53). He mentions ten string quartets at this time: another three would be added before her death in 1994.

Despite the work’s title suggesting a diminutive “epic,” Walsh feels that it is more of a “jeu d’esprit” – hardly an adjective I would have chosen for this often-profound piece. There is little of “light-hearted display of wit and cleverness” about it.

Walsh recommends Epyllion’s “originality of sound” and “its economy and clarity of form, which are its “two, or three, chief virtues.”  

The work is interpreted by Walsh as a “cello concertino.” There is little mileage in suggesting that this is just “a little concerto.” However in the other meaning of “concertino” which suggests a group of solo instruments playing alternately with the orchestra he may have a point, albeit a little stretched. Bearing in mind that Maconchy insisted that “the soloist is more of a leading character in a cast of actors rather than the traditional concert soloist.”

Turning to the music, Stephen Walsh considers that the “music is almost perfectly balanced in texture throughout its fifteen or so minutes, draws a clear line between the rhapsodic and melancholy sides of the cello’s character, and the shimmering metallic fabrics of sound available to a modern string orchestra using free aleatoric counterpoint and special effects like glissando harmonics.”   Aleatoric counterpoint is where the composer defines the boundaries of the piece but allows the players to determine the exact order of notes. Walsh feels that the “Scherzo is the most instantly attractive movement [with] the cello [singing] almost idly across a rhythmically elaborate mesh of orchestral ostinato.”

An important structural element is identified. Epyllion “is braced by obvious connections. The first movement seems entirely built on melodic lines drawn out from the terse opening chords, because of which the harmonic sense is static, without strong growth.”  It is the second movement where Maconchy grows and develops her material, with “brief excursions into divisi counterpoint.”  This is not satisfactory. The listener who “hopes for a focus of tension, the movement is a slight disappointment.”

Finally, Stephen Walsh thinks that the finale “restores the work’s true orbital [cyclic] character by reusing the first movement’s chords, and by throwing away its ending, so that one would not be surprised nor dismayed to hear the work through again.”

The only other review I could locate was Gerald Larner’s critique for the Manchester Guardian. (14 July 1975, p.8). Condescendingly, Larner writes “that as the title might imply to the classically educated, the Epyllion is a little epic. There is no story behind it, but at least to begin with there are events rather than themes – like the thumping chords on the lower strings at the opening of the work, simultaneously contrasted with twittering harmonics on the violins. It is an effective beginning, even though it is not readily comprehensible in purely musical terms and is no more so when the solo cello makes an awkward first entry with its own harmonics.” However, the progress of the music changes giving the work strength. There is a “delightful and deftly scored scherzo, a thoughtful lento and a dramatic last movement, the opening gestures are made again and fall satisfyingly into their musical place.” These “gestures” have “been at work in one form or another throughout this epic – with the more obvious echoes in the last movement – and it has established its musical identity.”

Larner concludes his review with a comment which is a little patronising: “So Elizabeth Maconchy, who is one of the senior composers on the British musical ears, still has ears and a mind open to new sounds. That, combined with her long experience in scoring for strings and her imaginative resources, should make Epyllion a regular item on Academy programmes.” Sadly this does not seem to the case. Even the premiere (and only) recording of the work was made by a German band, the South-West German Chamber Orchestra, Pforzheim conducted by William Boughton. As far as the performance went on 13 July, Kenneth Heath and his colleagues under the direction of Neville Marriner “gave a persuasive and well coloured, if not always thoroughly secure, performance.”

Elizabeth Maconchy’s Epyllion was released on Nimbus NI5185 in 2007. The soloist was Raphael Wallfisch with the South-West German Chamber Orchestra, Pforzheim conducted by William Boughton. It remains the sole recording.