Ronald Stevenson Piano Music, Volume Six

Volume 6 of Christopher Guild’s ongoing survey of Ronald Stevenson’s piano music concentrates on works produced at the beginning of his career. Much of this repertoire was written after his discovery of Ferruccio Busoni’s achievement, but before his relocation to Scotland. For details of the composer’s life see the biography published on the Ronald Stevenson Society website, here. 

Three rules of thumb will help the listener appreciate Ronald Stevenson. Firstly, he was eclectic, prepared to use forms, scales, and sonorities from both around the world and without historical prejudice. Secondly, he sits in an aesthetic trajectory that includes the big performers of the virtuosic piano: Franz Liszt, Ferruccio Busoni, Percy Grainger, Ignacy Paderewski, and Leopold Godowsky. All these men were also distinguished composers and applied themselves to original music and arrangements, transcriptions, and fantasias of other people’s tunes. And finally, despite being born in Blackburn, Lancashire, Stevenson adopted Scotland as his home, subsequently being influenced by that nation’s art, literature, politics, and music.

Ateş Orga has stated that the Three Sonatinas are the “earliest piano works of significance” in Stevenson’s catalogue. I will avoid a discussion about the nature and technical demands of the genre “sonatina.” Suffice to say that two significant examples by Maurice Ravel and John Ireland are hardly the didactic pieces once beloved by piano teachers. For that matter, most of Beethoven’s Sonatina’s are hardly cinches to play.

Stevenson wrote his examples between 1945 and 1948, during his time as a student at the Royal Manchester College of Music. Orga explains that the Three Sonatinas are “interesting for many reasons, not least for showing the seeds of Stevenson’s art in embryonic form.”

There are several passages of virtuosic pianism in the Sonatina No.1 (1945). The composer himself stated that Hindemith influenced the linear first movement, with its counterpoint and harmonic clashes. The second movement “shows features absorbed from an early acquaintance with [Alban] Berg’s Wozzeck. Assorted styles combine in the Presto finale, including a sea shanty in the Dorian mode – Stevenson suggests that this shows the impact of Percy Grainger. There are also jazzy syncopations and chromatic passages. The liner notes explain that there are references here to the earlier movements, not always easy to spot without the score.

Once again Paul Hindemith would appear to have had an impact on the Sonatina No.2 (1947). It is difficult to classify this piece, is it neo-classical, or as Malcom MacDonald has suggested, neo-baroque? Despite its apparent angularity, the overall mood is piquant rather than dissonant. There is much beauty in passing, and some beguiling sounds in both movements. Christopher Guild has noted the scotch snaps in the opening Adagietto, predating Stevenson’s move to Scotland in 1952 and his absorption of many of the musical fingerprints of that country.

Sonatina No.3 (1948) is really of “sonata” length lasting more than 16 minutes. It must be recalled that at about this time, Stevenson had been imprisoned for conscientious objection to National Service. He had served time in jails at Preston, Liverpool, Birmingham, and Wormwood Scrubs. The opening movement is an “almost Mahlerian funeral march” which nods to the much later Passacaglia on DSCH, finished in 1962. The mood lightens with a quicksilver scherzo which seems devoid of angst. This magic is continued in the finale, although sounding much more sinister and sarcastic.  

Retrospect is an early work, completed around1945. There is nothing challenging here. I guess the title may refer to the notion that this beguiling song-without-words was looking back to a late-Romantic pianism and formal structures.

The Three Nativity Pieces date from 1949. They have charm and innocence but are tinged with a feeling of regret. They are based on the gifts brought to the Baby Jesus by the Three Magi – Gold, Frankincense and Myrrh. The liner notes suggest that they are in a line from Franz Liszt’s Christmas-Tree Suite and Ferrucio Busoni’s Nuit de Noël. The first number, Gold: Children’s March is “non-militaristic” in mood. In fact, it is typically jaunty and merry in tone. The tune is based on the pentatonic scale (black notes on the piano). There follows the long and involved Frankincense: Arabesque which musically re-presents the “elaborate design of intertwined figures or complex geometrical patterns” often used in Arabic architecture. Here it creates more than a hint of the exotic, complete with drifting clouds of incense. The last of the set is Myrrh: Elegiac Carol. It is based on a carol, So she laid him in a manger, that Stevenson wrote in 1948, setting words by the Tyneside blast-furnaceman J.H. (Joe) Watson, a friend of D.H. Lawrence, and founder of the Frating Hill Farm near Colchester. This socialist institution had been set up to provide farm labour for pacifists, as conscientious objectors, to remain within the law. After a lugubrious angiosca soppressa (supressed angst) opening, the transcription of the carol follows. This is elaborated before the sombre opening theme returns.

The second of the Three Lyric Pieces, Chorale Prelude for Jean Sibelius (1948, rev.1963) was begun whilst Stevenson was incarcerated in Wormwood Scrubs. It reflects his admiration for the Finnish master, whom he regarded as “a lighthouse amid the maelstrom of post-War contemporary music.” Equally at odds with the prevailing musical temper is the Andante Sereno (1950), with its “emphasis on melody.” There are touches of gentle dissonance here and there, caused by clashes of the Ionian and Lydian modes, but overall “serene” is an ideal title. Guild is correct in stating that the “sonorities achieved are most distinctive for piano music of this era, especially in Great Britain.” The opening bars of Lyric Piece No.1, Vox Stellarum (Voice of the Stars, or Cosmos) (1947), is impressionistic in its evocation of vast universal spaces. However, the composer did wish to evoke the sound of a girl singing and draws on Scotticisms in the middle section, once again using the pentatonic scales.

Christopher Guild is a powerful advocate for Ronald Stevenson’s piano music, bringing both technical proficiency to the performance and scholarly endeavour to the liner notes. The sound recording is ideal, and the duration of the CD is a remarkable 80 minutes.

I understand that Volume 7 is “in the bag” and subsequent releases are at the planning stage. Listeners should not forget Guild’s contribution to Scottish music with his excellent recordings of Francis George Scott, Ronald Center, and William Beaton Moonie.

I look forward to subsequent releases in this remarkable cycle of Ronald Stevenson’s piano music.

Track Listing:
Ronald STEVENSON (1928-2015)
Sonatina No.1 (1945)
Sonatina No.2 (1947)
Sonatina No.3 (1948)
Retrospect (c.1945)
Three Nativity Pieces: No.1 Gold: Children’s March; No.2 Frankincense: Arabesque; No.3 Myrrh: Elegiac Carol (1949)
Three Lyric Pieces: No.1 Vox Stellarum (1947); No.2 Chorale Prelude for Jean Sibelius (1948, rev.1963); No.3 Andante Sereno (1950)
Christopher Guild (piano)
rec. 29-30 May 2022, The Old Granary Studio, Toft Monks, Beccles, Suffolk
Toccata Classics TOCC 0662