The unsigned review of the concert in The Times (28 April 1920, p.14) - possibly by H.C. Colles - considered that Bliss’s Quintet was “an exceedingly interesting work, rising to moments of striking beauty in the central movement of the three.” Furthermore, it impressed the critic by displaying a “real originality of melodic design and a high sense of the colour contrast producible from strings and piano in combination.” Alas, not “all of these possibilities of colour seemed to be realized in this rather rough performance.”
A critique in the Westminster Gazette (28 May 1920) suggested that Arthur Bliss’s Quintet “was quite worth hearing.” The premiere performance in Paris was alluded to and deemed appropriate as the work was “redolent of French influence through and through.” Regrettably he writes that “this is indeed the only fault which has to be found with so many of these clever young English composers of the present day. One feels that they could never have been written as they stand if Debussy, Ravel, and the other French modernists had never existed; and this is a thing which one ought not to be able to say of English music.” The reviewer completes his rant by asking, “What...is the good of casting off the oft-deplored influence of Handel, Mendelssohn, Brahms, and the rest, [if] it is only to substitute that of Debussy, Ravel and other Frenchmen in its place? Certainly, we shall never achieve the regeneration of English music in this way.” Presumably he was an Elgar, Parry and Stanford enthusiast.
Robin Legge for The Telegraph (29 April 1920, p.15) as “curious” the performance of Stravinsky’s Ragtime, but that which was “quite sane” was the Bliss Quintet. This new work was played “fairly well, but only fairly” by the Philharmonic Quartet. Legge felt that the “Quintet seems to have a little of a Scots twang about it.” Bliss has written music that is “frankly melodious, often very rhapsodical, more often incohesive, in that the joints are far too visible.” On top of this, he has “apportioned a rather dull share” of the score to the piano. That said, the enthusiastic audience “cheered him lustily on his way as a composer, and he was called and recalled many times.”
Ernest Newman (Sunday Times, 2 May 1920, p.6) states that the quintet was “on first hearing seemed to me to be a rather cold-blooded piece of pure headwork…” Percy A Scholes, writing in The Observer (2 May 1920, p.11) felt that Bliss’s Piano Quintet “has a very quiet refined slow movement - sort of intimate conversation à cinq. The work as a whole is much in the French style, and strikes me as a promising experiment, rather than achievement.”
Finally, The Athenaeum (7 May 1920, p.614) reported that “Mr Bliss has learned something it is clear, from Debussy, Elgar, Ravel, Stravinsky and Vaughan Williams, and some day he will weld the results of his various musical experiences into a style of his own.” On the positive side, was the “individual and compelling…wonderful energy and exuberance.” The Quintet was “reminiscent, but it has no cliches, no padding, no empty rhetoric; it is always vital and expressive, often genuinely noble and beautiful” Finally, it avoids “those characteristic English vices, pompousness and sentimentality, and it is full of delightful and original colour-effects. Its only grave faults are its untidiness of style and its looseness of structure.”
The critics are almost unanimous in pointing out the French influence on Bliss’s Quintet. Debussy and Ravel rather than Vaughan Williams or Edward Elgar are exemplars for this work. This was especially evident in the luminous colour effects of the scoring. Secondly, there seems some concern about the rather “loose” formal structure of the work. And finally, the overall mood of the piece would seem to have been rhapsodic underpinned by strong melodies.
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