Elisabeth Lutyens: Piano Music Volume 3.

Many years ago, I heard Elisabeth Lutyens’s O saisons, O chateau! during a concert in the Glasgow City Hall. I still recall thinking that this was one of the most appalling pieces of music that I had come across up to that time. Fifty or so years later, I have listened to several works by this oft regarded “fearsome” lady. My opinion has radically changed. For me she is one of the most original and diverse British composers from the last century. And one thing I have found out is that not everything she wrote was in a hard edged, serialist style. It was hearing her film score for the British Transport Film, The Heart of England with its “cow and gate” musings so despised by Lutyens in others, which made me look again at her achievement.

The present CD, which is the final volume of Martin Jones’s “landmark” survey of Elisabeth Lutyens’s piano music includes works written over a thirty-five-year period. Volume 1 is reviewed here, here, and here, Volume 2, here and here.

I am beholden to the excellent liner notes by Leah Broad in the preparation and content of this assessment.

The recital opens, appropriately enough, with the Overture completed in 1944. This is a neo-classical piece that is full of joie de vivre. There are lots of ideas and pianistic gestures in this short, but dramatic number. The Berceuse (1944) may be partially twelve-tone, with its enigmatic wanderings. I am not sure that it would serve well as a lullaby, but it is certainly sophisticated and dreamy. From the same year, the Barcarolle gives a decent impression of the gondoliers’ song and the “rippling” waters of the Lagoon. Again, nothing here to challenge even the most conservative of listeners.

Helix (1967) is much more typical of preconceived notions of Lutyens’s music as “complex, difficult [and] abstract”. Based on a concept of a coiled corkscrew, this piece explores diverse sonorities ranging over high and low registers. It is written in her individual serialist style. At one point the score instructs the soloist to hum! It was originally conceived for piano duet but is played here as a solo. In a programme note Lutyens stated that “Faced with the endless (too many!) possibilities and multiplicity of notes playable with four hands at a piano, I decided to choose one note; to emphasise this and let the sounds radiate, ‘coil’ out from this one note: as one might throw a stone in the water and ripples radiate from the impact.” Yet as Merion and Susie Harries explain in their biography (1989) of the composer, “The sounds she created are not flowing enough to suggest the ‘coiling’ which is implied in the title, and the line [is] too choppy to evoke the idea of ripples; the effect is more like sparks thrown off from a cogwheel slowly grinding.” All that said, Martin Jones gives an absorbing account of this “abstract” work.

Holiday Diary (1949) is one of the most charming pieces of music that I have heard in a long time. The background is simple. It tells the story of a family holiday in Cornwall. It is presented as being devised by one of her four children, Sebastian. There is a narration included in this performance. The Holiday Diary is “a small-scale example of Lutyens in theatrical mode, able to conjure images deftly and succinctly.” Topics covered include a crab walking sideways, the recitation of a fairy story, a game of cowboys and Indians, a misty sea, a bumpety donkey ride and a taxi journey home. The voiceover is by Martin Jones himself. I guess that as music and text overlap it was overdubbed. It would be easy to condemn this half hour long work as childish. It is not: it is childlike, which is a different thing altogether. I still fondly recall Blyton’s The Famous Five…!

The major item on this disc are the collected Bagatelles, op.141, Books 1, 2 and 3 (1979). There are seventeen in all, typically short. They cover a wide range of moods from anger to stillness, from romance to acerbity and even the downright sinister. Yet there is much beauty in these pages. They were all composed using her own version of serialism. I would recommend listening to them a “Book” at a time with a wee rest between bouts. 

The final work on this CD is the Dance Souvenance (1944). The title means a “Dance of Remembrance.” This is unbelievably un-Lutyens in every aspect. It is a miniature pot-boiler that no one could fail to love and be moved by. The liner notes explain that this “wistful little piece [shows her] talent for quickly capturing a mood or emotion that would make her a successful film composer in later life.”

Pianist Martin Jones’s sympathy with this repertoire is self-evident in the masterly and engaging performance given here. I have mentioned the outstanding liner notes above. The recording is clear and vital.

This is an enlightening disc that explores a broad range of Elisabeth Lutyens’s piano music. I have not had the privilege of hearing Volume 2 in this series, but based on the material here it would be a fascinating further exploration.

Track Listing:
Elisabeth Lutyens (1906-83)
Overture (1944)
Berceuse (1944)
Barcarolle (1944)
Helix, op.68 (1967)
Holiday Diary (1949)
Bagatelles, op.141, Books 1, 2 and 3 (1979)
Dance Souvenance (1944)
Martin Jones (piano and narrator)
rec. 27 February 2023, Wyastone Concert Hall, Monmouth.
Resonus RES10331

With thanks to MusicWeb International where this review was first publushed.