Alan Rawsthorne: Street Corner Overture for orchestra (1944)

In Music Survey (Volume 2, No 3 Winter 1950, p. 192), Donald Mitchell briefly reviews the miniature score of Alan Rawsthorne's Street Corner: Overture for orchestra. Ambivalently, he wrote that “I heard this work twice in one day at the recent Cheltenham Festival (rehearsal and performance) and discovered that once was enough. But that doesn't mean that it is not an extremely effective overture and bright enough to begin many a festival of contemporary British music.”

He was being a bit disingenuous. Overall, the piece is “light-hearted [and] tuneful” but written in a style “entirely characteristic of the mature Rawsthorne.” (Hugo Cole, liner notes, SRCD.255). Yet, Cole adds that “it is ‘tuneful’ rather than full of tunes – for no one ever whistled at street corners the main theme which emerges almost directly after the first lively flourish for full orchestra…” Even a casual hearing will spot the genial mood and may also note the “slight Elgarian flavour,” (Daily Telegraph, 24 February 1945, p.5) that well captures what the composer described as “the atmosphere of noise and hurry” of a “Saturday night at the cross-roads of a busy industrial town.”  (cited, liner notes Dutton Epoch, CDLX 7203)  

The Overture was composed during 1944 at the behest of English classical music record producer William Legge for use at ENSA (Entertainments National Service Association) concerts, entertaining war workers and the military. At the time, Rawsthorne was concentrating on radio play scores. These include Sitting on the Fence, He Had a Date and The Happy Hypocrite.

A programme note, devised by Harold Rutland, for a 1968 performance of the Overture explains: “After a series of scurrying semiquavers and a pause, woodwind instruments indulge in a kind of limbering-up process before the main theme is presented by a solo oboe. This theme, highly characteristic of Rawsthorne in its shape and style, has an attractive nonchalance and wit; it is soon taken up by other instruments and eventually by the full orchestra. No little ingenuity is shown in the music that follows, though the theme is rarely lost sight of; before long it is heard in augmentation and in canon. Certain of the episodes seemed to hint at conviviality as well as at rather more shady goings-on at the street corner. But the general bustle returns and leads to a vigorous conclusion.”

There is dubiety about the date and location of the Overture’s actual premiere. Both John Dressler (2004, p.63) and McCabe (1999, p.97, p.292) insist that it was at Leamington Spa. Dressler states that it was given there on the 23 September 1945. This conflicts with two newspaper reviews (Times and Telegraph, see below) which record that the concert on that day was in London. However, the Coventry Evening Telegraph (23 August 1944, p.5) mentions that “The Hallé Orchestra opened what should have been a full week’s engagement in the Jephson Gardens Pavilion, Leamington last night. Unfortunately, [some] instruments went astray…” resulting in the cancellation of Monday night’s performance. The paper then reports that “The conductor last night was Constant Lambert, and the first item was a premiere of Alan Rawsthorne's Overture: Street Corner.” So, the premiere was given nearly a year earlier on 22 August 1944. The main work that night was Tchaikovsky’s Fourth Symphony.

The Overture was given its London premiere during a concert at the Cambridge Theatre, as noted above, on 23 September 1945. The New London Orchestra was conducted by Constant Lambert. Concertgoers also heard the first performance of Lambert’s Aubade Héroique.

An anonymous critic (possibly Frank Howes) in The Times (24 September 1945, p.6) was impressed by Rawsthorne’s Overture: “[It] was one of those commissioned by ENSA to give a bright start to orchestral programmes. It is ingenious in its way of catching up short snatches of tune and uniting them by means of a broader, yet nevertheless lively, tune, and so accomplishing what it sets out to do with the distinction one associates with this composer's music. Lambert's Aubade vividly depicts the conjunction of summer weather and ill omen that marked 1940; it captures the fleeting moment, and the passing mood and imprisons them by recollection in tranquillity in music of great and permanent beauty.”

Other works heard at this long concert included Sibelius's Symphony No.2, Mozart’s “Prague” Symphony, and Manuel de Falla's Nights in the Gardens of Spain, with Miss Harriet Cohen as solo pianist.

The Daily Telegraph (24 September 1945, p.5) critic, Ferruccio Bonavia, enjoyed this “genial” overture, which balances “happy episodes” with the “general noise and hurry” of the street corner.

John McCabe (1999, p.97f) writes that the Overture is “cheerful and optimistic, music to chase away the gloom and despair (or any other cause of depression), and it lifts the spirits brilliantly.” Rawsthorne confirmed that it “was specially composed and used by a nation at war as a means…of helping to defeat the enemy. I do not mean that the overture itself is particularly lethal, nor that it was used as Joshua used his trumpets in his assault on Jericho.”  (From an unreferenced manuscript held in the RNCM archive, cited McCabe, op.cit.)

Other remarks made by McCabe include mention of Rawsthorne’s use of “a habanera rhythm [which] adds an extra touch of colour to the proceedings.” He considers that the constructive principle of the overture “sounds like a fairly conventional sonata form allegro, [but] as so often with Rawsthorne it does not behave like one.” Is it more akin to a scherzo and trio? Or a rondo?

Listening to this overture in 2024, all one can really say is that it stands as a cohesive piece, capturing the essence of one aspect of urban life during wartime and evoking vivid imagery through its orchestration and thematic development.

The London Philharmonic Orchestra under the baton of Sir John Pritchard, can be heard on YouTube, here.

Bibliography
Dressler, John C. Alan Rawsthorne: A Bio-Bibliography (Westport, Connecticut, Praeger Publishers, 2004)
McCabe, John, Alan Rawsthorne: Portrait of a composer (Oxford University Press, 1999)
Poulton, Alan, ed, Alan Rawsthorne, Essays on the Music (Hindhead, Bravura Publications 1986)

Select Discography
Rawsthorne, Alan, Street Corner Overture with Piano Concertos 1 & 2 and Symphonic Studies, London Philharmonic Orchestra/Sir John Pritchard Lyrita, SRCD.255 (2007) (original LP release, SRCS.95) (1980)
Rawsthorne, Alan, Street Corner Overture with Madame Chrysanthème, Practical Cats, Coronation Overture, Theme, Variations and Finale and Medieval Diptych, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra/David Lloyd-Jones Dutton Epoch CDLX 7203 (2008)
Rawsthorne, Alan, Street Corner Overture with Madame Chrysanthème: Ballet Suite, with music conducted by Arnold, Bliss, Addison and Arnell, Alan Rawsthorne/Pro Arte Orchestra Emi British Composers CDM 764718-2 (1993) (original LP release: Pye Golden Guinea GGC 4048) (1966)