Frank Bridge Gargoyle (1928) for piano solo

The last original solo piano piece that Frank Bridge wrote [1] is usually regarded as his ‘harmonically most advanced piano work.’ This short piece, lasting about three minutes, is certainly one of the hardest of composer’s works to come to terms with.  Gargoyle was composed in at Friston, Sussex during July 1928. It was given the title provisionally: the manuscript has a question mark against the name. It was rejected by his publisher Boosey...

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Ignaz Moscheles: New Year in Edinburgh 1828

I do not apologies for my continued interest in Ignaz Moschles (1794-1870): he is one of the most significant characters in European musical history. The fact that he spent a considerable amount of time in the United Kingdom makes him of importance to all historians of Victorian musical endeavour.  In 1828, while people were still wishing each other ‘a happy new year,’ Ignaz Moscheles arrived in Edinburgh. Someone had found him lodgings in Frederick Street, and curiously, he was ‘much struck by the ‘curious specimens’ of architecture’ that...

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Deems Taylor: Suite, Through the Looking Glass

I know that Deems Taylor is not British, but I feel that the new release of his Suite, ‘Through the Looking Glass’ on the Naxos CD label is so important that it deserves a little bit of creative license. Besides there could be no-one more British than Lewis Carroll! I have been helped in this short essay by the programme notes devised by Felix Borowski and  Deems Taylor himself.  I hope to write some more about Taylor and this piece in...

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Charles Villiers Stanford: Festival Overture in B flat

I recall a well-known conductor once telling me that one of the hardest things to do is to write about music that one has never heard: and with this I totally agree, having tried it a number of times. However, what can be interesting is to read tantalising accounts of music that has disappeared from the repertoire – and because the score/manuscript has been lost, will never be heard.  The main justification for this is twofold – firstly it allows the listener to gain more contextual knowledge about the composer in question and secondly it...

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Another Short Handelian Anecdote: A Duel

Not many of the great composers have gone down in history as having taken part as one of the principals in a duel. Among them, perhaps this honour must be awarded solely to Handel. The cause of this affair was to be found in one of the curious customs of his day.In the early part of the last century it was the custom for the director of an opera to play the accompaniments on a harpsichord which had its place on the stage. Distinguished personages who were present often claimed a seat on the stage and felt free to interpose a running fire of audible...

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A Short Handelian Anecdote

It is good policy for a singer to keep ‘on the good side of’ his accompanist. A really fine accompanist is a ‘rara avis’. Besides the technical skill necessary to a soloist, an accompanist must have the finest musical feeling and discrimination, and at the same time sacrifice himself to the interests of the singer.And oftentimes the accompanist has to shoulder the sins of the singer. It is an easy way to relieve one's self from the blame of a ‘bad break’ by charging the fault to the accompanist. A singer once tried this with Handel, and declared...

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Gordon Crosse: The New World (1969)

I have never been able to read any of Ted Hughes’ poetry without seeing a dead sheep in my mind’s eye: it was something to do with one of the images (page 42, opposite a poem entitled ‘The sheep went on being dead’) in his book Remains of Elmet (1979).  I guess that this somewhat morbid image sums up the darkness of much of Hughes poetic output. However, praise where praise is due: there is nothing of the rotting carcasses in these poems set...

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Elisabeth Lutyens: En Voyage –suite for orchestra.

IntroductionMuch has been written about the relative unapproachability of Elisabeth Lutyens’ music. I have often told the story of how hearing a performance of her O saisons, O châteaux! (1946) put me off her work for nearly thirty years. I felt that it was the most appalling piece I had heard up to that time. However, a few years ago I got a surprise: I bought a DVD of British Transport Films. One of these attractive pieces of ephemera from the...

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Some British (and Commonwealth) Piano Pieces: An Interesting List

I recently bought a second-hand copy of Arthur Banyon’s Two Preludes for piano. These were published by Oxford University Press as a part of their Oxford Piano Series in 1929. More about these later. However, on the back cover the publishers have listed a selection of numbers in this series. It makes an interesting list. Three things can be said. Firstly, none of these pieces appears to have entered the repertoire –either as a recital piece or as teaching material.  The exception is York Bowen’s Nocturne Op.78 which has found its way onto...

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Jonathan Harvey: Correspondances for mezzo-soprano & piano (1975).

I recently had the pleasure of reveing an album of British Song featuring  Meriel Dickinson (mezzo soprano) and Peter Dickinson (piano). The CD included works by Lennox Berkeley, Gordon Crosse, Jonathan Harvey, Elisabeth Lutyens and Peter Dickinson.However, from this particular listener’s point of view, the hardest work to come to terms with was Jonathan Harvey’s Correspondances (1975). These are settings of four poems by the French poet Charles Baudelaire (1821-67).  The songs are separated by a number of interludes and fragments...

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