Musical Opinion Review of 'English Piano Music'

Mozart’s String Quartet in D major k.499 set the standard for the concert. After a gambolling and brilliant Allegretto, the ‘hocketing’ texture at the beginning of the Minuetto was magical, and before the rallying finale, the players sank into a full-voiced and rich Adagio that was breathtakingly lovely.

Anglo-Irish composer E.J. Moeran’s Second Quartet made a rare appearance. The work is infused with the folksongs of Moeran’s beloved County Kerry, and its lush textures often swelled to Ravellian richness, particularly under the empathic fingers of the Carducci players.

Pianist Simon Callaghan then joined them for a deeply felt performance of Elgar’s Piano Quintet in A minor op.84, in which bristling dramatic tension alternated with desolate melancholy. Callaghan’s delicate pianism blended beautifully with the Carducci sound: a finely drawn finale to an inspiring concert.

Simon Callaghan, piano

(DE RODE POMP label )

With the plethora of CD’s available on the market today, it was refreshing to hear one which ‘ticks’ all the boxes. In this recital of English piano music, the William Sterndale Bennett Sonata in F minor is a revelation. With its inevitable influences from Mendelssohn and occasionally Schumann, this four-movement work is delivered with some of the finest piano playing I have heard in years. Simon Callaghan is a musician of the highest calibre, whose elegant phrasing and subtle rubato responds sensitively and with complete sincerity and conviction to the changing moods of the music. On a technical level he rises to the demands of this work, particularly in the frenetic scherzo and gallop like finale.

And so to the rest of the disc, which is no different. Two short pieces by the organist/composer, William Thomas Best, receive their first recording here and are played with absolute commitment. The Hubert Parry ‘Shulbrede Tunes’ – a set of ten miniatures based around the people and place of Shulbrede Priory (home of Parry’s daughter) – are equally well-played, with Callaghan bringing out all the subtleties and drama of the music with considerable élan. Who could fail, not to be moved by the exquisite ‘Dolly (No 2), with its Elgarian nostalgia, played here with refined taste?

This disc has been a constant companion and I would recommend it unreservedly. If you do buy it, play it to your friends, they may do what I did and think it was Murray Perahia!

(Please visit the CD page to purchase a copy)

October 19, 2009

Slaithwaite Philharmonic Orchestra, Huddersfield Town Hall

BENJAMIN Ellin began his second season as conductor with an excellent programme of German and Russian music. Not only does he lead with flair on the podium, his choice of programme titles is imaginative and his 5 Little Bites of information on each composer shows communication begins before and continues after the performance.

The orchestra is flourishing under Ellin and leader Peter Simons. The opening of Mendelssohn’s Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage depicted the majesty of the ocean in the strings with the orchestra painting an expressive picture.

The highlight was Rachmaninoff’s piano concerto number 3 in D minor. Soloist Simon Callaghan was superb and the audience adored his characterful playing of this difficult masterpiece. The relationship between Callaghan, Ellin and the orchestra was organic, with the thematic ideas shared with ease and precision.

Naturally the cadenzas gave Callaghan the space to show his immense keyboard dexterity.  Medtner’s Skazka crowned a magnificent performance.

Brahms’ symphony number 3 in F major brought out new and interesting colours – the cellos played beautifully in the famous third movement and the ensemble responded well to Ellin’s leadership in the finale.

I feel able to challenge the orchestra to tighten discipline, especially in regard to tuning and placement of notes.

David Heathcote

It was Stanford who suggested that, with the exception of Mozart, Bennett’s piano music represented the most difficult challenge in performance, and that ‘He [Bennett] unconsciously lays traps for the performer at the most unexpected moments, which spell disaster to the unwary’.11 Callaghan negotiates any such traps with aplomb, providing a very engaging reading. In the first movement,

Moderato espressivo, he brings out the local drama of the scalic runs and sequential passagesbeautifully, and highlights Bennett’s frequent use of the minor subdominant chord and the arresting move to C minor at the beginning of the development section with a subtle sense of pacing. Although bass notes might have been brought out a little more in places, the staccato chromatics from the inner texture are well projected, and Callaghan produces a beautiful singing cantabile and judges the arresting ending of the movement effectively; here, although F minor is re-established after the reprise of the second idea in the tonic major, a final 16-bar ritenuto gradually reasserts an extended Tierce de Picardie. Ilona Prunyi’s 1993 recording of the sonata on Marco Polo (programmed with Bennett’s Suite de Pieces op. 24)12 provides a viable alternative reading of the first movement, but in the second movement scherzo it is the agitato quality of Callaghan’s performance that is much more compelling, along with his highlighting of the hemiola at the end of the scherzo section, and the way in which the trio tentatively establishes itself after Bennett’s transitional  interrupted cadence.

There is no slow movement as such in the sonata; instead, Bennett provides a Serenata, marked Moderato grazioso, and although this is more derivative than the other movements, Callaghan gives an effective lilt and a thoughtful shaping to Bennett’s phrases, bringing out the dialogue between the hands. Again, however, it is the agitato quality of the 12/8 finale that Callaghan persuasively highlights with his brisk tempo, creating a real excitement as he moves through the textural contrasts of Bennett’s score, with undulating staccato chordal quavers, legato arpeggiations, left-hand octave leaps and hymn-like cadential passages. Whilst the verve of the movement is compelling, it is Callaghan’s subtle approach to Bennett’s tonal pacing at the end of the work that is particularly striking. Mirroring the major–minor fluctuations of the first movement, Callaghan has to negotiate the return of a second idea in the tonic major (marked by Bennett as a final ‘Maggiore’ section), followed by a diminished-seventh sequence, and the final harmonic shifts between subdominant minor/diminished chords and the tonic major.

William Thomas Best (1826–1897) is usually associated with editions of Bach’s organ music, vocal score piano accompaniments for choral works by Handel, Mozart and Spohr, and several arrangements and original compositions for organ. As a performer, he was considered by James Duff Brown in his 1886 Biographical Dictionary of Musicians to be ‘the greatest master of the organ now living in Britain’. The two works by Best on this disk, both first recordings, therefore create a more representative picture of Best’s compositional range. Suitably light-hearted, the Grande Mouvement de Danse: Polka Originale op. 4 (1847), represents an attractive response to the genre that had recently taken London by storm, and Callaghan brings out the dance-like character, textural contrasts and cadential nuances effectively. Best’s Romanesca op. 16, published in 1854, provides further textural and tonal variety; brief references to a wide range of keys, together with the occasional exoticism, suggest Best’s harmonic fluency, and Callaghan provides a suitable lightness of touch, particularly in the dialogue material in thirds in the central section. In 1902, Parry’s elder daughter Dorothea (Dolly) and her politician husband Arthur Ponsonby rented Shulbrede Priory, a substantial house with older parts dating from the twelfth century, buying it outright in 1905. Situated half-way between Parry’s London address, 17 Kensington Square, and Knight’s Croft in Rustington, close to the Sussex coast, it represented a useful stopping-off point for the composer, and a relaxing place to convalesce from his frequent heart trouble. Diary entries also suggest that he played through some of his compositions here, including the Symphonic Fantasia (Symphony No. 5, ‘1912’) and various songs.

Parry’s Shulbrede Tunes, published by Augener in 1914, contains ten delightful pieces based on the house itself (‘Shulbrede’, ‘Prior’s Chamber By Firelight’, ‘In the Garden – with the Dew on the Grass’), light-hearted activities (‘Bogies and Sprites that Gambol by Night’, ‘Children’s Pranks’) and family portraits – two movements representing Dolly, pieces for Parry’s grandchildren ‘Elizabeth’ and ‘Matthew’, and the culminating portrait of Arthur Ponsonby: ‘Father Playmate’. Typically, the composer spent much time and effort on this set. Drafts of ‘Elizabeth’ explored the keys of E flat and D major before settling on F, for example; there were also several structural alterations to ‘Children’s Pranks’, and ‘Matthew’ originally involved completely different material. Stylistically, although the influence of Schumann can be traced in ‘Dolly (No. 1)’ in particular, the set is a mature composition, with characteristic examples of Parry’s confident diatonicism, and a real awareness of the potential for pianistic characterization.

Again, although this is not the only recording (Peter Jacobs’s 1995 disk on Priory Records combines the set with Parry’s Hands across the Centuries suite and the Theme and Variations in D minor),13 there are many things to admire in Callaghan’s performance: the atmospheric reading of the opening ‘Shulbrede’, with a stately ebb and flow representing the understated grandeur of the building itself, the attention to pacing and dynamic shading that effectively highlights the mock-horrors of ‘Bogies and Sprites that Gambol By Night’ (this movement includes the striking musical quotation of ‘Three Blind Mice’), the compelling capriccioso quality of the mischievous ‘Children’s Pranks’, and a real sense of structural awareness in the passacaglia, ‘Father Playmate’. In terms of personal taste, ‘In the Garden – with the Dew on the Grass’ might have been more effective at a slightly more sedate tempo, ‘Dolly (No. 1)’ could perhaps have explored a dreamier tone within the piano dynamic, and the first section of ‘Elizabeth’ would have benefited from a little more flexibility, but these are thoughtful readings overall, bringing out the contrasting character of each miniature. Callaghan’s choice of instrument throughout is a Bösendorfer, which provides a real depth of sound and an effective range of tone colour with a pleasingly resonant bass, and he manages to create a contrasting soundworld that is entirely appropriate to the relative chronology of these pieces; those interested in the distinctive tones of Parry’s own Hagspiel piano, however, may wish to explore Anthony Goldstone’s 1994 recording of Parry’s piano music.14 Overall, therefore, a highly recommended disk of British piano music that contains some thoughtful interpretations.

Michael Allis
University of Leeds

With never a note out of place, Simon Callaghan stayed within the bounds of safety as he reasonably could in a programme of varied styles.  His ‘Mainly Mozart’ concert of last January in this series led us to expect great fluency and he didn’t disappoint in the slightest as he glided dream-like through Schumann’s.Arabeske, Op. 18 and moved fluently into the subtle humour of Haydn’s Sonata in G (1776).

That much alone was impressive enough, not the least because at a few days’ notice, he was replacing his teacher, the ailing Yonty Solomon, which is no enviable position in which to be.

But the remainder of the admirable programme was a major tour-de-force,  highly-coloured reading of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, in which Callaghan vividly and faultlessly described each tableau, powerful (that Gate) or delicate (The Unhatched Chicks), without ever losing sight of the balance of the whole. If there were any reason not to want an encore, it was only so as to leave this ringing in the ears as we departed.