Alec Rowley (1892-1958): Piano Concerto No. 1 in D major, Op. 49
Christian Darnton (1905-1981): Piano Concertino in C major
Roberto Gerhard (1896-1970): Concerto for piano and strings
Howard Ferguson (1908-1999): Concerto for piano and string orchestra, Op. 12
This recording brings together a fascinating collection
of piano concertos by four very diverse composers that
were all written in the middle decades of the last
century. Alec Rowley is a neglected figure nowadays,
although his music enjoyed wide currency during his
lifetime. His career embraced composition,
performance (as organist and pianist), teaching and
writing. He studied at the Royal Academy of Music
where his composition teacher was Frederick Corder.
In 1919 he became professor of composition at Trinity
College, and during the 1930s he formed a piano duet
partnership with Edgar Moy, with whom he was
frequently heard in BBC broadcasts. Much of his
music was conceived for educational or amateur
purposes and includes a series of what he called
‘miniature’ concertos for piano, violin, cello and
organ, as well as works for strings (English Dance
Suite) and orchestra (In an Apple Orchard). Other
orchestral works include two piano concertos and the
Three Idylls for piano and orchestra heard at the Proms
in 1942. Further information about his life and music
may be found in Beryl Kington’s fascinating book
Rowley Rediscovered.
Rowley’s First Piano Concerto received its
première in a BBC broadcast in August 1938. The
soloist was Franz Weitzmann with members of the
BBC Orchestra conducted by Warwick Braithwaite.
Apart from strings, the concerto is deftly scored for ad
lib percussion and timpani which are included on this
recording. It opens with an arresting introduction
marked by a fanfare motif and piquant harmonies. The
music that follows, clearly based on the fanfare, has a
breezy, open-air freshness about it and has as its
secondary theme a winsome, lyrical melody. A simple
wistful waltz, full of pastoral charm and a hint of
Delius, provides a foil to the energetic outer
movements. The opening of the finale is an exact
repeat of the first movement’s introduction until it
veers away on a course of its own, with the fanfare
motif now transformed in the bass. Overall the mood is
jocular as heard in the contrasting theme with its
teasing syncopations. The fanfare motif returns to
crown the concerto before it ends with a sparkling
coda.
Christian Darnton is the least known composer
represented here and the primary source of information
about him may be found in the pioneering thesis of Dr
Andrew Plant, whose generous help the present writer
gratefully acknowledges. Darnton studied composition
with Charles Wood at Cambridge University, then the
bassoon and conducting at the Royal College of Music
in London, with further composition lessons with Max
Butting in Berlin. Darnton’s early music of the 1930s
is advanced and dissonant and includes the Piano
Concerto and the Five Orchestral Pieces, a critical
success at its Warsaw première in 1939. His book You
and Music published in 1940 was also widely admired.
During World War II Darnton became a communist
and consequently decided that his music must become
populist, which led to a radical simplification of his
style. Works that reflect this stance include the
unstaged opera Fantasy Fair. In the 1950s,
discouraged by the lack of success, he gave up
composing for almost twenty years. Later he
abandoned communism and in the last decade of his
life had a remarkable rekindling of creativity,
composing two major works in the 1970s, the
Concerto for Orchestra and the Fourth Symphony.
The Concertino for Piano and Strings, composed
in 1948, was commissioned by Darnton’s staunch
supporter, the South African pianist Adolf Hallis, who
gave the première in April 1949 in Durban with the
Johannesburg Symphony Orchestra. Its overall
character, reflecting Darnton’s rejection of his earlier
style, is couched in a Stravinskian neo-classical idiom
and the music is built around the interval of a third and
by extension the triad. A languid elegance is apparent in
the opening theme announced initially by the strings
although the music gains a more steely edge as it
proceeds. The slow movement is characterized in its
outer sections by a graceful nonchalance and filigree
lightness as the upper and lower lines of the piano
gently chase each other in imitation. In the middle there
is a more overtly romantic outpouring which gradually
darkens to the lumbering tread of a slow march. The
movement ends with a descending chain of thirds,
Brittenesque in character, reflecting another
compositional influence on Darnton. Neo-classical
restraint is thrown to the winds in the finale with the
soloist plunging headlong into a pounding bravura
display of pianistic pyrotechnics. There is a lighter
playful development section before a return of the main
idea and a majestic culmination with the transformed
return of the opening of the first movement.
Although Spanish, Roberto Gerhard lived in
England for a quarter of a century and became a British
citizen. He was the most important Spanish composer in
the generation following Falla. From his first teachers,
Granados (piano), and Pedrell (composition), he
became steeped in the tradition of the nationalist school,
but then his interest in the radical developments within
European composition led him to study with
Schoenberg. During the 1930s he became a leading
figure in Spanish and particularly Catalan artistic
circles, but in 1939 after Franco’s accession to power
following the Spanish Civil War, he moved to England.
Notable works of the 1940s include his ballet Don
Quixote and the opera The Duenna. From the 1950s
onwards his music became advanced and exploratory,
as he developed his own personal brand of
Schoenberg’s serial technique, which was combined
with a superb ear for instrumental sonorities. The music
of his last twenty years led to international recognition
and includes four impressive symphonies composed
between 1952 and 1967.
Gerhard’s Piano Concerto, first performed by Noel
Mewton-Wood at the 1951 Aldeburgh Festival, with the
Festival Orchestra conducted by Norman Del Mar, was
the first of Gerhard’s works composed with serial
techniques. Each movement is headed with a title that
refers to Renaissance Spanish keyboard music. Tiento
refers to the name used by sixteenth-century Spanish
organists for toccata and the movement has a whirlwind
energy in which the soloist barely pauses for breath.
Diferencias is the Spanish equivalent of the English
divisions or variations and Gerhard suggested that the
‘theme and diferencias here may be taken as seven
different visions of the same face’. Based on a Catalan
religious song, the movement is among Gerhard’s most
powerful utterances, a dark lament for his country under
the yoke of dictatorship into which the Dies irae is also
woven. Folias was a fantasy-like form on ground bass
line. It was associated with a popular seventeenthcentury
melody which was widely used in keyboard and
string music. Gerhard makes prominent use of the first
three notes of the Folia tune in his finale which he
described as having ‘a frenzied carnival-folly
atmosphere’ reminiscent of Goya’s Burial of the
Sardine.
Howard Ferguson’s relatively few compositions
belong to the earlier part of his career, although many
have been revived and recorded in the last two decades.
Born in Belfast, he studied at the Royal College of
Music as well as having private tuition with the pianist
Harold Samuel. As a composer he came to attention in
the 1930s with the First Violin Sonata and the Octet,
and consolidated his reputation with the Partita and the
Piano Sonata. During the war he assisted Myra Hess
with the organization of the daily lunch-time concerts of
chamber music at the National Gallery. Amongst later
works are Five Bagatelles for piano, the Second Violin
Sonata and two choral works Amore langueo and The
Dream of the Rood dating from the 1950s. After this
Ferguson decided that he had said all he wanted to say
as a composer and instead devoted himself to
musicology, editing, for example, the complete solo
works of Schubert. He was also known as a pianist
throughout his career and taught composition at the
Royal Academy of Music.
Ferguson’s Concerto for Piano and Strings was
commissioned by the Council for the Encouragement of
Music and the Arts (Northern Ireland) to mark the
Festival of Britain in 1951. Ferguson himself was the
soloist at the première in June 1951 with the City of
Belfast Orchestra conducted by Denis Mulgan. The
concerto is classical in conception and scale, as
exemplified by the extended Mozartian opening tutti in
which the principal ideas are heard. Near the end the
soloist has a lengthy cadenza followed by a short coda
in which the music fades to an enigmatic close. A theme
and six variations form the heart of the work. The sad
theme is embellished by the piano in the first two
variations. A puckish third briefly brings a lighter
mood, but with the fourth brooding introspection creeps
in. The fifth variation opens and closes tenderly, but is
overwhelmed by an intense Animato in the middle.
Finally the movement is brought to a climax with a
solemn outpouring of the theme. The concerto is capped
with a care-free, high-spirited rondo whose themes
come and go in playful succession.
Andrew Burn