Chamber Music by Sir
Herbert Hamilton Harty (1879-1941)
Intro
Track: The Star of The County Down
This
is Classical Break on Somer Valley FM, and I’m Rupert Kirkham. This week’s script was researched and written
by Mike Burrows. To begin the programme,
we have a re-discovery lately recorded:
the Piano Quintet of the twenty-four years--old Herbert Hamilton
Harty. It was first performed in its
entirety in 1906, two years after it had won him First Prize in a small
privately-endowed competition arranged by a wealthy London socialite.
Between
early days as an accompanist, an organist, pianist and violist in the County
Down and Dublin of the ‘Nineties, and 1904, by which time he had settled well
after emigrating to London, Harty produced a series of chamber works, a Violin
Sonata, two String Quartets and this Quintet.
He won a prize for a String Quartet at the Feis Coeil in Dublin at the
turn of the Century, which helped to smoothe his path in London.
The
Piano Quintet in F Major begins with a movement in sonata form marked simply, Allegro. A rather crabbed Brahmsian flourish is
responsible for most of the material that follows, a strikingly stressful First
Group succeeded by the traditional feminine contrast, a tune whose scotch snaps
are Irish in origin, and whose influence briefly mellows the impassioned music
of the outset before providing the piano with the opportunity of more large,
sonorous chords. The development begins
with more subtle contrasts of string sound and piano timbres, the parts
skilfully interwoven in counterpoint; the viola is conspicuous as the music
dies down and slows for the recapitulation to come in and be made to seem more
reflective between fits of gustiness.
The
second subject is given beautiful full sonority on piano and diminished note-value
decoration underneath, and a triumphant climax - quietness on viola again sounds
and the flourish ends this brilliantly fluent movement.
Track
One: Allegro
This
is Classical Break on Somer Valley FM, and I’m Rupert Kirkham. The prize for the Piano Quintet and another
award at the Feis Coeil for an Irish Symphony in 1904, brought Harty some
fame as a composer, but he was to be known to posterity for other skills. As a pianist-accompanist to singers -
including his wife for some time, the soprano, Agnes Nicholls, as a formidable conductor
of the LSO and Halle Orchestras, and as an arranger of other men’s music, he
was seen for what he was. As a composer,
ambition drove him, but was not fulfilled. On the evidence of his actual compositions,
this has been a great loss to the concert-going public. This man, who was not an alumnus of a London
music college, was possibly as gifted a composer as any Briton working at the
time. Fame enourages true genius to
develop: like so many other gifted
provincials in this country, he was denied what would have been a far
preferable destiny.
To
return to the Piano Quintet: after a
dramatic, well-set-up opening movement in sonata-form, contrast is called-for:
a Scherzo, in fact. Marked Vivace,
it is like a Brahms intermezzo, and also sports a neat jig-rhythm in tribute,
perhaps, to an Irish muse. If it begins a little nervously as well as
skittishly, it soon opens out in piano arpeggios and slurred lyricism for the
violin and viola in particular. Harty
evidently likes the effect of darting pizzicati, also. The piano has a delightful treble chuckling
downward scale figure. Shifts between major
and minor increase the charm of this movement.
Contrasts are subtle - this is no workaday scherzo with trio - and it
ends circularly in the lightest and abruptest of fashions. What one should not
miss amid the banter is the cunning of Harty’s skill in cyclical variation -
this movement is a further development of thematic, rhythmical and harmonic
elements of the Allegro; the motto flourish haunts it.
Track
2: Vivace
The
motto-theme, smoothed, is present in the
third movement. This masterpiece, marked
Lento, is solemn, but gloriously feeling and lyrical, beginning in
violin, viola and cello-tone. A yearning
melody grows in large chords on piano, rolling itself out and accompanied by
counterpoint, and dies away into a crescendo in sequences; this is a striking
foretaste of the Elgar Piano Quintet of 1918.
It dies away in smouldering ‘Irish’ manner - only to begin to rise
again, with the violins in unison. The most
passionate material in this movement arises:
repose always regathers itself here, in order to deliver a stronger
message of loss or longing. Again, the
apparition passes - it seems like an apparition, and fades in shadows of
tremolando on cello in particular. A
further rise returns us to the Irish dying fall. A strong unisonal, chordal, tremolando and
trilled climax and one is left in peace and the close.
Track
3: Lento
The
finale is a rondo, Allegro con Brio.
It is as glorious in its own fashion as the other movements. It hints at every turn to the other
movements’ material, too. The clever
counterpoint of canons, imitations, diminutions and augmentations and colourful
interplay between instruments are as ever merely a means to expressive power,
in this case, fervent happiness and a contrasting melancholy. An inspired,
exciting fragment of melody succeeds the exultant stamping opening, and there’s
something of a reprise of the opening section.
A more mysterious segment following, derived from subsidiary phrases, is
carried into cheerfulness, only to be reasserted by viola and violin, courting scalic
responses from the piano. The piano is
the author of much of the sanguine or humorous tone of this music, but its
quicksilver runs - which impel jogging cello pizzicati, do not prevent the
stubbornly shadier bowed sounds of the strings - led by the lovely but
melancholy solo viola - from developing into a brown study, the poetic core of
this movement: Irish Brahms, but perhaps
more spontaneous. The brown study harks
back craftily to the slow movement! The
happier material rises up out of this, the first subject and its inspired
pendant striding out again, the piano either playing block chords or
arpeggiating. The quicksilver runs bring
back a more cheerful viola and cello amid stirring textures and all builds to a
confident, succinct climax; the brown
study music returns in a typical change in character through change in
tempo - appropriately, it now hustles
the Quintet to a close, accompanied at last with a Brahms-like downward
glissando on piano. This is an
unstoppable finale, superbly proud and optimistic, with genuine deep shadows to
contend with.
Track
4: Allegro Con Brio
Harty’s
Piano Quintet in F Major was performed in full once and once only, at a
function held at the Langham Hotel....
The
prize that this splendid score attracted, the in-those-days large sum of £50 -
was awarded to the young composer by
Benno Schonberger - a pianist - and Frederic Cowen and Alexander
Mackenzie, two eminent composers. Why it
went unpublished and dropped out of sight or sound for 106 years is a mystery. Judged as music, It comes perilously close to
perfection in all respects. Its loss to the concert-hall then and later
was a dunderheaded, very British tragedy.
Did Paddy think he was Brahms?
Three
Pieces for oboe and piano date from 1911, and were first performed in
orchestral dress at a Wood Promenade-concert in that year. These are character-pieces in a Romantic
tradition that reaches as far back as Robert Schumann. In a ternary form - a first subject with
contrasting material - all three display lively invention and skilful
workmanship which, although operating at a lower artistic level than the Piano
Quintet, are unforeseeably evocative and touching. Here is the first, entitled: Chansonette: Andante con moto.
Track
5: Chansonette: Andante con moto,
Here
is the second of Harty’s Three Pieces for oboe and piano. Orientale: Grazioso
e con moto. ‘Orientalism’ was a long-lasting fashion in European concert
and domestic music. The same clichés did
duty for ‘Turkish’, ‘Arabic’, ‘Chinese’,
or ‘Japanese’. Harty’s Eastern music is
not thorough-going, Irish turns occurring even here. Perhaps by Eastern, he meant London or Paris,
rather than County Down or Dublin...
There is a witty middle part.
Track
6: Orientale: Grazioso e con moto
Last
of these engaging miniatures is a pastoral, A la Campagne: Lento ma non troppo. Interestingly, when Harty devized a
book-plate for his library, he took two bars from A La Campagne to
accompany a picture of a shepherd playing a pipe. It may be the most inward-turned movement of
the suite.
If
the orchestral version of Three Pieces is vividly colourful, the duo
arrangement permits one to enjoy the work’s rhythmical qualities and the melodic
contours in higher relief, as well as a more intimate mode of address. What will be noticed -along with the big
reach needed by any accompanist - is the very musicianly balance in the oboe
and piano-parts - tact, given that Harty was a full-blooded pianist!
This
was Classical Break on Somer Valley FM, and I’m Rupert Kirkham. Today’s programme was researched and written
by Mike Burrows. We hope that you
enjoyed it and will join us again soon.
Goodbye!
Tracks
7: A la Campagne: Lento ma non troppo
