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!
