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. At the turn
of the Century, he won a prize for a String Quartet at the Feis Coeil in Dublin,
an achievement that 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 subtler 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 most abrupt 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 again. 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 dies away in shadows of tremolando on cello in
particular. A further rise leads once
more to the Irish dying fall. One more
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, Three Pieces, Harty
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!
Track 7: A la Campagne: Lento ma non troppo
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