10 & 11 August

Classical Break - Harty

 

 

 

 

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

3 & 4 August: Spanish Guitar

Spanish Guitar-music

The programme was scripted by Mike Burows and performed by Rupert Kirkham, broadcast on July the 16th, 2011. 

Intro Track:  Nortena, J Gomez-Crespo

Hullo, this is Classical Break on Somer Valley FM, and I’m Rupert Kirkham.  Today’s programme was researched and scripted by Mike Burrows, and is a presentation of largely Spanish guitar-music. We have just heard Nortena, a piano-piece drawn from an Inca lullaby by the Argentinian composer, J Gomez-Crespo, 1900-1971,  and arranged by the great guitarist Andres Segovia, of whom more later.  Besides the lilt of melody, aided by the rhythmically defined though sweet-harmonied accompaniment, notice the use of rapping of the soundbox, an effect more resounding than can be gained by the tapping of strings con legno of a bowed instrument.

“Only one thing is more beautiful to hear than a guitar, and that is two guitars,” so Chopin professed.  Developed from the lute and mandolin, the guitar has the lute’s fretted neck, but a flat-backed soundbox nipped in at the flanks that appears to owe something to the viol-family.  The breadth of the body and length of neck promote resonance and an ease in finding notes, it is light for its size and a comfortable shape to hold aslant the midriff and lower chest by left hand on neck and right elbow and forearm.  It comes in a variety of sizes, usually with four strings, its pubescent or matronly figure capable of a wide compass.  It does not require the speed of note-production needed on, say, the mandolin, to create a sustained sonority.  No other stringed instrument is easier to play well.  In its simplicity, it can be supremely expressive, neither as heavy nor as over-resonant as a piano, and less scratchy than a bowed instrument.  For centuries, it has been at home in most parts of the world, an instrument of choice for both colonialists and native peoples overtaken by European and American incursions.  Beginning among hired musicians and courtiers, its use has thus spread until in both acoustic and electrical forms, it has become a pillar in the edifice of modern blues, pop- or folk music.

The Valencian, Joaquin Rodrigo (1901-99) wrote a number of concertante guitar-works in an approachable idiom that owes much to folk-music and Art-music in Spain, all sadly overshadowed by the admittedly justly popular Concierto D’Aranjuez.  Blinded in an accident at the age of two, he was trained in his home town, Sagunto, and at the Madrid Conservatory.  He arranged the music of such composers as Soler and the courtly composers of the Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries, revealing both a long historical perspective on the music of all Spain’s provinces and considerable imagination in orchestral scoring whose richness approaches that of Respighi, yet, as Respighi’s does, preserves the tang of an earlier period.  This is achieved by favouring clear contrasts in the blending of the sections and treble, alto and bass registers of the orchestra. 

Here is a movement, Canario, from his colourful four-movement Fantasia Para Un Gentilhombre, a homage to the 17th Century performer and composer Gaspar Sanz (c1650-c1710), the gentleman of the title, and based on songs and dances from Sanz’s published collections.  This Fantasia was composed in 1954 for performance by Rodrigo’s friend Segovia. 

            A Canario is a variety of lively dance from the Canary Islands.

Track One: Fantasia Para Un Gentilhombre, Rodrigo

Often, we cry for the authentic, and decry the efforts of those who paid homage in the age before ours.  We can check on an original in this instance.  Gaspar Sanz’s Canario or Canarios in its solo-form shows us how brilliantly Rodrigo treats and develops his material. 

Track Two:  Canarios, Sanz 

Now, let’s hear the set of Six Catalan Folksongs by the Catalan guitarist-composer, Miguel Llobet-Soles (1878-1938).  Born in Barcelona, Llobet was one of the great artists of the guitar. A contemporary of Maurice Ravel, much of whose supersensitive sensibility and craftsmanship he shared, in Spanish music, he occupies an honoured position re-established by the end of the Franco-regime, which had subordinated all regions of Spain to rule from Madrid..  He lived a quiet life as a travelling musician welcomed by many countries around the world, and resident in Paris for long periods.  His tours exhausted him (however!) and he returned to Barcelona.  Tragically, he lost his mind during the Spanish Civil War, which broke out in 1936.  His collapse came when his local church was fired; according to his wife, he was left with the mental image of an eyeball gouged out of its socket.  His final illness followed swiftly, pleurisy ending his life soon after Barcelona was subjected to its first and heaviest air-raid.

 Six Catalan Folksongs consists of:  The Son of the Mother (A religious song), Amelia’s Testament, Robber’s Song, The Nightingale, Heir of The Rieras, and Christmas Night.  We have heard the guitar dance, now let’s once again hear it sing. 

Track Three:  Llobet:  Six Catalan Folksongs 

 

The guitar originated in Southern Europe and always had its strongest advocates in Italy and Spain, where there were many gifted craftsmen and a love of music and dance of a kind that favoured its use, until the vogue for Grand Tours among the wealthy, and the coming of factory-manufacture, of mass-education, of a culture of home-making and the development of Empires and global trade-links.  The use of the lute and allied instruments had spread throughout Europe, and so the way had been well-prepared.  The guitar, like most instruments, had its periods of favour with the classes, cycles of fashion.   In this country and in much of Northern Europe, the guitar had a golden age from the first third of the Eighteenth Century until the middle-class guitar gave way to the pianoforte in the early to mid-Nineteenth Century, as the family instrument; in the colonies, pianos travelled remarkably, but it was easier to take a wind instrument, guitar or violin on a voyage to some out-of-the-way station!

Undoubtedly, many Europeans knew the guitar from the experiences of well-heeled travellers in Spain and Italy, and during the latter half of the Nineteenth Century, a vogue for the Italiana and Espanole swept society at all levels.  Serenatas, canzonas, tarantellas, saltarellos, canciones, danzas de las hachas, fandangos, even flamenco, could be imitated on the piano, and were, but to hear them played on mandoline or guitar or vihuela - a kind of guitar favoured by wealthy Spaniards - was that bit more exotic an experience.

The Eighteenth Century had many guitar-composers, but it was a Spaniard, Fernando Sors (1778-1839), who brought the guitar into the 19th.  He settled in England, and taught, wrote and propagandized for the guitar, and was much favoured by fashionable Society.  Known as the Beethoven of The Guitar - the Cult of Heroic Ego was taking hold - he wrote concertante as well as chamber pieces, and developed the notion of the virtuoso in his own instrument. Here is a set of Variations On A Theme of Mozart by him, written in the lingua franca of the time, common to all Western civilization, rather than a style more characteristically Spanish.  The polite theme comes from The Magic Flute.  The fastidiously careful layout of this piece suits the guitar’s nature as aptly as one would expect.  A fairly simple, square-cut melody is subjected to processes of modification, adornment, rhythmical sequence-making, display coming to the fore towards the emphatic close.  Nimbleness in articulation is necessary in most guitar-music, rhythmical attack can be made wonderfully crisp and exact as well as soft.  The stronger and more flexible the joints of the plucking and pitching fingers, the less force need be exerted, and the better the tonal clarity that may be achieved. The guitar’s resonance requires little encouragement to sustain a note and create harmonic decay of a pleasurable kind as further notes superimpose themselves on it and the air. 

Track Four:  Theme And Variations, Fernando Sors

Without doubt, even if the pianoforte cut in, the Nineteenth Century song and dance were good to the guitar, and not only in the development of the science of guitar-design.  The invention of genre-pieces, short ‘poetic’ pieces of a particular character for a particular instrument, grew out of the John Field or Chopin Nocturne, the Schumann Novelette and Liszt Harmonie.  This, and a certain - in some places political - penchant among nations towards the picturesque elements of ‘nationalism’, stimulated a massive growth in interest in music-making, and mass-market in sheet-music.  Mass-publication, using the new factory printing-processes both met and further increased the demand.   At the highest levels, it paid composers to write well-turned miniatures.  Throughout the Nineteenth Century, the audience for virtuosity and serious musical entertainment widened, and at home or in musical and other clubs, at one level of accomplishment or another, something of the genius of hero- or heroine musician rubbed off on the public.  A good piece contrasting slow or quick A and quick or slow B sections, with or without development, provided people with entertainment and a challenge.  We mentioned the vogue for Italianacy or Spanishry earlier, and from Spain came the next impulse. 

The Castilian, Francisco Tarrega y Eixea, 1852-1909, was the teacher of Llobet, whose Six Catalan Folksongs we heard earlier.   Tarrega was a virtuoso and composer, known internationally as the ‘Sarasate of The Guitar’.  He wrote many genre pieces for his instrument, but, more, transcribed many piano-pieces by his colleagues.  He was educated at Madrid Conservatory, pursued a national career as a performer and achieved great success in Paris and London in 1880.  His piece for solo guitar, Recuerdos de La Alhambra, was perhaps his most popular piece, akin to a Neapolitan song in its melody and supported by tremolo-figuration throughout.  An intense presence on stage, Tarrega was perhaps less gifted as a composer, but his memories of the Alhambra, the Moorish fastness situated in Granada, was to be seen as a contribution to ‘Alhambrismo’; Granada was a place of fascination to Spain as a whole, and Andalucian music was not written by only Andalucians! 

Track Five:  Recuerdos de la Alhambra, Tarrega

The two great pianist-composers in Spain at the turn of the century were Isaac Albeniz and Enrigue Granados.  Both produced voluminously for piano, and only a proficient amateur can say that he plays from the works of either.  Isaac Albeniz (1860-1909), a Catalunian like Llobet, gave his first concert at the age of four!  He was refused entry to the Paris Conservatoire at seven, and at eleven stowed away to America, where he toured, supporting himself by playing the piano!  Studies in Leipzig and Brussels followed on his return to Europe.  He next went to Barcelona, where he met the composer Pedrell and first studied folk-music.  In 1889, he studied piano-technique with Liszt, after which he toured England.  In 1890, he studied with D’Indy and Dukas.  Back in England, he found patronage - Francis Burdett-Coutts, Lord Latymer, the banker, and in return composed operas to his Lordship’s libretti.  Opera was not his strong suit, and only one opera, Pepita Jimenez, of 1896, was a success.  He settled in Paris and concentrated on cycles of piano-music.  Altogether, his catalogue reaches to well over 200 Opus-numbers.  Even the collapse of his health - tuberculosis - from about 1899 - did not prevent him from accomplishing just the kind of music - piano-music and songs - of a national quality and harmonic and rhythmical sophistication that made it irresistible to Spanish guitarists. The Paris of Debussy, Ravel, Severac, Dukas, D’Indy, Messager, Schmitt and others helped to create the dynamic impressionism of Suites Espagnolas and Iberia.   

Here is an arrangement for two guitars by Llobet of a song, Bajo La Palmera, Beneath The Palm-tree, Number 3 of Cantos de Espana, Opus 232.  In this recording, it is performed by Julian Bream and John Williams.  The two parts demand concentration, but are both together and easily audible in partnership here.

Track Six:  Beneath The Palm Tree, Cantos De Espana, Op 232, No 3, Albeniz     

An instrument for a lover to play - to serenade his girl in languorous, rippling phrases that create a sense of contented laziness; good humour or longing. An instrument to play rapid, syncopated rhythms on, plucking, sliding, damping - even tapping strings or rapping soundboard - at a dance.  The guitar has two personalities, sentimental, sensitive to the point of just-audible stillness, and vital, aggressive and predatory.  It sings, it can mimic human movement in sound, it is a percussion instrument.  Art music took some while to match folk-music in all its variety and primitive but spontaneous skill.

Here is a modern example of flamenco dance-music composed and played by the Andalucian, who is much influenced by the work of Segovia, Juan Martin.  From his Andalucian Suite No 3, Jerez - Buleiras.

Track Seven:  Jerez - Buleiras, Juan Martin  

From Granada, Andres Segovia-Torres (1893-1987) had a concert career that lasted three-quarters of a century.  From his debut in Granada at the age of 15, he made his way throughout the Western World, becoming a good friend of Llobet, who greatly admired his skill and gift for interpretation.  His right hand was possibly stronger than that of any predecessor, and showed new possibilities in composition; perhaps the example of pianist-virtuosi had by now piqued guitarists into equivalent feats of simultaneous detail of rhythm and decoration, just as Paganini had piqued pianists in the early Romantic age!  Segovia transcribed many works for guitar and inspired the composition of works by many composers, and became an ambassador for Spanish culture, as well-regarded by fellow musicians as was Pablo Casals.  Here he is in a Fandanguillo written for him by Joaquin Turina (188-2-1949).  

Track Eight:  Fandanguillo, Turina

Estudio sin Luz, or Study Without Light is one of Segovia’s own finest miniatures, worthy of his composer-friends.

Track Nine: Estudio sin Luz, Segovia

To end our programme, here is a Pavanne by Luis Milan (c1500-flourished 1536-61), who served at the court of the Dukes of Valencia and wrote many collections of songs and pieces for the Vihuela.  The Pavane was a fashionable measure, so-called possibly because it was intended to be danced in the manner of a peacock - in English, it was the pavon or pavan; we have also the word pavonine, peacock-like.

This was Classical Break on Somer Valley FM and I’m Rupert Kirkham. Today’s script was researched and written by Mike Burrows.  We hope you enjoyed it and we look forward to having your company again, soon. 

Goodbye!

Track Ten:  Pavanne, Luis Milan      

July 27 & 28

Evil Company - an historical radio drama

Today's programme is a departure from the normal classical music-based programme. Instead we have an historical radio drama, produced by the Somer Valley Classical Break team. It has a 15 minute interview with the play's writer, bath-based journalist, Paul Fisher and members of the Trowbridge Players - the play's cast.

About the play

 Thomas Helliker's tomb in the churchyard of St. James's Church, Trowbridge

Evil Company is based on the life of local hero Thomas Helliker. The action takes place around Trowbridge and Beckington and it concerns events that led to the tragic death of a young Trowbridge cloth worker, hanged on the flimsiest of evidence for his alleged involvement in the burning of Littleton Mill, near Trowbridge on the 22^nd July 1802.

The entire production was put together by local people. The play's director, ex-Somer Valley FM staff member Rupert Kirkham, says, 'We were extremely lucky to discover that Trowbridge has a fine amateur dramatic company, the Trowbridge Players. We were able to cast almost the entire company with Trowbridge people which fulfilled our aim to keep the play a truly local experience from start to finish.’

Christopher Brown, the former rector of St James’ Parish Church, plays John Rees Mogg, the curate of St James’ who had buried 19-year-old Helliker 200 years earlier in March 1803; Frank Holmes, who has spent a career in the local textile industry, teamed up with his daughter Emma to play a nineteenth century father and daughter; The part of Thomas Helliker was played by Bath student, Kit Harrison. The remainder of the Trowbridge Players cast acted  the other 14 characters. Even some of the sound effects were produced locally by cast-member Tony Giddings who made a special recording of the bells of St James' Church in the centre of the town for use several times in the story.

 WANTED poster, quoted at the start of the play

 The radio drama was written by Bath-based playwright Paul Fisher, “Inspiration for the script came after a visit to Helliker's grave in St James’ churchyard. His table-top tomb is unusual in having two inscriptions, the first written in 1803 and the second over 70 years later. The latter records that ‘Thomas Helliker was condemned for an offence against the law, of which he was afterwards believed innocent and determined rather to die than give testimony which would have saved his own life, but forfeited the lives of others’.” 

Neither inscription reveals that Helliker was hanged as a common criminal, or why his grave is so prominent, or why seven decades passed before a second in memoriam.

“It's a salutary tale of corruption, frustration and tragedy in the face of new technology,” says Paul, “200 years later, it’s still completely relevant!”.

The letter Thomas Helliker wrote the night before his execution

The first airing of the new play was at an exhibition in the Trowbridge Museum in June. “We hope the play added extra interest and reality to the exhibition”, says the museum’s curator, Clare Lyall. “We often get parties of school students and community groups looking at the exhibitions here and we felt that since the play was based on the man behind the exhibition, Thomas Helliker, it should be used to enhance the visitor's experience”.

The hanging of Thomas Helliker, March 1803

We’d love to hear any reactions, good or bad, that you may have about the production – just email me, Rupertkirkham@gmail.com.

Some of the cast at Somer Valley FM

The Cast

Kit Harrison Thomas Helliker                                         

Emma Holmes Mary May 1802                                                                      

Christopher Brown John Rees Mogg                                         

Tony Giddings John Jones

Sylvia Seaman Mary May 1873

David Powell Henry King

Francis Holmes James May                                             

Mark Rhodes John Read

Barry Culverhouse Nathaniel Draper

Claire Powell Jane Beaven

Cast members played the rest of the parts.

Thanks to the Trowbridge Players.

Evil Company was directed and edited by Rupert Kirkham.

Sound effects Tony Giddings

Written and produced by Paul Fisher

Evil Company is a FROMEDIA production for Somer Valley FM.

Copyright, Fromedia 2013