Lennox Berkeley (1903-1989) Pour Flûte, Clarinette Et Basson Sextet, Op
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LENNOX BERKELEY CHAMBER WORKS BERKELEY ENSEMBLE RES10149 1. Pièce (1929) * [2:50] Lennox Berkeley (1903-1989) pour flûte, clarinette et basson Sextet, Op. 47 Chamber Works for clarinet, horn and string quartet 2. Allegro moderato [5:45] 3. Lento [4:59] 4. Allegro [3:55] Berkeley Ensemble 5. In Memoriam Igor Stravinsky (1971) * [1:32] Sophie Mather violin 2-5, 7-9 Canon for string quartet 2-5, 7-12 Dan Shilladay viola 6. Introduction and Allegro (1971) [6:41] Gemma Wareham cello 2-5, 7-9 for double bass and piano 5 Lachlan Radford double bass String Trio, Op.19 1-4, 13-15 John Slack clarinet 7. Moderato [5:55] 1 Andrew Watson bassoon 8. Adagio [4:39] Paul Cott horn 2-4 9. Allegro [5:15] with Three Pieces for solo viola * Julia Loucks violin 2-5 10. Moderato [0:59] 1 11. [Largo] [3:00] Sarah Bennington flute 12. [Allegro] [1:56] Libby Burgess piano 6, 13-15 About the Berkeley Ensemble: Sonatine (1928) pour clarinette et piano '[...] the ensemble gels cohesively, and the well-balanced recording 13. Moderato [4:10] shows the players in their best light' 14. Lento [5:30] The Strad 15. Allegro [2:31] '[…] hardly more than one listening should convince you of Ferguson's high craft as he works within Schubert's Octet texture, as should the Total playing time [59:48] vibrancy of the Berkeley Ensemble's performance even compared with Dennis Brain and friends in [the Ferguson Octet's] first recording.' * world premiere recording Gramophone Lennox Berkeley the guitar works for Julian Bream and the a marked disinclination to practice. madcap plot to convert Britain back to Violin Concerto for Yehudi Menuhin, he Nevertheless he enjoyed the piano, and Catholicism; alas, the score has vanished). Essentially orthodox in character, if could always call on the specialist advice by the time he reached Gresham’s School, unorthodox in his private and spiritual of a commissioning musician. Norfolk, in 1916, he had developed what Converted to the early music revival as life, Lennox Berkeley was adventurous a contemporary described as an much by his own inclinations as by the and open-minded as a composer. He This new recording offers seven of his works uncharacteristically florid style of examples of his organ teachers at never looked back at his work but always for rarer forces, some of which the Berkeley playing. His next school, the equally Oxford, W.H. (later Sir William) pressed on to the next piece, exploring Ensemble found at the British Library progressive St George’s, Harpenden, Harris and Henry Ley, Berkeley wrote and experimenting, in search of the amongst the hundreds of manuscript encouraged him to compose, and in several harpsichord pieces for his friend ideal means of expressing his thoughts scores acquired from the Berkeley family 1921 he won a prize for a piano piece Vere Pilkington, with whom he shared and feelings. in 2014. These seven pieces span most of he’d written that summer at his parents’ rooms. Both young men admired Bach Berkeley’s working life, from the Sonatine villa in the shade of the Forest of and Stravinsky, French music of the turn Like other composers of his time he was pour clarinette et piano, written in 1928, Fontainebleau. of the century and the early Baroque, much influenced by Stravinsky, but also when he was just down from Oxford and despised the romanticism of Wagner. by Gregorian chant, Bach, Mozart, the and studying in Paris with Nadia Boulanger, In 1922 he matriculated at Merton French Impressionists, Poulenc. He to the Three Pieces for solo viola, which College, Oxford, supposedly to study Berkeley’s favourite composer at Oxford tried, but rejected, twelve-tone serialism. date from the early 1970s. French, Old French and Philology, but, was Ravel, and in 1925 he actually met He wrote songs and operas, piano by his own admission, he did little else Ravel, when the great man was staying studies and concertos, string quartets The grandson of an earl who was himself but music (with a brief spell on the river with mutual friends in London. Plucking and symphonies, and a treasury of adept on the zither, Lennox Berkeley first in his first year, when he surprised up his courage he played one of his music for the church. He played the came to music as a small boy, listening to himself by coxing his college boat to harpsichord pieces: Ravel approved of piano (better than he thought he did), his mother playing Chopin on the piano, some notable successes in Eights Week). the harmonies (which weren’t a million conducted (when he had to), and his French aunt playing her own salon While the rest of the Bright Young miles from his own), but criticised the taught an entire generation of younger pieces, his English godmother singing Things of that Brideshead generation lack of technique. Berkeley wasn’t surprised composers, with a kindness and Schubert, and the pianola at home on were swanning around in Oxford bags, because he’d never had any composition generosity which none of them ever forgot. Boars Hill near Oxford, which played, as getting drunk, kissing other men and lessons, and when Ravel prescribed a though by magic, assorted rolls collected dancing the Black Bottom, Berkeley was period of study with the greatest music Though the piano was his only instrument, by his father, a naval officer, mathematician busy composing. During his four years teacher in Europe, Nadia Boulanger – Berkeley was always ready to write for and passionate music-lover. at Oxford he wrote more than seventeen and offered to make the introductions – other instruments, and for unusual works - mostly songs and keyboard pieces, he leapt at a chance that was to change combinations of instruments. This often He started having piano lessons when he but also a score for a film starring his life. presented technical problems which went to the Dragon School at the age of Evelyn Waugh (as a sinister Dean of Balliol were new to him, but, as in the case of eight, though his progress was marred by who seduces the Prince of Wales, in a Mademoiselle Boulanger accepted him as a student, on condition that he wrote only fourteen) and Stravinsky’s son nothing of his own for a year, did daily Soulima. Sometimes Soulima took Lennox exercises in counterpoint and fugue, and back home to the Stravinsky’s apartment studied the works of the masters, in the rue du Faubourg-St-Honoré. Years analysing Beethoven piano sonatas, later Berkeley remembered Stravinky’s Stravinsky’s Les Noces, pieces by Debussy chain-smoking and the fine claret and Ravel – and the complete Bach cantatas. bought by the barrel from Bordeaux. Berkeley was up for it all: it’s what he had Stravinsky, he said, was kind, well-mannered, always wanted. elegant – and terrified of his old mother. Though he was courteous, ‘he held very Off duty, he haunted Le Boeuf sur le Toit, the definite opinions about everything and fashionable bar for the night owls of the could be devastatingly critical of what he avant garde – often with Ravel, who had didn’t like’. become a special friend. There they listened to jazz and watched men After nearly twelve months of Boulanger’s dancing while Ravel talked. A young strict regime, Berkeley was allowed to Oxford friend once found them at resume composing. One of the first fruits Le Boeuf, Lennox wearing a frayed mauve was the Sonatine pour clarinette et piano, shirt and long hair, with his arm linked in which Frederick Thurston played with Ravel’s, as the older composer expounded Gordon Bryan at the Aeolian Hall in his theories. Ravel was never intimate London in 1928. Bryan, who was both a with anyone, but he was unusually friend and a professional critic, liked the close to Lennox, who was charming, piece and noted its debt to Hindemith. nice-looking, talented and modest. But another English reviewer accused More importantly they both ‘lived within Berkeley of having ‘caught some of the themselves’, drawing from a spiritual well Paris tricks fashionable at the present that neither of them needed to talk about, moment’ – in particular, Poulenc’s way of but which was to lead Berkeley to the creating a double tonality. Roman Catholic Church in 1929. Undeterred, Berkeley followed this up a year But there were other friends too: Francis later with Pièce pour flûte, clarinette et basson. Poulenc, Georges Auric, and two other The manuscript is stamped ‘36 Rue Ballu’, Boulanger students, Igor Markevitch (then which was where Boulanger lived. Whether this indicates that the piece was written there, Lennox Berkeley met was Benjamin Britten. under Mademoiselle’s watchful eye, or They had never met before, and fell in a whether Berkeley later gave her the sort of love. For a week they were manuscript and the stamp is an Ex Libris, constantly in one another’s company, isn’t clear. His musical biographer Professor listening to music, meeting other Peter Dickinson describes the piece as musicians, talking and sight-seeing – and showing ‘a neat, terse, neo-classical technique’. in England that summer they spent a further, more intense, week composing, After six years of study at the ‘Boulangerie’, reading, talking and swimming in Cornwall. Berkeley went south to look after his aged When Britten’s mother died the following parents in their opulent retirement on year, they moved into a converted mill Cap Ferrat, next door to Somerset at Snape in Suffolk. Their dream was to Maugham’s villa, La Mauresque. Maugham live and work together in an unofficial was always surrounded by interesting civil partnership.