August 2020 Address for Communications
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News In this issue ... Page Page Address for Communications 2 Summertime at The Firs 27 Keep in touch 2 Membership Matters 37 Letter from the Chairman 2 Elgar Works 39 From the Editor 4 Obituaries 42 Coping with Lockdown 6 Letters to the Editor 51 Zoom ! 13 Branch Reports 52 AGM 2020 15 Branch Events 63 Reviving the SW Branch 23 Delius Society 65 Elgarian Researches Dates for your Diary 66 in Lockdown 24 Crossword 70 No. 71 – August 2020 Address for Communications Contributions for the December 2020 edition of the Elgar Society News should be e–mailed to the Editor: Peter James: [email protected] Full contact details can be found on the back cover. The latest date for submissions for the December 2020 issue is 25 October 2020. Keep in Touch Remember: you can keep up to date with the latest Elgarian news online at Facebook: www.facebook.com Twitter: www.twitter.com London Branch Account: https://twitter.com/ElgarLondon YouTube: www.youtube.com or, search for ‘Elgar’ or ‘Elgar Society’ or ‘Elgar Birthplace’. Letter from the Chairman Spare a thought for the horns! Thus ended my last little homily, penned at the very close of 2019. It was a jocular reference, but, widening it to include all performing musicians, it now bears a distinctly hollow ring. Distinguished members of the profession had all work cancelled and music examiners were instructed to return home with 24 hours’ notice. Perhaps you assume both groups thus contracted were still remunerated? Guess again. 2 Elgar Society News Letter from the Chairman I dare say many of you know performing artists from every discipline, who have been similarly affected, with countless numbers experiencing very real hardship. We turn to music for all sorts of reasons and it is rather ironic, is it not, that we find so much comfort and solace in the very arts that are so much under threat. Let us hope that once we finally emerge from the present dire situation all those wonderful musicians, actors, writers and artists are still there for us. Having purchased the new compact disc Elgar from America, naturally I read Arthur Reynolds’s review in the April edition of the Journal with great interest. Understandably and rightly he concentrates on the Toscanini and Barbirolli issues, but I confess that the performance which fascinated me most was the totally unexpected appearance of a 1943 live broadcast performance of Falstaff. Well, about two thirds of it – the usual running time of some 35 minutes is rather crudely hacked down to around 26. It is unclear why, but the most likely reason is to do with radio timings and their limitations. I have a live Beethoven Ninth Symphony from New York conducted by Bruno Walter where the sound is faded in about eight minutes from the start of the performance, with the announcer breezily informing us that ‘Mr [sic] Walter has already started’. (How rude of him not to have waited!) In view of all this you will be wondering why on earth I am even giving this effort houseroom. Well, firstly, the conductor, Artur Rodziński, was, as our American friends say, ‘no slouch’ when it came to wielding the baton and the New York Philharmonic was a high–powered virtuoso ensemble, able to negotiate with ease the considerable technical demands of a score which must have been totally new to them. True, Sir John and his motley associates do tend to emerge more as Mafia hitmen than the rather homespun loveable rascals we know so well – the former impression strengthened by the orchestra’s unofficial title of ‘Murder Incorporated’! Perhaps this is why Rodziński was reputed to keep a loaded revolver in his back pocket during rehearsals … It is indeed good news that Arthur was able to reveal in his review that the next Elgar in America CD will include Toscanini’s 1940 broadcast of the Introduction and Allegro for Strings. I think No. 71 – August 2020 3 Letter from the Chairman it should prove to be a revelation. Perhaps space might be found to include some at least of the surviving rehearsal material, where one is moved to hear the loving care with which he works with the wonderful strings of his NBC Symphony Orchestra. To conclude in a rather lighter vein than I began, here is a little brain teaser for you: which conductor, in discussing a major work by Elgar, claimed that one particular passage had been written by his cook? Take care, all, and let’s look forward to better times ahead, strengthened by our love of music and of course Elgar in particular. Neil Mantle From the Editor The April edition of the News was compiled and printed in February and early March, when we were only just beginning to be aware of the threat from Covid–19. By the time it reached members’ letterboxes, however, we were in full lockdown, and for many there was no doubt a cruel irony in seeing Branch events and concerts listed as usual. At the beginning of July, as this edition of the News goes to press, lockdown rules are in the process of being eased and we have to hope that measures taken to stimulate the economy do not trigger a second wave of the virus. But while shops, pubs and restaurants are being allowed to reopen, the prospect of concert life returning to normal seems sadly distant. This despite some encouraging efforts like Radio 3’s live lunchtime concerts from an empty Wigmore Hall. Fortunately we still have the consolation of recorded music – and I’m grateful to the contributors to ‘Coping with Lockdown’ for sharing their locked–down listening. Incidentally, this may be the first time in the history of the News that Schoenberg has been compared to Elgar, as Julian Rushton teasingly does in his article. There is quite a lot about Zoom in this issue. Few of us had heard of this piece of technology a few months ago, but now its use is becoming ubiquitous and routine. The ability to attend virtual 4 Elgar Society News From the Editor meetings must offer some relief from the isolation we have been enduring. Joining a Zoom call is relatively straightforward (and Stuart Freed offers help to the faint–hearted on page 14), so I hope people will be encouraged to ‘attend’ the Zoom AGM on 20 September – as notified on page 15. I’ll close with a must–read and a must–see. It would be remiss not to mention that it’s 50 years since Sir John Barbirolli died (on 29 July 1970). Many will have come to know and love Elgar through his recordings and concerts; he is fittingly celebrated in David L. Jones’s comprehensive article in this month’s Journal. And on YouTube, don’t miss a moving performance from Dame Sarah Connolly accompanying herself in ‘An die Musik’ – Schubert’s sublime tribute to music, that ‘sweet art’ which, as the poet says, can in sad times transport us into a better world … https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVAaXLMfLHY Peter James Barbirolli in 1965 [Photo: Joost Evers] No. 71 – August 2020 5 Coping with Lockdown With no live music to be had, we asked some distinguished Elgarians to write about the recorded music that they have most enjoyed during lockdown. As a music critic, many of my evenings are spent reviewing live performances in concert halls and opera houses, but during lockdown I have been confined to barracks listening to recorded music. Much of that has in fact been piano music. I am a lapsed pianist myself, though I could never have got my fingers around much of what I have been listening to: Dohnányi’s Variations on a Nursery Song (Cyril Smith the soloist), de Falla’s Nights in the Gardens of Spain and Ravel’s Piano Concerto for the Left Hand (both Steven Osborne), Brahms’s Second Piano Concerto (Wilhelm Backhaus – who had played for Brahms – and the Saxon State Orchestra conducted by Karl Böhm), and the Schumann Etudes Symphoniques and Carnaval played by Alfred Cortot, peppered with wrong notes but so grippingly musical. Most of all, though, I return again and again to a recording of the Prokofiev Third Piano Concerto, set down in 1932 with the composer himself as soloist and the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Piero Coppola. I first heard this concerto when I was at the Last Night of the Proms in 1966. Martha Argerich was the pianist and Sir Malcolm Sargent conducted, the very last time he conducted here. I was bowled over by the work. In this recording, which has kept me company all these weeks, Prokofiev reveals his amazingly steely–fingered pianism, his capacity for both lyricism and glitter, his sheer strength of personality; and I also admire Coppola’s conducting, both efficient and shrewd, and the LSO is on top form. I wonder if Elgar knew this remarkable recording? Christopher Morley 6 Elgar Society News Coping with Lockdown I feel I should submit something solemn and serious, by Elgar. Not so. For someone of my age the comparisons of today with the 1939–45 war are inescapable. For me, that meant Myra Hess and her National Gallery concerts. So I’ve been listening to my friend Piers Lane’s recording of her arrangement of Bach’s ‘Jesu, Joy’, which I often heard her play. That led me on to other pieces on his disc, Piers Goes to Town: the delicious ‘A nightingale sang in Berkeley Square’, and Billy Mayerl’s ‘Marigold’, both cheerful wartime memories.