Tag Archives: Sir Charles Hubert Hastings Parry

On Record: Richard Deering – Parry: Piano Music (Heritage Records)

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Parry
Piano Sonata no.1 in F major (1876)
Piano Sonata no.2 in A minor (1878)
Sieben Charakterbilder (1872)
Five Miniatures (pub. 1926)

Richard Deering (piano)

Heritage Records HTGCD140-141 [two discs, 87’15’’]
Producer/Engineer: Paul Arden-Taylor
Recorded 15 July 2023 at Wyastone Concert Hall, Wyastone Leys, Monmouth

written by Richard Whitehouse

What’s the story?

Heritage continues its coverage of unfamiliar British music with this set featuring much of the music for solo piano by Hubert Parry, representative of those earlier years when his immersion in the Austro-German tradition was being leavened with a more personal vein of expression.

What’s the music like?

Although he had essayed two sets of shorter pieces in the late 1860s, Parry’s large-scale piano works come from the following decade. The First Piano Sonata owes a debt to Beethoven but also Mendelssohn and Weber, the eddying restraint of its first movement finding contrast with the capricious charm of its scherzo or wistful poise of its Andante. The finale duly heads from a pensive introduction to an elegant Allegretto that, in turn, finds greater animation in its coda. Modest in scope, the whole piece has a limpidity and understatement which is most appealing.

The Second Piano Sonata, if not that much longer, none the less leaves a greater impression – not least as the influences of Schumann and Brahms are more evident. The opening Allegro features a Maestoso introduction that recurs after the development and in the coda to deepen this music’s ingratiating manner, then the Adagio touches on deeper or even darker emotions. The ensuing Scherzo is more rhythmically incisive than its predecessor and while the finale is marked Allegretto, it builds to a decisive close – the introductory music again in evidence.

Before either of these sonatas, Parry composed a set of studies entitled Charakterbilder but with the intriguing subtitle Seven Ages of Mind, which suggests an evolving concept akin to several of Schumann’s collections. The Dreaming of a whimsical Prelude is followed by the impetuosity of Learning then the histrionics of Passion. The trenchancy of Striving precedes the eloquence of Longing then the elation of Triumphing, and though the final Adagio is untitled, its mood of inward rapture might well be thought of as being Fulfilling.

Parry soon went on to write a notable Piano Concerto and engaging Theme and Variations, but little further for the solo instrument until late in life. Published posthumously, the Five Miniatures likely emerged over a quarter-century – the initial Sleepy having an affecting charm complemented by the winsomeness of A Little Christmas Piece then wry humour of Capriccio. Greater profundity is hinted at in the ensuing Pause before this sequence reaches its close with the bittersweet resignation of Envoi – most delicate of miniatures.

Does it all work?

It does. Parry was still in the process of finding his own voice (which, as can be heard from his later choral and orchestral works, was a distinctive one) when writing this music, which should not detract from the technical finish and emotional warmth in much of what is heard here. It helps that Richard Deering brings out its salient qualities through playing responsive to the composer’s idiomatic if stylistically undemanding pianism, as rendered on a Steinway D which clarifies a preponderance of ‘middle range’ keyboard sonorities and passagework.

Is it recommended?

It is. The sound has all the clarity and perspective expected, and there are useful background notes by Lisa Hardy. A follow-up release featuring the Theme and Variations, along with the three sets of Sonnets and Songs without Words and the Schulbrede Tunes, would be welcome.

Listen

Buy

You can explore purchase options for this album at the Heritage Records website. For more information, click on the links for performer Richard Deering and for the Hubert Parry life history

Published post no.1,981 – Tuesday 17 October 2023

In Memoriam Queen Elizabeth II

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As a tribute to Queen Elizabeth II, here is a small part of the deeply meaningful music from her funeral service at Westminster Abbey this morning, which also included new works from Sir James MacMillan and the Master of the King’s Music Judith Weir.

Two English works, by Sir Hubert Parry and Vaughan Williams, are included below. My Soul There Is A Country is the first of six Songs Of Farewell by Parry, for unaccompanied choir, written towards the end of the First World War.

O taste and see is a short motet that Vaughan Williams completed in 1953 for the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. It is a short and beautiful piece:

Royal composers – Sir Hubert Parry: I Was Glad

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by Ben Hogwood

Our brief survey of coronation music arrives at the quintessential choral anthem, Sir Hubert Parry‘s I Was Glad.

Completed in 1902, Parry’s work sets the text of Psalm 122. It was not the first setting of the psalm, with Henry Purcell and William Boyce – royal composers themselves – setting the texts for coronations of James II (1685) and George III (1761) respectively.

Parry’s is the version we hear most often today, used in the coronation of King Edward VII in its year of composition, then for the Coronation, silver, diamond and platinum jubilees of Queen Elizabeth II, not to mention the wedding of Charles and Diana in 1981, then William and Kate in 2011.

In a resplendent B flat major, the piece has it all – grand trumpet fanfares, thunderous organ lines, and thrilling choral lines that have been seized on gratefully by choral societies around Britain. Little wonder that it has been chosen for such important occasions, for in a good performance Parry’s exultant piece comfortably fills a cathedral.

In concert – Soloists, Tonbridge Philharmonic Society / Naomi Butcher – Music by Fanny & Felix Mendelssohn, Vivaldi, Parry & Eugene Butler

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tps

Parry I Was Glad (1902, revised 1911)
Vivaldi Gloria in D major RV589 (c1715)
Eugene Butler Song of Mine, Depart (unknown)
Fanny Mendelssohn Overture in C major (c1830-32)
Felix Mendelssohn Symphony no.3 in A minor Op.56 (1831-42)

Rebecca Milford (soprano), Katie Macdonald (mezzo-soprano), Tonbridge Philharmonic Choir and Orchestra / Naomi Butcher

Chapel of St Augustine, Tonbridge School, Tonbridge
Saturday 20 November 2021

Written by Ben Hogwood

There was a keen air of expectation in the regal surroundings of the Chapel of St Augustine at Tonbridge School. The pandemic has wrought havoc with choral and orchestral plans over the last two years, and as such this was the first opportunity for the Tonbridge Philharmonic Society to celebrate their 75th anniversary. They did so with a new music director, Naomi Butcher (below) at the helm – and she delivered a typically enterprising programme.

There could hardly have been a more appropriate way to start than with Parry‘s jubilant anthem I Was Glad, the choir singing the opening line as one. This was a terrific performance, the audience in spatial stereo as the sound of the organ, commandingly played at the south end by Julian Thomas, and the choir, at the north end, met in the middle. That both forces were so closely aligned said much for Butcher’s musical instincts.

The new music director – the Philharmonic Society’s first woman conductor – introduced herself, in the process revealing the enthusiasm and passion at the heart of her conducting. There was great musicality, too, evident throughout a vibrant and magnificently sung account of Vivaldi’s Gloria. The daring choice of a fast tempo for the Gloria itself was a challenge met head on by the choir, while the fugue of Cum Sancto Spiritu was given impressive authority by the spirited bass section.

The two soloists, soprano Rebecca Milford and mezzo-soprano Katie Macdonald, found the ideal balance with a reduced orchestra to fill the chapel in the arias. The Et in terra pax section was suitably darker in colour, prompted by Vivaldi’s minor-key harmonies, before Macdonald’s fulsome mezzo came into its own for the Qui sedes section. Meanwhile Milford’s clear soprano was the ideal foil for the sensitively played continuo group in the Domine Deus, giving full voice to Vivaldi’s inspiration.

To finish the first half we heard Eugene Butler’s Song of Mine, Depart, a setting by the prolific American composer of verse by Paul Verlaine. This made an attractive encore piece, its lilting refrain nicely phrased by the choir with melodic keyboard accompaniment.

Tonbridge Philharmonic concerts are known for their original repertoire selections, and the inclusion of Fanny Mendelssohn’s Overture in C major – her only known orchestral piece and seemingly a recent discovery – made for a bracing beginning to the second half. The orchestral writing is surprisingly full for its time, to these ears even pointing the way towards Tchaikovsky and Sibelius, but there was still room for the attractive melodies to make themselves known, especially the balletic second theme.

The Overture led straight into the Scottish Symphony by Fanny’s brother, Felix Mendelssohn – the siblings closely linked throughout their personal and professional lives. The Scottish, third of five in Felix’s symphonic canon, is one of the jewels in his output. Its craft and wholesome melodic invention were brought to the fore here, with tempo choices from Butcher (above) that felt just right. These included the solemn opening – where the woodwind choir deserve great credit for their phrasing – to the open-air scherzo, where the violins and solo clarinet (Amanda Curd) were especially good. The Scottish outdoors was painted vividly here, its fresh air palpable – as was also the case in a heartfelt slow movement where Butcher cajoled some lovely phrasing from the orchestra. The finale was a darkness to light experience, thoughtful to begin with but blossoming as the music moved into the major key and an ultimately triumphant conclusion.

It is worth allowing for the fact that many musicians may have lost the ability or even motivation to practice during the pandemic – but there was no evidence of standards having changed here. Rather, with passionate performances from choir, orchestra and conductor alike, Naomi Butcher has brought a breath of fresh air to the Tonbridge Philharmonic Society. Her next few concerts include Prokofiev, Rachmaninov, Duruflé and Sibelius, and if they live up to the standards set by this enticing opener they will be well worth catching.

For further information on the Tonbridge Philharmonic Society click here

On record – Duncan Honeybourne: De Profundis Clamavi (EM Records)

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de-profundis-clamavi

Armstrong Gibbs An Essex Rhapsody Op.36 (1921); Ballade in D flat (1940)
Bainton Variations and Fugue in B minor Op.1 (1898); The Making of the Nightingale (1921); Willows (1927)
Bridge Piano Sonata H160 (1921-4)
Britten Night Piece ‘Notturno’ (1963)
Edmunds Piano Sonata in B minor (1938)
Pantscheff Nocturnus V: Wing oor die Branders (2015); Piano Sonata (2017)
Parry Shulbrede Tunes (1914)

Duncan Honeybourne (piano)

EM Records EMRCD070-71 [two discs, 156’46”]

Producer Oscar Torres & Richard Pantcheff
Engineer Oscar Torres

Recorded 20 & 21 August 2020 at Potton Hall, Westleton, Suffolk

Written by Richard Whitehouse

What’s the story?

Never a pianist to pull his punches, Duncan Honeybourne adds to his expanding discography with this extensive survey of British piano music which, written across almost 120 years and evincing a range of styles, more than reinforces the descriptive heading of the overall project.

What’s the music like?

The first disc begins with the Piano Sonata by Christopher Edmunds. Birmingham-born and long active at the School of Music there, he left a sizable output from which the present work impresses through its wide expressive range within modest formal dimensions. The opening Allegro recalls Medtner in its pivoting between fervency and repose, then the Lento strikes a note of heartfelt emotion underlined by its ‘mesto’ marking. Utilizing aspects of scherzo and finale, the closing Allegro returns to more extrovert concerns as it arrives at a virtuosic close.

Edgar Bainton was still in his teens when composing the Variations and Fugue which became his first acknowledged work. Brahms is a key influence, but the music’s motivic and textural discipline ensures a formal focus throughout the nine deftly contrasted variations then into a tensile and vividly cumulative fugue. Remembered primarily for his songs, Cecil Armstrong Gibbs wrote idiomatically for the piano as is demonstrated by the intricate passagework and often bravura writing of An Essex Rhapsody, while the later Ballade exudes deeper emotion – not least an ominous central section with undeniable overtones of war. Part of a compendious sequence exploring different aspects of night, Richard Pantcheff’s Nocturnus V: Wind on the Waves follows a trajectory of impending marine turbulence that duly regains its earlier calm.

Written at the home of his daughter’s family, Shulbrede Tunes finds Hubert Parry reflecting on domestic environs in a methodically constructed cycle – the 10 pieces taking in evocations of the priory and people within. A lively humour informs Bogies and Sprites that Gambol by Nights, with a ruminative pathos to the fore in Prior’s Chamber by Firelight. Here, as in the exuberant Father Playmate, the aging composer’s devotion to Austro-German romanticism results in music which is as affecting as Parry’s orchestral and choral works from this period.

The second disc opens with two further pieces by Bainton. From among his many miniatures, Willow is a limpidly impressionist album-leaf of no mean poignancy, then The Making of the Nightingale evokes this bird’s creation in imaginative terms that are appealingly realized here. Written for the first Leeds International Piano Competition, Benjamin Britten’s Night Piece is the only acknowledged piano work from his maturity – a study in dynamic and timbral nuance of a finesse as to make one regret his stated antipathy for the modern piano on its own terms.

It is the Piano Sonata by Frank Bridge (placed before the Britten) which inevitably dominates this collection, not least as this recording is among the finest from recent years. Testimony to the composer’s response to the carnage of war as well as its impact on his evolving idiom, the three movements unfold as a single cumulative entity – the sizable opening Allegro preceded by a slow introduction whose main motivic elements are gradually elaborated for the ensuing opposition between anguish and eloquence. The savage rhetoric of its close makes the contrast with the Andante’s consoling rumination more acute, the music as if surveying a landscape of memories which elides straight into the final Allegro with its renewed confrontation of earlier motifs – on the way to a stark denouement then a resigned and almost confessional epilogue.

Pantcheff’s almost contemporary Piano Sonata rounds off this collection. Its three movements each carries an inscription from the epic poem The Axion Esti by Odysseus Elytis that sets the tone for a restive and increasingly tumultuous Inquieto, followed by an Elegia whose sombre imagery might feel almost nihilistic were it not for the plaintive expression that emerges in its latter stages, then a finale whose Alla Vortice marking aptly indicates the gradual intensifying of mood which carries this movement – and the work as a whole – towards its explosive close.

Does it all work?

Undoubtedly, when heard as a collection. Honeybourne has been astute in his planning so that each disc can be appreciated as a stand-alone recital in its own right, or as independent halves of an ‘uber-recital’ which even he would be unlikely to undertake in a live context. All except the Bridge, Britten and Parry are receiving their first recordings, and it would be surprising if some pieces did not enjoy greater exposure in future. For his dedication in championing them, and for putting together such an ambitious anthology, Honeybourne can only be commended.

Is it recommended?

Very much so. The piano sound is a shade hard at climaxes, while spacious and wide-ranging elsewhere, with detailed notes on each work and composer from various sources including the pianist. It adds up to an impressive release and a highlight of the EM Records catalogue so far.

Listen & Buy

You can discover more about this release and listen to clips at the EM Records website, where you can also purchase the recording. For more on Duncan Honeybourne, visit his website – and for more on Richard Pantcheff click here