SERGEI RACHMANINOV (1873-1943)

 Matthew Taylor has chosen to kick off his ambitious series on the Concerto, covering the period from 1900 to 1950, with Rachmaninov. Like Elgar he was a man of the 19^th century although, in his case, only just. Still most of us on first acquaintance with his music perceived a lush romanticism of a distinctly nineteenth century flavour owing more to Tchaikovsky than to his nearer contemporaries, Stravinsky and Prokofiev. Funnily enough, although he did not write film music there seemed to be a Hollywoodian association rather than a Russian one, not forgetting either the thawing effect his second piano concerto would have on the stiff upper lips of Celia Johnson and Trevor Howard in Brief Encounter. His music was regarded as predominantly pianistic and, speaking for myself, it took to the 1980’s with a little help from André Previn to realise just what a wonderful orchestrator he was.

 Rachmaninov’s music was in this country distinctly popular during and following the second world war. It was particularly listenable to for the new emerging young audiences who had no time for all this new fangled modern stuff. The Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, especially the 18^th variation became a no 1 pot boiler. Here was music with a decent tune played not only in the concert halls but also by Sunday night at the Palladium TV artistes such as the pianist, Winifred Attwell, under the title of The Story of Three Loves . It is wrong however to think of Rachmaninov as a Russian emigré remoulded in America. Rachmaninov was an established Russian composer emerging in the early 1890’s whose main output was composed in his years in Russia. He left that country in 1917 and settled in America but in all the time he lived there he found little time to compose producing only six works in twenty six years, albeit very fine ones. His career had by financial necessity become one of a virtuoso pianist always on the road. How different to the life and expectation which lay before him when he was born in1873, the second son to Vasily Rachmaninov an army officer married to his general’s daughter, Lyubov Butakova

 Vasily was an amateur musician as well as a military man. His father had learned the piano under John Field, the Irish composer who spent a large part of his life in Russia. The family had a long aristocratic history but no longer any money to go with it. Still Lyubov had brought into the marriage as a dowry five estates.   Within a few years Vasily had spent, drunk, gambled, invested disastrously and lost four of the estates leaving just the family home, Oneg. He also had a reputation as an inveterate liar and a lady’s man. Apart from that there was little to complain about.

 Sergei’s first encounter with the piano was as a result of being made to sit under it as a punishment. Lyubov was a proficient pianist who gave Sergei his first lessons. He displayed an early musical aptitude and when he was six one Anna Ornatskaya, was engaged from St Petersburg to give him lessons and would remain for three years. Unfortunately in those three years Vasily had not improved and Oneg, the family home had to be auctioned off and the family forced to move to a small flat in St Petersburg. Separate arrangements had to be made for each of the children and in the case of Sergei, just ten years old, Ornatskaya arranged for his admission to St Petersburg Conservatory. The family break up was inevitable with the feckless Vasily leaving and never to return. Lyubov’s mother stepped into the breach to take care of the religious side of the children’s development. Matters became worse when three of the children including Sergei contracted diphtheria. Sergei and his brother recovered but their sister, Sophia succumbed. Fate struck another blow. His elder sister, Yelena, also musical with a fine contralto voice obtained a place in the Bolshoi opera but at age 18 she contracted and died of severe anaemia. On the plus side for Sergei he was taken to the Russian Orthodox churches of Moscow where the chant and the bells would leave a legacy in his music. The problem now was that there was little discipline exercised over Sergei who for three years began missing classes but covering his reports by falsifying the marks such as changing a mark of 1 for that of a 4. Ultimately he was to fail his exams and the family informed that he could lose his place. Urgent steps had to be taken. Alexander Siloti, a cousin who had made a successful piano career and was finishing a course with Lizst recommended that Sergei be shifted from St Petersburg to the Moscow Conservatory and referred Sergei to his own former tutor, the pianist, Nicolai Zverev.

 Zverev took on private pupils but offered the three best pupils the opportunity to board at his flat. He did not charge where the pupil’s family could not afford it. He was a control freak who would brook no dissent. Rachmaninov shared a room with two other thirteen year olds living en famille with the sixty year old Zverev and his sister. Besides daily attendance at the conservatoire there was also vigorous piano practice at the flat for at least three hours a day starting at 6 o’clock in the morning. Zverev encouraged and paid for the boys to broaden their minds by visiting exhibitions, theatre and opera. Amongst his lessons were the playing piano reductions of orchestral works for four six hands or even, on occasion, eight hands with a fourth person joining them. I am not certain I would have liked to have been a neighbour, particularly at 6 am.   Zverev would invite well known celebrities whom the boys would meet, one of whom was Tchaikovsky. Rachmaninov had recently heard his Manfred symphony and had then transcribed for two hands. Tchaikovsky is said to have been impressed but there is no extant record of it by which it can now be judged. It was from the study of piano reductions that Rachmaninov could learn much of the orchestral repertoire and learned his harmony. His first year had been successful and he had benefitted from the discipline. His second year at conservatoire would be studying harmony under Arensky and his success was such that he was taken under the wing of the principal, Tanyev (a dry as dust composer if ever there was one) to study counterpoint. This discipline is very much apparent in the first movement of Rachmaninov’s first symphony.

 It became clear that Rachmaninov was bursting to compose but he was discouraged in this by Zverev which led to the ultimate rift between them. Rachmaninov was writing his first compositions, mainly piano preludes where Chopin was the inspiration but the style already recognizably Rachmaninov. His various preludes were written at different times and ultimately packaged as a set such as his five opus 3’s containing the C sharp minor. This became his universal trademark work. Other early works included a number of songs. It was Tchaikovsky who recommended Rachmaninov to his own publishers and it was they who approached Rachmaninov. Tchaikovsky also advised him not to ask a figure but to leave it to them to name one. Their first commission was 500 roubles, not bad when when he was otherwise only earning 15 roubles a month from odd pupils.

 The rift with Zverev worsened with Rachmaninov more or less expelled from the flat after four years. By now Rachmaninov was no longer the fun loving adolescent but a serious minded individual. He moved in with a fellow student where he had a room of his own giving him the space to compose. Siloti by this time was teaching at the conservatory and introduced Rachmaninov to the Skalons, an aunt and cousins, who lived in a country estate, Ivanovka. Here he was happy to visit particularly Vera, the youngest of three daughters. He was 15 and she 17 but her mother was not going to have any of that, and he was forbidden to write to her. Instead he corresponded with her eldest daughter, Natalia, who herself was no mean pianist. They corresponded about his early compositions including a number of love songs seemingly composed with a nod in Natalia’s direction.

 In 1891, he entered his name a year early at short notice for the final examinations at the Moscow Conservatory. This included the submission of a one act opera. Aleko was composed in 16 days, a vibrant gypsy opera which was successfully produced at the Bolshoi. It not only made the reputation of Rachmaninov but also that of the young Chaliapin. Not only did he pass his examination but he was awarded the Great Gold Medal. He then with Siloti moved to Ivanovka where he began his first piano concerto, his actual opus 1. He also wrote an unnumbered symphony in one movement known as the Youth Symphony; a one-movement symphonic poem, Prince Rotsislav and the Rock, a very haunting orchestral piece somewhat like Sibelius who was also at the beginning of his career in Finland.

 As the early works were beginning to roll out new commissions followed including one to adapt Tchaikovsky’s Sleeping Beauty for two pianos followed in turn by his first Piano trio, Elégiaque. His publishers had now bought outright his five opus 3 preludes for 200 roubles equating to 40 roubles per prelude. One of them was of course the prelude in C sharp minor which would become a pianistic blockbuster. So though it became played all round the world; including on countless occasions by Rachmaninov himself; he was never to receive a kopek for it in royalties.

 Rachmaninov was to receive a hammer blow towards the end of 1893 with the news of Tchaikovsky’s death caused by his drinking a glass of unboiled water during a cholera epidemic. The effect on Rachmaninov was immense and he poured his grief into his second piano trio mindful perhaps that it was a piano trio that Tchaikovsky wrote following the death of Nicholas Rubinstein.

 Soon afterwards there followed the funeral of Zverev. The old boy had gone over the top in the first place; and had continued by putting a stop to another of his pupils performing in a first performance of the Rachmaninov first trio. Nevertheless a healing process did duly come about with Zverev sending pupils to Rachmaninov who was deeply sorrowful at the master’s passing.

 Rachmaninov’s career from there on continued both as a composer and as a pianist performing both in Russia and other European centres. In 1896 he started on his first symphony working swiftly but intermittently between his playing commitments. Eventually the symphony was ready for performance and Alexander Glazunov had agreed to conduct. The symphony was cast in four movements and is very much a combination of classical structure owing something to Tchaikovsky and at the same time containing the sounds of Russian nationalism of the Mussorgsky/Borodin order. Its opening could be from the Night on the Bare Mountain but Mussorgsky himself could never have turned this theme into a fugue as Rachmaninov did in the development section. The opening of the last movement became widely known in the 1960’s as the signature tune of the television programme “What The Papers Say”. The work is powerful and over 65 minutes long. It may have needed a trim here or there but disaster was to occur. Glazunov, known for completing the unfinished works of others, famously Borodin’s Prince Igor, decided to make cuts to the score and changes to some of the instrumentation. It was also said that he was drunk during its ill prepared first performance. Rachmaninov had to escape from the concert hall. There can be nothing worse imaginable for a composer in seeing himself and all the hard work of months of inspirational ideas thrown to the lions by the ill thought caustic comments of critics. In the case of the Rachmaninov the critic in question – there were others – was César Cui, the least known composer of The Five, the Mighty Handful, and whose works are hardly known today. I cannot say if posterity has been unfair to Cui as a composer any more than I can comment on his ability as an engineer in the Russian army but one can say that critics owe a duty of responsibility to the subjects about whom they write, a responsibility that Cui lacked in likening the symphony to the ten plagues of Egypt and declaring it would be admired by the inmates of a music conservatory in hell, a brutal panning if ever there were one. The immediate result was that Rachmaninov withdrew the symphony ordering all copies to be burned; secondly it sent him into a composing block over two years. César Cui has something to answer for. Fortunately Rachmaninov was offered an assistant conductorship at the Bolshoi and so instead began his career at the podium. The symphony was never played again in his lifetime but it was unearthed in its Glazunov incarnation and later in the 1970’s Rachmaninov’s original sketches came to light. So how good a symphony is it? It ought to enjoy the performances given to its successors but here is what Robert Simpson wrote-:

 “It is a powerful work in its own right, …., convinced, individual, finely constructed, and achieving a genuinely tragic and heroic expression – an artistic whole – created naturally and without strain it leaves little to be desired. At no time is it ever less than personal, strongly compelling. All four movements are genuinely thematically integrated”    

 During the period of composition Rachmaninov had been involved emotionally in a relationship which fell apart. His relationship with his cousin Natalia had however become closer and ultimately they became engaged. It took them three years to be able to marry because marriage between cousins, was opposed by the Russian Orthodox Church and his family. Eventually they were married by a military chaplain and their marriage was a happy one with two daughters following. Interestingly, there are two other instances which come to mind of marriages between cousins. Stravinsky had to overcome the same problem in marrying his first wife, Katya. The other composer to marry his first cousin was Grieg but he was Norwegian and for him the Russian Orthodox Church not an issue.

 Following the catastrophe surrounding his first symphony Rachmaninov had a nervous breakdown descending into clinical depression and a creative block. In January 1900 Dr Nicolai Dahl treated him over three months, using novel methods of hypnotherapy to encourage the recovery . This encouraged the restoration of the creative muse and led to the writing and completion of the piano concerto no 2, the most famous of his concertos and which Rachmaninov dedicated to Dr Dahl. In later years Dr Dahl moved to Beirut. He played the viola in the orchestra of the orchestra of the American University there. On one occasion when Rachmaninoff’s 2nd Piano Concerto was performed the audience were informed that the dedicatee of the concerto, Dr Dahl, was a member of the viola section of the orchestra, and they demanded he rise and take a bow!

 In 1904 Rachmaninoff became appointed chief conductor at the Bolshoi Theatre, a position from which he resigned following political upheaval of the failed 1905 uprising. He spent the following three winters composing in Dresden, and returning to the family estate, Ivanovka, each summer. In 1907 he tackled his second symphony and at the same time was writing his tone poem, The Isle of the Dead. In its early days the symphony was considerably cut by conductors so that it only lasted for 35 minutes. Nowadays it is very popular and performances last an hour. The Isle of the Dead is a haunting tone poem based on four paintings by the Swiss symbolist artist Arnold Böcklin and in one article described as four good bad paintings. That may be but the Rachmaninov is for sure one certain good masterpiece.

 In 1909, he composed a third piano concerto for his visit to the USA. This concerto is undoubtedly the most powerful of the four he wrote and contains a scherzo section in the middle of the slow movement, a device he used again later on in his third symphony. The tour was a great success and he was offered the permanent conductorship of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Rachmaninov declined it.

 A close friend of Rachmaninov was the composer Alexander Scriabin who had been a friend of his since their days together as students at the Moscow Conservatory. Scriabin’s death in 1915 affected Rachmaninoff so deeply that he went on a tour giving concerts entirely devoted to Scriabin’s music. When asked to play some of his own music, he would reply: “Only Scriabin tonight”.

 The October Revolution of 1917 brought to an end the Russia as Rachmaninov had known it. As he saw it, the Revolution had led to the loss of his estate and threatened the loss of his livelihood. On 22 December 1917, he left Petrograd with his wife and two daughters on an open sled, having gathered some sketches and two scores of his own compositions and two orchestral scores and Rimsky’s opera, The Golden Cockerel. His only route out with the First World War in the west was to Helsinki. He spent a year performing in Scandinavia. He received three offers of lucrative American contracts which he declined before deciding that the solution to his financial concerns might lie in America. He left for New York on 1 November 1918. How different it might have turned out had the armistice come first? On arrival he was snatched up by an agent, given a piano by Steinway, and signed up with a contract by the Victor Talking Machine Company. He was now on a roller coaster of a concert career travelling non-stop by rail from one place to another. .

He was a sad man with a lugubrious face and now added to his torment was a deep seated homesickness for the Russia he had known and lost. He was described by his friend Stravinsky as a “six-foot scowl.” Between 1918 and his death in 1943, he completed only six compositions and his ability to create those lay in the fact that in 1932 he had bought and built Senar, a new summer home over Lake Lucerne. It is in classic Bauhaus design and it was there that he began writing again. He attributed his blockage to his heavy workload of concerts but in reality it was America itself that was the cause. It was as if he had left his inspiration behind when he left Russia. His revival only came about once he was living at Senar where he spent summers from 1932 to 1939. It reminded him of his old family estate, Ivanovka. Here it was as in his later home in Beverley Hills that the visitors were Russian, the staff Russian and Russian traditions practised. It was here that Rachmaninov composed the Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini in 1934. His comment on finishing it was “This is one for my Agent”. He went on to compose here his third symphony in 1936 which is pure Mother Russia. The Symphonic Dances, his last completed work in 1940, could be described as his Fourth Symphony. They are more symphonic than dance. The idea was suggested by Michel Fokine allowing these two old stalwarts from the Tchaikovsky days to combine in the twilight of their careers. It reminds me of “The Sunshine Boys” or “The Odd Couple”. A dead pan Walter Matthau to play the lugubrious looking Rachmaninov with Jack Lemon playing Fokine. The collaboration didn’t happen. Fokine died in 1942 and Rachmaninov followed him wherever a year later. In many ways it is a summation of Rachmaninov’s achievement as a composer, quoting from his long forgotten first symphony; from the ‘dies irae’ which he returned to time and again; and also Rimsky’s Golden Cockerel, the score of which he brought out with him from Russia. In this work his orchestration has become more modern with the use of a solo saxophone reminiscent of Ravel and the instrumentation more brittle and spiky. There was now a distinct nod towards those two other war horses of the Diaghileff years, Stravinsky and Prokofiev. Just a nod mind you, not a conversion. It is as if after nearly thirty years the kopek might have dropped.

 In late 1940 he was approached to write a short concerto-like piece for use in the British film, Dangerous Moonlight, but he declined. Instead it was offered to Richard Adinsell who came up with the Warsaw Concerto. I have often thought how Rachmaninovian that work sounds. I little knew how close that connection was.

 Rachmaninov died in America in 1943. He was buried in Beverley Hills. He would have liked to have been buried at Senar but the war prevented that. He never returned to Russia. I started at the outset by saying his music was once viewed as luscious late 19^th century romanticism. Much like Elgar in many ways, he did not appear to follow the trends of the twentieth century but simply continued writing his way, nostalgic, romantic, melodic, deeply Russian and attached to an old world; a brilliant orchestrator and pianistic composer whose own music remained always formally structured. A brilliant concert pianist without doubt but I would forgo any recordings or piano rolls he left if only, if only, he had not gone to the States and between 1918 and 1943, there had been available to him a more accommodating environment for him to compose, as Senar turned out to be, which would have then undoubtedly have allowed him to bequeath an even greater legacy to the world.

—————————-

 * Since 2013, the Russian government has been negotiating to purchase Senar together with its many Rachmaninov relics. Rachmaninoff’s grandson who died in 2012 had taken steps to prevent the opening up of the house. I have not heard that the negotiations have yet been concluded. The Russian Ministry of Culture aim to turn it into a Rachmaninov museum and to restore Rachmaninov’s reputation as a composer as opposed to a performer. Could it also, I wonder, should the circumstances arise, turn out to be a Plan B bolthole for Vladimir Putin himself?

 

EDWARD ELGAR (1857-1934)

 Before I got round to writing biographical notes on the subject composers of the Matthew Taylor series I had a shot at writing a dissertation at a history series I was attending at Morley college in 2007. Our lecturer had sought a written presentation on the Indian Mutiny and I had a go. Unfortunately my lecturer never got round to reading it and Simon Schama and David Starkey have no need to panic from the challenge.  My magnum opus started off with a prelude linking the mutiny at Meerut in May 1857 with the birth of a son a month later to the wife of a Worcester piano tuner at nearby Broadheath. The young boy was Edward Elgar destined to become the most famous of composers associated with empire and reaching its and his apogee in Caractacus, written following Queen Victoria’s diamond jubilee in 1897. This work ends with the Romans capturing the British king Caractacus. After a paean to Roman power the centuries roll on, the Roman empire replaced by a new greater British Empire over which the sun would never set.

 Caractacus was the birth of the association between Elgar and the world of swaggering jingoism and imperialism. Associations such as this can prejudicially affect our take on the music of a composer. Our objective view of the music becomes coloured by the composer’s political leanings. Caractacus in particular is a little known cantata, a pity as it is the nearest thing to an opera that Elgar wrote, with distinct nods in the direction of Wagner,. It appeared when Elgar was on the cusp of greatness, two years or so to go before the Enigma Variations and the Dream of Gerontius would hail the arrival of the twentieth century. The climax to Caractacus comes with the Processional March which is so absolutely OTT that one scarcely takes note that it contains wondrous mood settings of the banks of the Severn and of the Malvern Hills. This flag waving triumphalism is echoed of course in the Pomp and Circumstance Marches. Its majesty (maestoso) pervades both of his first two symphonies, brimming with the confidence of the Edwardian decade and ultimately fading away at the end of his second symphony like the lamps all over Europe which were about to go out.

 Until he died in 1934 Elgar was perceived as an establishment figure, the man who wrote Land of Hope and Glory which he detested. (The words were actually written by A C Benson, a teacher at Eton and later Master of Magdalene.) It is against this background that the generation which followed, of which I was one, saw Elgar as a grandee whose music exuded a bygone aristocratic age which had spawned the pith helmetted rulers of the British Raj. (I assure you all I do not have a lisp). What is more it appeared in the immediate post second world war years to be conducted only by the knighted establishment of English conductors, Sir Adrian Boult, Sir John Barbirolli and particularly Sir Malcolm Sargent. Elgar was their personal property and what’s more they and the critics also resented the bloody foreigners attempting to trespass. (Sir Thomas Beecham, Bart was an exception who championed Delius, rather than Elgar, but he would often give a rattling good performance of the Cockaigne Overture). Little wonder it took another generation to see Elgar for what he was, a great composer who regardless of his establishment connections was reflecting a slice of history. He was not however a naturally born Edwardian grandee but a product of the Victorian age. It is a fact overlooked that he was already 43 and had lived over half his life when the old queen died. Here the proof of the pudding is in the moustache. It is a Victorian moustache and the Edwardians who wore them were the surviving older generation. The moustache is surely among the more pointless of fashion statements, wrote Michael Lepman in the Daily Telegraph. The growth of hair on the upper lips of both soldiers and colonial administrators played a decisive role in bringing the natives to heel. The fate of the Empire and the moustache have gone hand in hand. As the red patches on the world map have dwindled to insignificant dots, such as Gibraltar and the Falkland Islands, so the once-universal furry caterpillar on the lip has become an endangered species.

 Sir Edward William Elgar, 1st Baronet, OM, GCVO was knighted in 1904. In 1911 he was appointed a member of the Order of Merit; in 1920 it was the Cross of Commander of the Belgian Order of the Crown; in 1924 he was made Master of the King’s Musick; the following year came the Gold Medal of the Royal Philharmonic Society; in 1928 he got his KCVO (Knight Commander of the Royal Victorian Order). Between 1900 and 1931, he received countless honorary degrees from the Universities in Britain and from all over the world and was made member of the top European and American academies. In 1931 he became a baronet, the first baronet of Broadheath of Worcestershire.

 Yet behind all the pomp lay the circumstances of a very humble provenance. Despite all the splendour, he felt himself an outsider, not only socially but musically. In musical circles dominated by academics, Parry and Stanford, he was a self-taught composer (as was Walton after him); he was a Roman Catholic within a Protestant establishment and regarded with suspicion in some quarters; and he remained sensitive about his humble origins even after having achieved recognition.

 His father, William, came from Dover and moved to Worcester in 1841 where he worked as a piano tuner and set up a shop in the High Street selling sheet music and musical instruments. His mother, Ann, was the daughter of a farm worker. The couple married in 1848 and Edward was the fourth of seven. Ann Elgar had converted to Roman Catholicism shortly before Edward’s birth, and he was baptised and brought up as a Roman Catholic, despite his father’s disapproval. William was a violinist of professional standard and held the post of organist at the Worcester Catholic Church for forty years. By the age of eight, Elgar was taking piano and violin lessons. He began composing at about 10. It was for a play written and acted by the Elgar children and would have little significance except that forty years later he rearranged and orchestrated it as the Wand of Youth suites.

 Elgar received a general education at a local school near Worcester. His musical training was just piano and violin lessons from local teachers and more advanced violin studies in brief visits to London in 1877–78. Elgar described his first music as having been learnt in the cathedral, from books he borrowed from the music library, when he was eight, nine or ten. He was self-taught from manuals on organ playing and every book he could lay his hands on on the theory of music. He would have liked to have gone to Leipzig for further musical studies, but his father could not afford it. Instead, on leaving school 15, he started as a clerk with a local solicitor. So we do have one thing in common, Elgar and I. Not unsurprisingly he did not find the work fulfilling. After a few months, he left the solicitor and started giving piano and violin lessons and working occasionally in his father’s shop. He was an active member of the Worcester Glee Club, along with his father. It was around this time, he made his first public appearances as a violinist and organist. Elgar himself, having heard leading virtuosi at London concerts, felt his own violin playing lacked a full enough tone, and he abandoned any ambitions of being a soloist.

Elgar gained his first position as a conductor in 1879 when he was 22. But this was not to be some top notch symphony orchestra or chorus. The only orchestra of today around at the time was the Halle and Sir Charles Halle was to hold his position there till 1895. On the whole orchestras of the day were amalgams of freelance get together individual players and not contract musicians. Elgar’s little band of happy musicians was that of the Worcester and County Lunatic Asylum in Powick, all of three miles away from Worcester. Its line up consisted of: piccolo, flute, clarinet, two cornets, euphonium, three or four first and about the same number of second violins, occasional viola, cello, double bass and piano. Elgar coached the players and wrote and arranged their music. From this concoction he acquired a practical knowledge of the capabilities of these varied instruments. He held this post for five years, from 1879. At the same time he became the professor of violin at the Worcester College for the Blind Sons of Gentleman, no less. He made his way in and around Worcester and played in the violin section of the orchestra at the Worcester Festival and at Birmingham where he was to play Dvorak’s 6th symphony and Stabat Mater under the composer’s baton, an event which left a lifelong impression upon him.

Elgar made his first trip abroad in 1880 with a visit to pre-Eiffel Tower Paris and saw Saint-Saëns play the organ of La Madeleine. He made his first German trip in 1882 and got immersed in Brahms, Schumann, Wagner and Rubinstein. At Leipzig he met an English student, Helen Weaver, and they got engaged. It got broken off however and Elgar came out somewhat hurt. The reason is not known but clearly she had thought better of it. Maybe she did not like the prospect of her intended being the conductor of the Lunatic Asylum Ensemble.

 In 1883 he wrote his first full orchestral work. He was then a regular of the orchestra doing the winter concert season at Birmingham. The work was called Sérénade Mauresque. He was invited to conduct it but preferred to keep his place in the orchestra and afterwards rose to bow, violin in his hand, and then resumed his place. He began visiting London to try and get published but he was stony broke and despondent. At least there were teaching and playing jobs back in Worcester. He also deputised for his father as organist at the Catholic church and took over from him in 1885. From that he wrote liturgical works based on Catholic tradition and which are still in the repertoire of church choirs.

 In 1886, aged 29, he took on a new pupil, Caroline Alice Roberts. Socially she was more than a cut above him. Her father had been a major-general. She probably took to Elgar putting his arm around her shoulder to help her violin technique. Anyway things happened and they became engaged. She was eight years older than him. As an engagement present, Elgar dedicated his short violin and piano piece, Salut d’Amour, to her. Her family were very hostile to the intended marriage. He after all worked in a shop and he was a Catholic to boot. Alice went ahead despite being told she would not inherit or get any support. Three years after meeting they were married at Brompton Oratory. All of this was of course pre-Downton Abbey. She became the driving force in the marriage, acting as his manager, his social secretary and was his keenest critic. She fought hard to introduce him to influential society and, with her pushing, they moved to London where she could do the networking whilst he did the composing. Their daughter, Carice, a contraction of Caroline Alice, was born in West Kensington in 1890.

 In London, Edward and Alice spent time together at various concerts, particularly those conducted by August Manns at the Crystal Palace. He learned many orchestral tricks of the trade from Berlioz and Wagner and influences from each of these two can be clearly detected in the second movement of Elgars second symphony. This movement was in memoriam to Edward VII. Its long elegiac theme sounds like one of the impassioned build ups from Tristan and Isolde. The autumnal ending of the movement has a low trombone note following a high flute creating a sound that could only have come to his ear from the Hostias of the Berlioz Grande Messe Des Morts. He himself was not making headway at the time and when he did receive a commission it actually came from Worcester to write a short orchestral work for the Three Choirs Festival. The Overture, Froissart, was to be his first step on the professional ladder where Elgar has discovered his voice. It is a concert overture after Walter Scott concerning knightly deeds. The first performance in 1890 took place in Worcester with Elgar conducting.

 One swallow however etc and lacking other work, there was nothing for it but to leave London in 1891 for a second time and return with his wife and child to Worcestershire, where he could earn a living conducting local musical ensembles and teaching. They settled in Great Malvern where Alice had previously lived. During the 1890s, Elgar began to build a reputation as a composer. His delightful Serenade for Strings dates from 1892 and frequently gets an airing but the bulk was chiefly works for the great choral festivals. The Black Knight (1892) and King Olaf (1896) were both inspired by Longfellow. The Light of Life (1896) and Caractacus (1898) were all modestly successful but not such as to make money. He had however made it sufficiently to obtain Novello & Co as publishers and particularly from them August Jaeger who became his closest friend. Following a holiday in 1897 in Germany he wrote Three Bavarian Dances. He was prone to despair but encouraged by Jaeger with “Your time of universal recognition will come.” He was to be right. So right that not only Elgar but Jaeger himself would become universally famous without his name being known.

 Writing a theme with variations was nothing new. Often the listener does not always make the connection between theme and variation and sees it as just some academic exercise. In 1899, Elgar had sketched a theme and then had the idea, well let him tell the story in his own words, “I have sketched a set of Variations on an original theme. The Variations have amused me because I’ve labelled them with the nicknames of my particular friends … that is to say I’ve written the variations each one to represent the mood of the party and have written what I think they would have written – if they were asses enough to compose”. He dedicated the work “To my friends pictured within”. The theme is very recognizable but Elgar added a cryptic clue that behind the whole thing was a larger theme. What was it? No one has yet discovered it or was it just Elgar playing clever to arouse interest. The enigma had been set and all the world loves a party game. This was no dry crusty theme and variations but variations which are very human and humorous. The friends are exposed with all their quirks and they bring a smile to one’s lips. Many are described by nicknames, some by initials, one by *** thought to be a romantic attachment of Elgar from before his marriage. The three principal portraits are CAE, the initials of Alice; Nimrod, the nickname for Jaeger. Nimrod is the hunter and Jaeger is the German word for hunter. His variation has turned into an annual funeral March every remembrance Sunday but funeral march it is not. Its link to the main theme is fairly obvious but it also has an upward familiarity to Beethoven’s Pathethique sonata, a pointer to Jaeger’s love of that composer. The third such person is the last variation, EDU. Not initials but the endearment by which Alice called Elgar. EDU is thus Elgar himself emerging out of the music, out of the century with confidence and an individuality which was to bring him fame at last at 42. Oh I forgot one other, not named. Variation X1 GRS was George Robertson Sinclair, organist at Hereford Cathedral, but also included is his bulldog, Dan, who slips into the river Wye and who is heard paddling away down river.

 To finish off 1899 Elgar wrote Sea Pictures for mezzo and orchestra for performance at the Norwich Triennial Festival. These are wonderful songs the most famous being a setting of Where Corals Lie by Robert Garnett but Elgar, loyal to Alice included a poem by her, “In Haven (Capri)”.

 The next ten years or so were the crowning experience, a period which coincided with the reign of Edward VII and going just beyond, the Edwardian years, the pre-war years. This was the period of Elgar at the top of his powers and here we need to look briefly at a few of the great works to emerge.

 His next major work had already been commissioned for the Birmingham Triennial Festival. He had known the poem by John Henry Newman of the Dream of Gerontius for many years. His mother had given him a copy on his wedding. The poem relates the journey of a pious man’s soul from his deathbed to his judgment before God and settling into Purgatory.  Newman had been a protestant priest and leader of the Oxford movement which sought to return the Church of England to Catholic forms of worship. He went further by converting to Catholicism and was made a cardinal. He has recently been canonized which will hopefully do him a lot of good. Elgar set a number of verses to music in a large scale work for soloists chorus and orchestra – he did not like the name, oratorio. It went through hurried rehearsals; the chief chorus master died shortly before the first performance; the conductor, Hans Richter, received a copy of the full score only on the eve of the first orchestral rehearsal. Little wonder the first performance was a disaster and Elgar shattered at the debacle. Fortunately its fortunes changed following its London performance at Westminster Cathedral. It was then played in Dusseldorf. The Cologne Gazette claimed that Elgar stood on the shoulders of Berlioz, Wagner and Liszt. Richard Strauss toasted the success of Meister Elgar. There followed performances in Vienna, New York and Paris. Two years before, Elgar, little known outside Worcester and Birmingham, was scraping for commissions. Now he was an international star. Of course Gerontius did the rounds all round England but not without difficulty in some quarters. Some bishops banned its performance in cathedrals finding the catholic concepts doctrinally alien. Musically it got short shrift from Stanford who had a vinegary disposition and criticised it as stinking of incense. As a God fearing atheist myself I am amused that here we have an inverse situation, an Irish protestant from Dublin castigating an English catholic!

 In 1901, Edward Elgar called to his wife from the piano in the next room “Alice, I have a tune here which will knock ‘em flat”. The tune in question was to become his Pomp and Circumstance March Number 1 and first played at a Prom that year conducted by Henry Wood. Benson’s “Land of Hope and Glory” was fitted to it to celebrate the coronation of Edward VII. With one exception when Wood created a national protest by leaving it out, it has always been played at the last night of the Proms   He went on to write four more pomp and circumstance marches but on the whole only No. 4 is generally known. Elgar viewed the march like Dvorak did the Slavonic Dance or Johann Strauss the waltz. In fact number two is somewhat Dvorakian. The fifth march stands outside the cycle written as a late addition in 1930. Elgar loved watching soldiers ceremonially marching and this comes out in his overture, Cockaigne, sub-titled, (In London Town). Cockaigne is an old name for London from which is derived the name Cockney. The overture is buzzing with London pride and the cheeky cockney, the lovers in the park and in the midst comes what first sounds like a salvation army band and in the later reprise a full swaggering military band marching the Mall to a thumping bass drum.

 In 1903 Elgar wrote the Apostles for the Birmingham Festival. It has never achieved the popularity of Gerontius but there are plenty who claim it to be the greater, more professional, work. Within a few years the Apostles was joined by the Kingdom. In early 1904 a three day festival of Elgar works at Covent Garden took place. Included was the first performance of his concert overture, In The South. Edward and Alice had holidayed in Alassio in Italy in the winter of 1903 and the idea hit him to “depict the streams, flowers, hills; the distant snow mountains in one direction and the blue Mediterranean in the other; the conflict of the armies on that very spot long ago.” This powerful work has a new more modern sound clearly influenced by Richard Strauss. The best known part of the piece is the central serenade played by a solo viola, one of the most delicious melodies Elgar ever penned. In July he received his knighthood. Now there was no need to have to stay in London. Elgar and his family moved to a large house in Hereford overlooking the Wye. He was reunited not for the first time with home territory and lived there till 1911.

 His new surroundings probably influenced his next prominent work, the Introduction and Allegro for string quartet and orchestra written in 1905. It was written to display the skills of the newly founded London Symphony Orchestra. Elgar visited America in that year to conduct his music including the Introduction and Allegro. The work’s main theme is thought to be of Welsh origin. It is in effect a form of neo Baroque concerto grosso with the quartet, usually leaders of their respective sections, and the main body of strings bouncing off of each other. In the middle comes what Elgar described to Jaeger as “a devil of a fugue”.

 With the approach of his fiftieth birthday in 1908 Elgar wrote his first symphony which was an immediate success, nationally and internationally. In just over a year, it received over a hundred performances. It starts with a motto theme which dominates much of the work and returns in various moods, most notably in the last movement when it interrupts the proceedings with the sweetest Elgar you are ever likely to hear.

He followed this by the violin concerto commissioned by Fritz Kreisler. Elgar wrote it during the summer of 1910. Although Elgar knew the violin he enlisted help from W. H. Reed, the leader of the LSO.   Their friendship would last for the rest of Elgar’s life and Reed wrote a biography, “Elgar As I Knew Him”. This is one of two concertos Matthew will be dealing with in his new series “Concertos 1900-1950”. It is a prodigious work in three movements and 54 minutes in length.   The Violin Concerto was a great triumph, indeed Elgar’s last popular triumph. It is best known for the recording made in 1932 at Abbey Road by the 16 year old Yehudi Menuhin with Elgar conducting.

 The years leading to the First World War were more troubled for him. It is too glib to say that Elgar lost it with the death of Edward VII which would not have made any difference to him. It was the audience which had lost it, not him. One paints the period as a golden age before 1914 when it was in fact politically in turmoil following Lloyd George’s Peoples Budget, the Parliament Act; the Suffragettes; industrial strikes, an arms race with Germany and civil war looming in Ireland, all of which Mr Asquith took in his stride. It was against this background that Elgar’s second symphony, dedicated to the memory of His Late Majesty, King Edward VII, received its first performance. It has a quote at the foot of the first page from Shelley, “Rarely, rarely, comest thou, Spirit of Delight!”. And there is one recurring theme throughout and upon which the work ends referred to as the “Spirit of Delight”. It opens with orchestral splendour but also contains moments of quiet contemplation. The slow movement is an elegiac epitaph to the late king. The rushing scherzo is followed by a section where hell breaks loose as the orchestra builds to a nightmarish climax with an insistent accompaniment of percussion as if Elgar sensed what might come. The fourth movement however is reminiscent of earlier times, a sense of Back to the Hansom cab rather than the motor car. Its final fading would leave John Barbirolli with tears down his face. The second symphony did not achieve instant popularity but it remains up there with the first symphony and the violin concerto.

 Two other works to mention from this immediate pre-war period are The Music Makers and Falstaff. The Music Makers was yet another choral commission in which Elgar quotes from a number of his earlier works starting with the Engima. The idea of self glorification came from Richard Strauss’s Ein Heldenleben (A Hero’s Life) in which Strauss quotes from his various musical heroes. The trouble with both is that you have to know the pieces being quoted to make sense of it. All right for musical quizzes. Falstaff is a tone poem based of course on the fat knight from Henry IV. It has always been considered an odd work and even its dedicatee, the conductor Landon Ronald said that he could not make head nor tail of it. It is Elgar beginning to take a new direction. Unfortunately the country took another one.

 Elgar was horrified at the prospect of the war but he did his bit becoming a special constable in the local police and joining the Hampstead Volunteer Reserve but his composing output was hardly top notch stuff. The fact was that the mood of the time did not match what he had been writing or what people might have expected from him. It was in any event a mood changing like quick sand as Elgar’s old world was fast disappearing. I once had an LP of music from Joan Littlewood’s “Oh what a Lovely War” except the recordings were repros of the acoustic recordings of the originals. The songs were taken in chronological order and start with the mad optimism of “Belgium put the Kibosh on the Kaiser”. It descends into the plea of “When This Lousy War is Over” and by 1917 there is the heart rending “Keep the Home Fires Burning”. Elgar was not able to get on the bandwagon. Ivor Novello got it just right at the right time. So what did Elgar produce? There was Carillon for speaker and orchestra to pay tribute to Belgium; there was Polonia for orchestra to pay tribute to Poland. He wrote an innocuous ballet, the Sanguine Fan and the music for a children’s Christmas show, Starlight Express (no connection with the long running rock opera of Andrew Lloyd Webber). He wrote some music for verses of Rudyard Kipling, “The Fringes of The Fleet” but Kipling himself withdrew. And in 1917 he wrote the music to “The Spirit of England”, verses by Lawrence Binyon. Land of Hope and Glory of course was played all over the place and Elgar was quite sick of having to conduct it all the time.

 Towards the end of the war, Elgar was under the weather and the doctors recommended removal of the tonsils, then considered to be a dangerous operation for a sixty year old. Alice thought it best for his recuperation to get him away from London and to move to the countryside. The previous summer she and Carice had seen a thatched cottage ‘Brinkwells’, near Fittleworth, in Sussex, with views of the South Downs. In April 1918 they rented it again and moved in. Elgar loved it and surprised the family by asking for his Steinway piano to be sent there. He started writing straight away. Four major works came from this period all of which he was writing at the same time. Three of them were chamber works, a violin sonata, a string quartet and a piano quintet, all mediums he had never essayed before. The fourth was his cello concerto. What became the main tune of its first movement he actually wrote down, not knowing what to do with it, the previous year. All three chamber works were completed quite quickly and the quartet and quintet played together at Wigmore Hall. They were well received but they were a far flung thing from the flag waving optimism of the pre-war years. There can be no doubt about the devastating effect the war had had on Elgar, still had as they could hear at night the rumblings from the front from across the channel. One must not however necessarily interpret what one hears as necessarily the direct response to the war. There is an overall pervading sadness particularly in the quartet and quintet which appear to start with pessimism. The same atmosphere permeates the cello concerto. It is though sadness from within, a sadness of compassion, not pessimism. The piano quintet starts out bleakly but its second subject produces a theme that sounds as if out of the palm court orchestra. To me it is both introspective and retrospective as if – my thoughts only – Elgar was looking back sadly and fondly to earlier times. A tea dance perhaps in the Waldorf Astoria. The theme returns in the last movement like a last trickling tear for an epoch never to return. The four works are grouped together as the new re-emergent Elgar, wholly detached from the pre-war years. Yet I venture to question this in one way. I did write earlier to suggest that Falstaff written in 1913 appeared to be taking a new direction. I wonder whether it was at times the same direction that Elgar took in 1918-19. Of course it was different, a Straussian tone poem but containing very similar sections of wistfulness and sadness as the old knight tearfully recalled his youthful days. Here now five years on and with a world war intervening was Elgar replacing his own quixotic character with himself. Musically here is Elgar reaching out to the past. It is just a passing thought.

 

The cello concerto had a disastrous first performance, with the London Symphony Orchestra in October 1919 under its newly appointed conductor, Alber Coates. Elgar himself was due to conduct his own work but Coates overran his rehearsal time at the expense of Elgar. Alice wrote , “that brutal selfish ill-mannered bounder … that brute Coates went on rehearsing.” In contrast with the First Symphony and its hundred performances in just over a year, the Cello Concerto did not have a second performance in London for more than a year. One nineteen year old cellist in the orchestra would not forget the occasion. Giovanni Battista Barbirolli later became a conductor and anglicised his first name to John. His recording of the cello concerto with Jacqueline du Pré is assuredly the most famous of this work.

 Elgar seemed set to continue but six months later Lady Alice Elgar died of cancer aged 72 and Elgar came to a complete stop. She had been the driving force behind him, inspiring him, pushing him when he preferred to do anything else other than compose. She had made him the only purpose of her existence. Where would Elgar have gone had she survived? One suspects he would have pursued this new direction, perhaps similar to Sibelius with his sixth and seventh symphonies or his tone poem Tapiola which has similar inspirational sources of woodland forests and nymphs as might have attracted Elgar. Sibelius alas also took an early sauna. Elgar was shattered and lonely. His instincts got him to pack his cases and drive to Worcestershire with his two dogs, which Alice would never previously let into the house, now sitting as his travelling companions in the back of his open car.

 Elgar was not short of activities but compositionally he had dried up in a world which no longer seemed interested in his style of music. He conducted, guesting with the London Symphony Orchestra for whom he had previously been chief conductor in 1911 and with the Halle. He recorded nearly all his works in the latest technique of electric microphone recordings. He had previously made acoustic recordings but he left with His Master’s Voice an authoritative legacy of his works, the first composer to do so seriously. He became appointed Master of the Kings Musick and famously he conducted Pomp and Circumstance No 1, the virtual English National Anthem, at the opening ceremony in 1924 of the Empire Games at the new Empire Stadium at Wembley with its twin towers, alas no more. He took up chemistry, took a long cruise which took him up the Amazon; he wrote an anthem for his favourite football team, Wolverhampton Wanderers, “He Banged the Leather for Goal”, he wrote the Severn Suite for brass band played by the Foden Motor Works Band at the Crystal Palace; but his great passion was horse racing. Yehudi Menuhin has related how after the famous recording of the violin concerto Elgar looked at his watch to confirm that there was enough time to make it to Newmarket. He produced the odd work, some songs for the Empire Exhibition, a Nursery Suite based like the Wand of Youth suites on airs he had written as a young man. It was dedicated to the newly born Princess Margaret, her older sister Princess Elizabeth (the present queen) and their mother, then Duchess of York.

 In 1931 Elgar set eyes upon a semi professional violinist, Vera Hockman, in the orchestra pit at Croydon. She was 40 years younger than him but she set her eyes on him also. There is little doubt that Elgar had eyes for a pretty maiden now and then but for the most part it appears to have been little more than that. Dr David Wright, a composer, who cannot find one good word for Elgar, which itself makes his judgments questionable, suggests something more sinister and which in today’s quest for witch hunts could result in yet another government enquiry to find out why no one complained in the first place and to strip Elgar of his knighthood, his baronetcy and his Royal Philharmonic Society gold medal into the bargain. Vera was the daughter of a Jewish diamond merchant and had married a rabbi with whom she had two children. The marriage was not working and she left. Elgar and she met up and she was invited to Marl Bank his nine bedroom country home in Worcestershire. They only needed one of them. Elgar had found love and inspiration. Her husband did not find their relationship kosher and refused to divorce her.

 It was at much the same time that Bernard Shaw came to the aid of the party. He persuaded the BBC who had just founded its own orchestra under Boult to commission a third symphony from Elgar. He began work and was writing at the same time an opera, The Spanish Lady. Neither would be finished in his lifetime. The symphony was more advanced than appear from the sketches. Most of the ideas came from earlier works. There are hints of swagger from earlier times but not the martial splendour; the second movement is short and light, a little reminiscent of the Sanguine Fan; the third movement contains much of the pain which has to be unlocked. The fourth movement starts with energy but…..

 Elgar was taken ill and found writing more difficult; his ideas were not all written down but Billy Reed had played sections with him and knew what Elgar was looking for. Elgar then underwent an operation during which it was discovered he had incurable cancer. He stopped writing. He asked Reid not to let anyone tamper with the score but to burn it and thus it so remained. Anthony Payne, a composer, had spent twenty years trying to piece it together but the Elgar trustees would not allow him or anyone to elaborate upon it until, with copyright due to run out in 2004, they realised that someone else might do so. So, they commissioned Anthony Payne himself to do so. If there are weaknesses they are Elgar’s, not Payne’s, and to be fair to Elgar he would, likely as not, have reworked it before publishing had he lived.

Elgar died in 1934. His music of course was completely out of fashion for thirty years and forever linked with Empire. The old generation of conductors began to disappear and we began to hear Elgar under such conductors as Solti, Barenboim and Haitink. As usual these foreigners were acknowledged but Elgar was not in their blood. So it was that Solti conducted at the Festival Hall and then recorded the second symphony. It went at a rate of knots with all the pent up energy that that conductor was known. Of course it was criticised. Had he not listened to the recordings of Boult, Sargent and Barbirolli. Maybe not, but Solti had obviously listened to the recordings of Edward Elgar whose speeds he had reproduced. Of course Elgar had clearly speeded up to fit the recording into the 4 minutes 20 seconds allowed for one side of a 78 rpm shellac disc. Ah well, there’s always an answer. The fact is, it is this later generation of conductors that have revealed that Elgar is international property, just like Beethoven or Brahms.

BELA BARTÓK (1881 – 1945)

BACKGROUND TO THE SERIES ON THE 20^TH CENTURY CONCERTO

Back in the very early 1950’s the name to strike terror when talking about modern music was Bartók, rather like Stockhausen today. It was with trepidation that I borrowed some 78’s of Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra from the record library and how courageous I thought myself to listen to it. Nowadays it presents no problem at all. I have previously written specifically on his ballet “The Wooden Prince” and I have expanded that note so as to accompany Matthew’s programme on his concertos.

Bartók was a Hungarian. But even to say that begs a question because Hungary had a habit, not of its own choosing, in changing its size and borders and exact whereabouts from time to time and the part of Hungary where Bartók was born is now in Rumania. All of these areas were part of Austro-Hungary, a two state – one kingdom power broken up in 1919 by the Versailles Treaty. Take for instance his popular Five Rumanian Dances for violin written in 1915, just before The Wooden Prince. These were dances from Transylvania, an area of Rumania taken over by Hungary in 1867. Thus the Rumanian Dances were home to Bartók much as Woolwich once might have been to Arsenal.

 Bartók was born into a musical family and received good piano training from his mother from when he was four. When he was seven his father who had been a head teacher died and his mother moved to Pressburg, now Bratislava in Slovakia. He gave a first public piano recital there when he was 11 including compositions of his own. In 1898 he turned down an offer from the Vienna Conservatory, but chose instead to stay in Hungary at the Budapest Academy where he first met Zoltan Kodaly. His early work was influenced greatly by Richard Strauss and Liszt. His first major work, Kossuth written in 1903 is a long tone poem written following his hearing the first performance in Budapest of Strauss’s “Also Spracht Zarathustra”. Kossuth depicts the deeds of a Hungarian hero of the 1848 revolution.

In 1907 Bartók became appointed professor of piano at the Budapest Academy. This would allow him freedom of time to continue his compositional activity, as well as his researches to reproduce the authentic in the pursuit of what he termed ethno- musicological studies. He began collecting folk music by recording musicians on wax cylinders, carried out in conjunction with Kodaly, much as Vaughan-Williams and Holst were doing with English folk music. This had a profound impact on Bartók’s compositional style, for in these pieces he found elements that he began to incorporate into his own writing. These folk tunes, removed from the traditional major/minor tonality of Western music, provided new lines of melody and harmonies, and their asymmetrical rhythms became a hallmark of Bartók’s rhythmic style. It became immediately obvious to him that Hungarian folk song with its pentatonic scales had nothing in common with the gypsy music popularized by Liszt in his Hungarian Rhapsodies or Brahms in his Hungarian Dances. These were about as genuine as those Rumanian accordionists one sees on the Paris Metro. Bartók and Kodaly went on to compile and publish a volume of the songs they had collected. These encompassed a number of ethnic traditions both near at hand and further afield, Transylvanian, Romanian and stretching to Anatolia.

He wrote the first of his six string quartets in 1908 which, like his piano pieces, takes in these folk sounds. The new great emerging modern influence of the time was Debussy and certain aspects were absorbed by Bartók whilst developing his own distinctive Bartók sound. He wrote his only opera, “Duke Bluebeard’s Castle”, in 1911. During the Great War Bartók he wrote his ballet, “The Wooden Prince”. His reputation at this stage stemmed more from his concert performances as a pianist than as a composer. Meantime his own music grew tighter, more concentrated, chromatic and dissonant. His sound world was modernist but although a sense of key is sometimes lost in individual passages, Bartók never went along with atonality. 1919 saw the break-up of Austro Hungary and a brief Bolshevik revolution in Hungary. It was soon replaced by a near Fascist takeover to which Bartók was always opposed. He earned some notoriety when the Nazis banned his ballet The Miraculous Mandarin written in 1918–19 but not performed until 1926 because of its sexually explicit plot.

His international reputation grew throughout the 1920’s and 30’s. His Dance Suite was written in 1923 to celebrated the 50th anniversary of the unification of the two cities, Buda and Pest with a symbolic chain bridge across the Danube. In 1927 he wrote the first of his three piano concertos, the piano part of which is noticeably and notably percussive in nature. Bartók actually directed in the score “The percussion (including timpani) must be placed directly behind the piano” and the kettle drum can be clearly heard as if in partnership with the piano . For Bartók the piano was in essence a percussion instrument and this was his own distinctive style of that period.

The second piano concerto followed in 1931 and is more dense. Bartók created his own blend of sonata form, which involves a kind of mirror-recapitulation, with the reprisal of the opening material in the correct sequence, but with each theme in mirror form as well as played back to front. Much of Bartók’s music was seen as difficult, a trait it must be admitted of his own making. The Danish composer Carl Nielsen met Bartók at the time that Nielsen was writing his sixth symphony. Now this work started off simply enough but ran into trouble of its own. Nielsen was experiencing difficulties in his private life at the time.  Nevertheless Nielsen was somewhat depressed when Bartók asked him, “Mr Nielsen, do you think my music is modern enough?”

Bartók’s second period, his most modernist, had begun with the end of the first world war when he, underwent a period of expressionism and barbarism probably influenced by Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring. This radical phase of his output lasted until 1926 followed by an easing in his style which became leaner and formally tighter. It included three of the cycle of six string quartets he wrote, which could be described as uncompromising, yes, but so were the last quartets of Beethoven for that matter. He remained resident throughout in Hungary always an arch opponent of the fascists. He refused to be the soloist when his own music was played in Nazi Germany. His feelings towards them were reciprocated.  

His third period could be said to have begun with his “Music for Strings Percussion and Celesta” in 1936/7 commissioned by the wealthy Swiss conductor Paul Sacher for the tenth anniversary of his Basle Chamber Orchestra. It is written for double string orchestra and takes a neo-classical turn. It opens in a fugal style which owes much to Bartók’s study of Bach but makes no attempt to sound like him. It owes nothing however to Stravinsky whose own neo-classical concerto Dumbarton Oaks was written the following year and makes every attempt to sound like Bach. The title of the work does not mention the word piano but there is a prominent role again for this instrument amongst the percussion. The third movement could be music of the spheres with an odd xylophone introducing it followed by glissandi effects on strings and on timpani. Its last movement recalls some of his early Rumanian folksong. Bartók was again championed by Sacher who commissioned the Divertimento in 1939. In between came his sonata for two pianos and percussion and his violin concerto (now known as No 2) written in 1938 for Zoltan Szekely which some consider his finest work. This final period reveals a more approachable side to Bartók . Don’t get me wrong, Bartók was not going to suddenly become a populist. He was coming in from the impenetrable. His style would remain searching serious and shadowy but deliberate mystification would be shed. Now he no longer seems to be seeking to shock but often to be communing with himself.

His last string quartet was written in 1939 and with his going to America might well have ended up as his last work. Bartók had come to realise that he could no longer stay on in Hungary. He had sent on his scores to America where he and his second wife sailed to in 1940. He was just in time. The Hungarian Government joined in the war just afterwards… on the side of the Axis.

To begin with Bartók considered his stay in the U.S. not so much as emigration but as exile. He did however take up American citizenship in 1945 just before his death. Although he was considered one of the greatest concert pianists of his day there was little demand for concert performance by him. One benefit for him was his appointment as professor at Columbia University where he was able to study its large collection of Serbo-Croatian folk music. He lacked any incentive to continue with composition. The Bartóks lived in relative obscurity in New York. They had a small income from royalties and lectures but added to this he became ill and was diagnosed with leukaemia. Being America, to obtain good treatment one needed to be able to afford to do so. Being America, the American Society for Composers, Authors, and Publishers paid Bartók’s medical expenses. It was then that Serge Koussevitzky, conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra stepped in to make a decision which gave the musical world one of its greatest legacies. Previously Koussevitsky over the years had arranged commissions of numerous composers. Stravinsky’s Symphony of Psalms, Ravel’s orchestration of Mussorgsky’s Pictures from an Exhibition; Rachmaninov, Roussel; Honneger’s Pacific 231; Prokofiev’s fourth symphony and the first of Martinu’s six symphonies after he had arrived in America also in 1940. Closer even to home came the financial backing in 1942 to Benjamin Britten, then holed up in America, for Peter Grimes.

Now in 1943 came the commission from the Koussevitsky Foundation for Bartók to write a concerto in memory of Koussevitsky’s wife, Natalie. It was not written for any one solo instrument nor for any particular concertante group of instruments but to be a concerto for orchestra. It would be designed for the orchestra to show itself off, just as a soloist might, in switching between its various sections. It was a work which was right up the street of the streamlined American orchestras of the time and it turned out to be Bartók’s greatest success, not that he would live long to savour that result. Written in five movements it is in all but name a symphony. Now Bartók was never a barrel load of laughs but the fourth movement demonstrates to us for the first time that he actually had a sense of humour. The Hungarian sounding serenade gets interrupted and we are propelled into Colney Island and all the fun of the fair. The trombones join in with most un-Bartók like deep raspberries before the fairy tale resumes. For sheer excitement the last movement sets off with a huge whirlwind of strings sounding almost like a hundred and one gipsy cimbaloms or zithers. The sounds become wilder with the entry of the brass, reminiscent in some ways of the sounds of Janacek’s sinfonietta.

The Concerto for Orchestra rekindled, albeit briefly, Bartók’s creativity. In 1944 he composed a sonata for solo violin, written for Yehudi Menuhin. His last major work was the third piano concerto which includes bird calls and sounds of nature. This was written with the playing of his wife in mind. The piano writing is no longer percussive but quite gentle. His viola concerto was unfinished at his death, and completed by his long time pupil, Tibor Serly. These late pieces caught the spirit of the approaching end of the second world war. They remain Hungarian influenced, but here and there one has the feeling there is an added American dimension and that a fusion has grown between Hungarian folk modes on the one hand and the blues on the other. A touch of Benny Goodman perhaps!

On September 26, 1945, Bartók died in a New York hospital. He was buried in New York. In 1988, with the iron curtain raised, his remains were transferred to Budapest. There, a statue of him was erected in front of the Unitarian Church to which he belonged..