Jennifer Pike plays Tchaikovsky:Themes and variations

12 March 2018: Forum Theatre, Malvern Theatres

• Sergei Prokofiev – Symphony no1 ‘Classical’ in D major, op25
• Franz Schubert – Symphony no3 in D major, D200
• Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky – Violin Concerto in D major, op35

Tonight’s concert begins and ends with bright, golden fireworks… – or yellow ones, at least: Russian composers Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov (1844-1908) and Alexander Scriabin (1872-1915) both agreeing (for once) that this was the characteristic colour, for them, of the key of D major. In his influential work of 1785, Ideas Towards an Aesthetic of Music, Christian Schubart (1739-1791) – summarizing the thoughts of many earlier musicians – described it as “The key of triumph, of Hallelujahs, of war-cries, of victory”; adding that “Thus, the inviting symphonies, the marches, holiday songs and heaven-rejoicing choruses are set in this key”. We are therefore in for an enjoyable evening of what philosopher (and composer) Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) called “gaiety or brilliance”: as not only do our wonderful first and last works start and finish in this flaxen key, but so does our enthralling central one!

Not that this means we are in for an evening of invariability: if anything, the music programmed tonight demonstrates just how spectacularly disparate orchestral ‘classical’ music can be. For example: a comparison of the two “inviting symphonies”, both fashioned to long-standing formal rules – particularly as regards structure – reveals many more differences than similarities. They both just happen to open and close with the same chord. (Although it then takes Prokofiev a mere eleven bars to change key completely: to the “innocent, simple, naïve” C major!) After all, the key which each revolves around, is only a starting-point: all it does is unlock the musical doorway through which we, and the players, ‘visit’ each composition.

As for Tchaikovsky’s miraculous work: the key of D major is a favourite one for violin concertos – think of Mozart’s second and fourth; of Beethoven’s, and of Brahms (also written in 1878); and even of Prokofiev’s first… – as the instrument’s open strings are particularly resonant in this key. (As, of course, are the orchestra’s! Indeed, the last chord we will hear tonight uses this characteristic to full effect: as the strings triple- or quadruple-stop – that is, play three, or all four strings, simultaneously – and, in this case, fortissimo…!)

You might think from the descriptors above that an evening packed full of what scholar Albert Lavignac (1846-1916) dubbed “joyful, brilliant, alert” D major might be too much of a good thing. I don’t believe it is; and I hope, at the end of the evening, as you call Jennifer back to the stage once more, that you won’t either!

Roderick Williams and English Song:Themes and variations

13 February 2018: Stratford ArtsHouse
14 February 2018: Town Hall, Birmingham
6 April 2018: Worcester Cathedral

• Ralph Vaughan Williams – Five Variants of ‘Dives and Lazarus’
• Ralph Vaughan Williams – Five Mystical Songs
• Gerald Finzi – Let Us Garlands Bring, op18
• Gerald Finzi – Romance for String Orchestra, op11
• John Ireland – A Downland Suite

Ralph Vaughan Williams first encountered the folk-song Dives and Lazarus in 1893, when he was twenty-one; and he later said that “I had the sense of recognition – here’s something which I have known all my life, only I didn’t know it!” Michael Kennedy characterized the tune as emanating “from the soil of England”; and one of the end results (RVW was quite addicted to using it), which opens today’s concert, sounds (nearly) as natural as the composer breathing.

But why does this music feel ‘English’? What makes it so? Is it just that we have become accustomed to its ‘shape’, its style; or is there truly an identifiable vernacular? (In other words: would we sense, somehow, that this concert’s musical origins were all so ‘local’, if we had not seen the programme and its title; nor heard these composers before?)

John Ireland – whose A Downland Suite completes the programme – said that “folk-song influenced Vaughan Williams, but I have been more influenced by plainsong”: despite Charles Stanford (one of the originators, with Parry, of the broad style which so influenced the young Elgar) accusing him of sounding “all Brahms and water”! And yet both composers – as well as sharing Stanford as a teacher (although RVW went on to study with Ravel) – share a certain audible je ne sais quoi – or at least my (admittedly capacious) taste easily encompasses both (as well as Holst, Finzi, and Walton; Britten, Tippett, and Maxwell Davies). They also move me in a way that is at odds with the emotions provoked by, say, Mozart, or Messiaen; they speak to a different part of my heart (although I must emphasize that there is no room in there for nationalism of any political piquancy).

I wonder, were I not born of “this sceptred isle”, if they would still affect me like this. Elgar said (to Ireland), referencing The Dream of Gerontius and Richard Strauss, that “No-one in this country took any notice of my music until a German told them it was good”. In other words: I really do not have answers (certainly not simple ones) to the questions I posed above; I simply do not know! But maybe you will come to a different conclusion: once impressed by five outstanding examples of twentieth-century English music.

John Lill plays Beethoven:Themes and variations

19 January 2018: Forum Theatre, Malvern Theatres

• Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart – Overture ‘Don Giovanni’, K527
• Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart – Symphony no41 ‘Jupiter’ in C major, K551
• Ludwig van Beethoven – Piano Concerto no3 in C minor, op37

This evening’s concert features – arguably – two of the greatest composers who ever lived: both with major works composed hastily during periods of significant trial and tribulation. Firstly, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart – here in financial straits, after the failure of his latest opera; and possibly on the verge of depression – three years before his death and his final great outpourings. And then Ludwig van Beethoven, as he began to break free of his great idol’s influence to find his own voice: despite struggling to come to terms with the onset of deafness – especially the concomitant tinnitus.

Don Giovanni had been hailed a palpable hit at its first performance in Prague, in October 1787; but, just over six months later, in Vienna, a revised version met with failure. Facing this setback head-on, Mozart immediately began composing his three final, miraculous, symphonies: managing somehow to complete them in successive summer months.

The last of these – our second work, tonight – even in the light of its two remarkable symphonic companions, K543 and K550 – is utterly astonishing. It simply does not matter whether you consider ‘Jupiter’ the greatest symphony ever written (as I do) – or merely(!) the greatest symphony of one of the “greatest composers who ever lived” – it will always stand as an imposing, sunlit monument to the man and the genre. (Sadly, it seems unlikely that it was ever performed in Mozart’s lifetime.)

It is difficult not to consider Don Giovanni his greatest opera, as well (although his later “great outpouring”, Die Zauberflöte, K620 – certainly more successful in his lifetime; and more frequently performed, today – must also be a contender). The overture is rumoured to have been composed on the day of its first performance (29 October 1787). However, Mozart records the completion of the opera as the day before! Whatever the case, as with the symphony, there are absolutely no audible signs of such alacrity.

Only music from the pen of a composer of Beethoven’s stature could succeed such masterpieces: with a work also premiered in Vienna (in April 1803, alongside his first two symphonies) – however, yet again, to mixed reviews. This time, though, the score had not even been finalized: the composer, as soloist, playing reportedly from “nothing but empty pages [with] a few Egyptian hieroglyphs… scribbled down to serve as clues”!

Messiah:Themes and variations

9 December 2017: Holy Trinity Church, Stratford-upon-Avon

On 9 September 1742, George Frideric Handel wrote a letter to his close friend (and greatest fan), Charles Jennens, enclosing a glowing review – by “no less than the Bishop of Elphim (A Nobleman very learned in musick)” – of the extremely successful first performance of an oratorio in Dublin. This premiere had actually taken place five months earlier, on 13 April 1742: so it seems that Handel was perhaps a little tardy in informing Jennens just “how well Your Messiah was received”.

Yes… – “Your” Messiah. For it was Jennens who not only compiled the text; but also convinced Handel of the merits of such a work in the first place. It seems, as well, that the composer trusted his collaborator’s knowledge of music, and musical forms, well enough to have asked him for feedback on the final article: as later, he would write to Jennens, asking him to “point out these passages in the Messiah which you think require altering”.

Unfortunately, Jennens doesn’t appear to have considered Messiah one of Handel’s greatest hits (an opinion also held by the first London audiences for the work) – as he wrote to his friend Edward Holdsworth that…

I shall show you a collection I gave Handel, called Messiah, which I value highly. He has made a fine entertainment of it, though not near so good as he might and ought to have done. I have with great difficulty made him correct some of the grossest faults in the composition; but he retained his overture obstinately, in which there are some passages far unworthy of Handel, but much more unworthy of the Messiah.

There is no mention in either of my (extremely well-used) scores of Messiah of the librettist’s name; and it would be easy to dismiss – as many have done – its lyrical content as just a collection of random verses from the Bible loosely stitched together. Additionally – especially for those of us who need more than our hands and feet to count the number of performances we have either attended or taken part in – the words have become so utterly familiar, anyway, that we perhaps take little (if any) notice of their meaning – either as individual movements, or overall.

I would argue, though, that Jennens’ knowledge of scripture; his grasp of dramatic literature (he was the first person to produce scholarly editions of individual Shakespeare plays), and of dramatic music; all come together to produce a cohesive, intelligent, and, in many ways, a quite startling narrative. We have to remember that nothing like this had been produced before (excepting Jennens’ own text for Handel’s Saul, in 1739); and that the first edition of Alexander Cruden’s Complete Concordance To the Old and New Testaments had only just been published (in 1736). But, even then, it has to be acknowledged that Jennens must have known the 1611 King James Version of the Bible – and the versions of the psalms as printed in The Book of Common Prayer of 1662 – inside-out. Indeed, musicologist Watkins Shaw – in The story of Handel's ‘Messiah’ – asserts that the libretto “amounts to little short of a work of genius”. As a writer, I have to agree!

The storyline that Jennens weaves can be seen in more than one light, too – hence its effectiveness. As religious propaganda, it reflects his own feelings concerning religion and society. In structure, it follows the liturgical year: Part I corresponding with Advent and Christmas; Part II with Lent, Easter, the Ascension, and Pentecost; and Part III with the year’s end (as well as ‘The End of Days’). Of course, its main thrust is the rehearsal of the life of Jesus: from Isaiah’s prophecies of a longed-for saviour – of his birth and death – to their fulfilment (in effect, from the First Coming to the Second). However, despite its title, this “life” is only ever really implied – apart from the appearance of the angels to the shepherds (in movements 13 to 17), events are written well and truly between the work’s lines.

As you listen to Handel’s glorious music, tonight, please, therefore, pay attention to those wonderful words, as well as – perhaps more than you would normally – to their meaning, their significance and power. And remember that, to all intents and purposes, without Jennens, there would be no music to hear. Without Charles Jennens, there would be no Messiah.