This
sturdily bound hard-back has been
a long time in arriving. I recall
it being first mentioned in the
early 1990s; still, not quite
as long as the wait for Diana
McVeagh's book on Finzi.
For
those of you who do not know,
Stevenson is a British composer-pianist
who was born in Blackburn
in the North-West of England in
1928. His music, which is often
lyrical and sometimes tough and
tonal, has been fitfully supported
and the number of performances
remains meagre. There are many
songs, some wonderfully recorded
on Delphian, the piano concertos
on Olympia and much of the solo piano
music on Chris Rice’s Altarus
label. The DSCH Passacaglia has
had good outings on disc from
Ogdon, Clarke and the composer
himself - there’s also a further
private recording reviewed on
this site. Major gaps in the recorded
repertoire include his cello concerto
and violin concerto. Over the
next year or so Toccata Classics
will be issuing a series of Stevenson
CDs to fill out the slender discography.
Toccata will also be issuing several
books collecting Stevenson’s writings
about music.
My
own interest in Stevenson came
about through a BBC broadcast
by the composer of his DSCH Passacaglia.
That was on 30
July 1979. I was fascinated by this
epic and complex work for solo
piano and kept watch for further
recordings and broadcasts. I managed
to add a precious few more over
the years - several while I was
in Scotland
from 1986 to 1998.
I
also encountered the composer’s
name in connection with other
composers in which I had a strong
interest. He performed and recorded
music by Percy Grainger. Grainger
and Stevenson first met in the
late 1950s. Stevenson did a piano
transcription of the Hill Song
No. 1 and a piece for two
pianos the Jamboree for Grainger
- a very Graingerian title;
later this was orchestrated. He
broadcast Bax’s Paean on
Radio Scotland in 1987 and Ronald Center’s sonata the next year. With
David Wilde he was one of the
two pianists in the 18
October 1974
broadcast of Havergal Brian's
Third Symphony. The most indelible
of these experiences was his performance
of the masterful John Foulds cello
sonata with Moray Welsh in October
1979. He also played the late
piano sonata of fellow traveller
in communism, Alan Bush.
The present
book is a satisfyingly substantial
symposium. The number of living
composers treated to such exhaustively
commodious treatment is preciously
small. By the book’s content and
design it instantly declares itself
as the authoritative reference
on Stevenson. This is no missed
opportunity.
There is a foreword
by the late Lord Menuhin written
very shortly before his death.
Colin Scott-Sutherland (currently
working on a study of the life
and music of the Scots composer
Cedric Thorpe Davie) appears as
both editor and major contributor.
He traces Stevenson's career,
stylistic development and aesthetic
stance. Ates Orga surveys the
piano music in great detail. Malcolm
MacDonald examines the orchestral
works. Alistair Chisholm addresses
the chamber music. Jamie Reid
Baxter assesses the choral music
and Derek Watson discusses the
230 songs. Pianist Harold Taylor
illuminates Stevenson's approach
to performance at the piano and
Jamie Reid Baxter examines his
position in Scottish musical culture;
Stevenson has made Scotland his home for many years.
The history
and structure of the DSCH Passacaglia
is surveyed in this book across
14 pages. What other work was
praised in such a fulsome way
by Walton, Simpson, Sorabji and
Szigeti? The performance history,
such as it is, is also documented.
The
merit of a symposium is the multitude
of perspectives one encounters
although one also faces the danger
of a large number of people's
special pleadings for their own
hobby-horse. But why else do you
read a symposium except to read
the insights of those who have
invested time and concentration
in the music they love and respect.
If there is adulation here then
allow for it and do not turn your
back on the cornucopia of insights
and information.
The
book is decked out with a wondrously
vivid and generous selection of
photographs. They lend further
vibrant life to what is a substantial
volume appositely targeted to
cover music never previously addressed
in such rewarding detail. Especially
memorable is the plate in which
the composer is photographed with
Shostakovich at the Edinburgh
Festival. He is also pictured
in his music room - his ‘den of
musiquity’ as he calls it. Stevenson
is seen sitting with the venerable
Pete Seeger in 1984 in New
York. The folk song connections
are always strong with this composer.
There
is something of the theatre about
Stevenson; that goatee, the cape
... a flamboyant character perhaps
with a touch of Warlock and of
Aprahamian. The man is a survivor
from another more unfettered era
and one where long paragraphs
and attention spans were the norm.
His socialist politics had perhaps
less of an excluding effect than
those of Alan Bush. The fact that
Stevenson has suffered neglect
is more often down to his tonal
idiom at a time of dissonant predominance
and the ascendancy of the Glock-Keller-Boulez
axis at the BBC.
Colin
Scott-Sutherland provides a biographical
introduction which is much more
than a plodding timeline. In a
mere twenty pages the picture
is touched in here and a detail
added there. The life story is
told but not in a linear way.
The list of works which Stevenson
introduced Colin to is in itself
intriguing.
Mr
Scott-Sutherland’s quoted description
of the Scots Dance Toccata
will surely have most readers
insisting on hearing it: ‘...several
traditional dance tunes from Neil
Gow's repository are drawn out
on an opening haar into a Paganini-like
polytonal reel of Ivesian complexity’.
Such writing!
After
that comes Ates Orga's study of
the piano music. Orga says Stevenson
has modelled himself on the Medtners
and Godowskys and Rachmaninovs
of this world. Music exx. adorn
this and other sections and many
are in Stevenson’s elegant hand.
Orga’s congested musicological
dissecting approach does not make
for a streamlined read. This,
for me, is the one downside to
the book.
Too
easily overlooked in his catalogue
are the transcriptions. Special
attention is drawn to his L'art
nouveau de chant appliqué au piano,
written between 1980 and 1986.
He has applied his art of apotheosis
to the songs of Vincent Wallace,
Stephen Foster (a Grainger link
there), Coleridge Taylor, Harty,
Balfe, Bridge and Rachmaninov.
The
Stevenson songs tend to be away
from what is seen as high art.
Try the truly beautiful anthology
on the Delphian label. In addition
we should note a Harpsichord Sonata
and a Peter Grimes Fantasy
for solo piano both examined
by Ates Orga. The orchestral music
is in the reassuring grip of Malcolm
Macdonald whose National Library
of Scotland book on Stevenson
had, since 1988, been the only
reference on Stevenson. It is
still extremely valuable so do
take the chance to read it when
you can.
Let’s
not forget also the Janet Baker-dedicated
Vocalise Variations on two
Themes from ‘The Trojans’.
It’s for mezzo and orchestra.
The voice is used as another orchestral
instrument rather as it is in
Harty's The Children of Lir,
Medtner’s Sonata-Vocalise and
Foulds’ Lyra Celtica.
The
cello concerto (premiered by Moray
Welsh) and two piano concertos
are fully written up and of course
there are those maddeningly tantalising
references to the incomplete Ben
Dorain symphony ... of which
more later.
There
are so many works we should hear
recorded. They include Anns
an Airde as an Doimhne (In
the heights from the depths),
the Peace Motets, the Scottish
Triptych - In Memoriam Robert
Carver. These works would
mix well with Miklós Rózsa's choral
works - another major catalogue
lacuna.
Harold
Taylor surveys Stevenson's pianism
picking up on the striking physical
similarities between Paderewski
and Stevenson. He also dwells
on his playing of three of Foulds’
Essays In The Modes and
of Grainger’s Rosenkavalier
Ramble as well as works by
Medtner, Whettam, Rubbra, Stevens
and Bush's Piano Sonata op. 71
(a work dedicated to Stevenson).
Eight
short personal portraits touch
in more of the picture. They are
by Colin Wilson and John Ogdon
amongst others. Albert Wullschleger
expatiates on Stevenson’s championing
of the music of Czesław Marek
(eight volumes of CDs on the Koch
International label - all now
deleted). Alan Bold's contribution
is in the form of a poem. In this
section there are many atmospheric
photographs of Stevenson with
John Ogdon.
Scott-Sutherland
(the author of the first complete
book on the life and works of
Bax) also pulls together and catalogues
Stevenson’s concert programmes
which include such ‘strangenesses’
as the Stevenson-arranged suite
from Paderewski's Manru an
opera recently recorded complete
on the Polish Dux label.
The
list of Stevenson works is organised
by genre with full details of
orchestral specification, premiere
details, commission and dedication
incipits.
There
is a bibliography of Stevenson’s
writings. They span a wide horizon
extending to a survey of Alan
Bush's piano music for Alan Poulton’s
Bravura Publications, Grainger
and the piano, Busoni: Necromancer
of the piano, Bernard Stevens,
Britten’s War Requiem; Maurice
Emmanuel - a belated apologia,
Godowsky and Sorabji, Szymanowski
and Enescu. He also reviewed a
very rare performance of the Delius
Requiem as well as of concerts
of works by Menotti and Dallapiccola.
Hanging
over all is Stevenson’s massive
and incomplete epic Ben Dorain
'symphony' started in 1962
at the prompting of Hugh McDiarmid.
It is listed as a work-in-progress
for double chorus and two orchestras
both large and chamber. Scott-Sutherland
describes it as a symphony conceived
in a single movement - a variation
structure with principal motif
acting as the urlar or ground
for the richly tapestried variation
construct. Will it ever be finished?
Will we ever hear it or is it
the same stuff of which Sibelius
8 was made?
In
one chapter James Reid Baxter
examines the Stevenson connection
with Scotland,
the composer’s working class connections
and his relationship with his
mentor, the song composer Francis
George Scott (1880-1958). Mr Baxter
gives us the heartening news that
in the spring-summer of 2004 Stevenson
was still working on the orchestration
of Ben Dorain. The work
remains "in some sense a
vision - and it will be no less
a vision even when there is a
bound full score. Nobody is clamouring
for the honour of a giving the
first performance; and the most
fitting setting for that premiere,
the Edinburgh Festival, has never
featured a note of Stevenson's
music to this day."
This
is a handsomely presented book
that is a joy to use. The thirty
page index means business. Layout
includes footnotes rather than
endnotes but these are no obstacle
to an athletic read. I am quite
confident that the next Grove
will have this book at the head
of the bibliography for their
Stevenson entry. In fact given
Grove’s commitment to keeping
the online version up to date
it would not surprise me if it
was already listed. I’ll leave
checking that one to someone who
can afford the subscription.
As
well as being a signal entry in
Martin Anderson’s determinedly
serious Toccata Press list, it
also stands out as one of the
major contributions to musical
literature.
Rob Barnett
