Composers have always needed champions - people who make performances
and recordings happen, people who are
prepared to make their own sacrifices,
to cajole, to persuade in the interests
of the music they prize. When a composer's
works have fallen into neglect after
death how much more important are such
champions? I can think of various exemplars.
Lewis Foreman, Colin Scott-Sutherland,
Peter Pirie, Graham Parlett, Richard
Adams and others have fought and won
ground for Bax. Lionel Hill, Geoffrey
Self, Andrew Rose, Stephen Lloyd and
John Talbot have achieved similar exposure
for Moeran. The changed and still changing
fortunes of Joseph Marx are almost single-handedly
down to Berkant Haydin. Much the same
can be said of the valuable work of
Vardo Rumessen for Eduard Tubin and
other Estonian composers. Michael Freeman
has been a persuasive and heroic advocate
for Holbrooke and Bantock. Malcolm MacDonald
(editor of Tempo) has also trodden a
lonely and costly path in winning friends,
recordings and performances for the
music of John Foulds. The list goes
on and I apologise to the many I have
not mentioned.
Tovey's star had, in
relation to his compositions, sunk into
a seemingly terminal slough. This was
enigmatically consolidated by Tovey's success as music author.
Peter Shore - distantly related to Tovey - has doggedly
fought a long campaign for the music.
This has over the last few years begun
to bear fruit and new allies including
the onlie begetter and owner of Toccata, Martin Anderson.
The most recent evidence of the renaissance of Tovey the composer
is the present disc but we can also look back on a scatter of
articles, recordings and performances that have lifted the music
into the light - or at least closer to it. There's
further to go including performances
and recording of the opera The Bride
of Dionysus and of Tovey's numerous
chamber works; the latter gradually
to be tackled by Toccata.
I first came across
Tovey's music through the broadcast
of the Cello Concerto in 1976 on BBC
Radio 3 by Moray Welsh with the BBC
Scottish Symphony Orchestra conducted
by Christopher Seaman. I recall that
it left little in the way of a favourable
impression. Unusual this, as Welsh is
an exceptional artist as his broadcast
of the Foulds Cello Sonata with Ronald
Stevenson reveals and similarly his
blazing Glasgow premiere of the unrecorded
Stevenson Cello Concerto.
Next I remember disparaging
comments by Constant Lambert about the
unholy duration of the Cello Concerto.
The language of the Cello Concerto is
the antithesis of the syncopated sensational
spirit of the 1930s especially that
espoused by Lambert. For this reason
it is no wonder that Lambert did not
like it despite hearing it in the hands
of Casals. While Lambert was a prophet
for Sibelius's music his verdict on
Tovey must have dealt a heavy blow.
When Mats Lidström's
Scottish performance of the Tovey Cello
Concerto took place in the 1990s there
was talk of that being issued commercially
but nothing came of it. Before that
Symposium had issued an acetate recording
of the concerto from a radio broadcast
that took place on 17 November 1937.
Miraculously then you can still hear
Casals playing the work. This invaluable
historic document can be experienced
in all its distressed and uniquely valuable
magnificence on Symposium 1115. It is
sui generis and is not in any
real sense competition with the present
recording.
Let's now turn to this
fine new recording of the Tovey Cello
Concerto. The 25 minute Allegro
moderato first movement features much
fond and affectionately rounded writing.
In the broadest terms this is redolent
of Brahms in the Third Symphony and
the Double Concerto. There are other
transient echoes as well. These include
Elgar and in the kindly contours of
the solo part the luminous First Cello
Concerto of Hans Pfitzner; I do wish
that Rohan de Saram's 1970s studio broadcast
of the Pfitzner could be issued commercially.
This is heart-warming writing with craggily
defiant heroics to match at 7:45 and
11:20. The Andante Maestoso is
an anxiety-racked testament which at
4:02 recalls the Brahms Fourth Symphony.
The invocation if not the achievement
of peace of mind returns with the Intermezzo
third movement the character of
which harks back to the amiable opening
of the work. Then comes the allegro
giocoso finale. In its mood this
can be seen as a precursor to the Finzi
Cello Concerto which across its three
movements has a similar character layout
to Tovey's four; not that the language
is related! It is however playful in
a rustic manner as at 5:30. The Ulster
horns play it large, as they
say, and have many moments of magnificence.
The last few bars make for an inventive
and unconventional end with a satisfying
mixed stutter of legato, pizzicato,
quiet and loud. All in all this struck
me as the sort of work that Furtwängler
would have loved if only he had discovered
it. The warm recording is cogently balanced
with space to render many subtle, quiet
and soloistic passages.
The brief Air
for string is arranged by Peter Shore
and recalls the opening bars of the
concerto. The stormily Brahmsian rhetoric
of the Elegiac Variations is
memorable. The work was written in memory
of the cellist Robert Hausmann of the
Joachim Quartet. It had been Hausmann
who with Joachim had premiered Brahms
Double Concerto. Hausmann played alongside
Tovey on many occasions and the two
artists had a glowing and affectionate
respect for each other.
Alice Neary makes every note tell in both cello
works and each is played as if it urgently mattered - which it does. She clearly relishes
the scattering of pizzicato passages
throughout the first movement and the
engineering team is with her.
If you enjoy the Concerto
- and I think you will - then you should
hear the Tovey Symphony also available
on Toccata.
The Tovey Cello Concerto
needs to be heard by all enthusiasts
of the late-romantic orchestral world.
That it was written in an idiom that
was old-fashioned in 1935 matters not
a jot. It is fresh, keenly imagined,
emotionally engaging and the performance,
recording, documentation and presentation
adroitly complement this major work.
Rob Barnett
Toccata
Classics Catalogue
Alice Neary (cello)
