As Roberto Gerhard was a disciple of Felip Pedrell, so Joaquim
Homs was a pupil of Gerhard, one of his only true pupils. The
two men were born twenty years apart, Gerhard in Valls, and
Homs in Barcelona and it was during the 1930s that Homs took
lessons from the older man after Gerhard’s studies with
Schoenberg.
Thus there is certainly logic, if not compositional lineage
involved in this selection of the two Spanish composers’s
chamber music. The booklet is largely silent as to the works
performed, however, and only the most basic information is provided,
if that. Gerhard’s study for the film Secret People
is a sample piece which he submitted with a view to being commissioned
to writing the score. The notes say nothing about the film or
whether Gerhard’s music was even used, but a check of
a film encyclopaedia shows that Gerhard’s music was indeed
used in this Ealing film directed by Sidney Cole that concerned
European anarchists at loose in pre-war London: maybe Gerhard
was chosen to supply a suitably ‘foreign’ touch.
Naturally the notes won’t tell you that one of the themes
is the traditional Song of the Birds, beautifully textured
for the trio of violin, clarinet and piano.
Gerhard’s Clarinet Sonata of 1928 is so brief, at three
minutes, that it hardly has time to do more than swirl briskly
in a spirited, angular fashion before stopping. His 1929 Andantino
is, once again, slight and brief, but well laid out for the
chamber forces.
Homs’s 1972 Soliloquy for solo clarinet is representative
of his work in a way that the disparate, largely early Gerhard
pieces are clearly not. It’s very finely organised and
performed but again it lacks development potential at only three
minutes in length. The Impromptu for violin and piano
is sparer and more elliptical but in its piano chordal depth
and the intensity of its violin writing it bears a rather greater
of weight than the somewhat understated title would suggest.
His Inventions for clarinet exploit deft intervallic
interplay, predominantly slowly and thoughtfully, whilst the
Solo Violin sonata presents a conventional four-movement plan
and ensures suitable colour and contrast. It’s at its
best when most urgent. The 1974 Trio has plenty of colour as
well, and is a most attractive way to end the recital.
The performances and recordings are fine here. The music is
uneven and not representative of Gerhard at his most mature,
but that’s inevitable given the dates of composition.
It’s more valuable for presenting the Homs pieces, which
are quietly imaginative. Apparently he was crippled by shyness
and would never speak publically about his music. But the inner
man certainly found a way of saying things in these discreet
but not evasive chamber works.
Jonathan Woolf
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David Ballasteros (violin) Cristo Barrios (clarinet) Gustavo
Díaz-Jerez (piano) 