Malcolm Williamson’s solo piano music is mostly
from the 1950s and early 1960s after which much of his time and
inspiration was taken up with orchestral pieces. The four concertante
works for piano and orchestra date from the same era.
What immediately strikes you from the tracklisting
is that Williamson does not suffer from prolixity. There are no
windy and pompous adagios or unrelieved slabs of sound. Even the
four sonatas range from 8.30 to 19.55 across three movements;
apart from the diptychal Fourth.
The First Sonata is plays with dissonance
and a gamely jazzy feyness rather like Poulenc or Lambert but
with determined incursions from Schoenberg. The music is always
in active and does not fall into fallow introspection. The Second
Sonata is dedicated to the memory of Gerald Finzi who died
in 1956. It was premiered by Robin Harrison and was initially
entitled Janua Coeli (‘Gates of Heaven’). Banish any thought
of this sounding at all like Finzi; there is no reason why it
should. It is tough, serial, angry, though retreating into a steady
'dumpe' in the long Poco Adagio (tr. 2 CD2) with maybe
a shading of the glum Bachian Finzi from Fear No More and
other Hardy songs. The Third Sonata opens the door to lyricism
in a frank and fairly uninhibited way, closer to Poulenc spliced
with Bach, and without any real dissonance. Certainly this is
well outside Williamson’s serial tendency. The strolling Sonhando
central movement juxtaposes Bach and the Dies Irae while
the darting spindrift of the finale Brincando (all the
movements have Portuguese titles) is a microscopic set of variations.
The Fourth Sonata is in two uncompromising movements, typically
serial and with dislocational writing disturbing or banishing
lyrical lines. That said there is a discernible and intriguingly
splintery melody decked out in clamour and confidence in the short
final allegro.
The Five Preludes are from 1968 and Cheltenham.
They were written for Antonietta Notariello. Their spangled and
starlit dissonance, sometimes clangorous and sometimes solipsistic,
sounds somewhere between the coordinates of Berners, Sisask, Holst
and Schoenberg. The titles (Ships, Towers, Domes,
Theatres, Temples) are from Wordsworth's sonnet
‘Composed upon Westminster Bridge’. The Variations are
just as tough as the Second Sonata. They were written while Williamson
was studying with Elizabeth Lutyens. They have had little concert
currency being revived specially for this recording. The Ritual
of Admiration is similarly astringent though the imaginative
mastery of sentiment and form is stronger here than in the Variations.
Ritual was written for Lutyens 'on the occasion of her 70th birthday
with love, admiration, gratitude'. It is an impressive piece,
evincing real tenderness and emotion (try 2.30 tr. 5 CD2). The
Hymna Titu, written in 1984, reeks
of Yugoslavian folk music and stands well clear of his serial
effusions. It is still peppery. He gave the premiere himself at
the Australian Embassy in Belgrade. The work reflects his admiration
for Tito. He orchestrated the piece under the title Cortège
for a Warrior. It is extremely impressive - in fact the most
commanding piece in this anthology.
The Haifa Watercolours comprise
ten pictorial and atmospheric miniatures from The Harbour at
Sunrise to The Bedouin Shepherd and his Black Mountain
Goats to the Harbour at Sunset. Nothing can be found
here of the pastoral or romantic British schools. If anything
Williamson here sounds like a development of the louche and seedy
backstreet gloom of Constant Lambert in the Sonata or Piano Concerto
and of Rawsthorne in his Ballade. A Stravinskian alertness
lightens the Bedouin Shepherd movement (tr. 14); nothing
here of Holst's Beni Mora or even of Glanville-Hicks's
Letters from Morocco. This sound something closer to an
overwrought version of the de Hartmann miniatures but ‘processed’
by Conlon Nancarrow and even Cage in his Sonatas and Interludes.
Composers have been writing such sequences for ages. Look at the
Mediterranean Mezzotints of Joseph Holbrooke and Ibert’s
Escales.
The Travel Diaries all date from 1960-61
and together with the Haifa and Van Gogh sequences
are teaching pieces. They cover a wide range typified by the Sydney
set, from a Shostakovich-type charge (CD2 tr.14) to an old style
waltz, to a singing lyrical piece worthy of Michael Head (CD2
tr. 15) in Lane Cove and fragrantly strumming A Morning
Swim (Ravel flavouring). In Hyde Park one can detect
Shostakovich's sardonic smirk. There is a jazzy dislocation in
King's Cross. Apart from the absence of jazzy voicings
the Naples set traverses the same style-sheets -
charming, peppy and, as befits the Italian locale, just a little
sentimental indeed almost Sondheim (Blue Grotto - Capri CD3
tr.9). The Tarantella introduces Bach to Rossini - very
much a brush of passing shoulders. The London sequence
has some sturdy British atmosphere in Busy Shoppers (bustling
matchstick characters). St Paul's Cathedral has Finzian
gravitas as well as high register piano ‘plinks’ suggesting
the heights of the cathedral ceiling - a touch that returns for
The Planetarium. The lumbering Thames Barges gives way
the ‘fife and drum’ flavours of Along the Mall with its
echoes of ‘The British Grenadiers’. The piece makes its farewells
with the whirling of Helicopters in the first and last
movements. The Paris diaries embrace lyrical pieces
such as the fragrantly sentimental Flower sellers at the Place
de la Madeleine, the absurdist Gendarme, the
skittering Ladies with Poodles teetering on their high
heels as their dogs pull them ever forward. There is the rocking
motion of the Boatride Down The Seine and the abrupt scalar
heartlessness of Eiffel Tower and the powdered wigs of
Versailles. The suggestion of French songs can be heard
in Customs -Départs. New York is taken
as an opportunity to blow away cobwebs with a splintery spiralling
blast-cloud of notes in Subway Rush (Bliss would have been
fascinated bearing in mind his own set of Conversations
which included a portrayal of the London Underground). The
Statue of Liberty feels peculiarly French. A bluesy flavour
can be detected in Central Park (Riding School) as well
as in the soft lyrical Broadway Midnight - a lullaby of
Broadway indeed - fragrant with Gershwin and Berlin.
Continuing the vein established in the five Travel
Diaries there is The Bridge that Van Gogh Painted and the
French Camargue. These ten pieces have the brutish Friendly
Bulls on the Highway, the Bach-like delicacy of The Bridge
finely picked out and shaded by the consistently sympathetic
and insightful Mr Gray. These ‘pictures’ more closely resemble
music inspired by sketches rather than by direct observation as
in the case of the Wild Horses in the Long Grass.
The melodic material here and in the diaries sometimes suggests
child's songs and rhymes.
I hope that Antony Gray will be allowed to record
the Williamson works for piano and orchestra. There are four piano
concertos as well as one for two pianos and orchestra. Indeed
an Antony Gray recital of the piano sonatas of Roy Agnew and Dorian
Le Gallienne would make an extremely attractive project. These
works were known and admired by Williamson. For now we must content
ourselves with an impending second Goossens solo piano collection
from ABC. The first was reviewed here back in 1999.
Meantime I must pass on Antony Gray's reminder
that almost all Williamson's piano music including the concertos
were written by the time he was thirty-five.
An adroitly and brilliantly performed collection
in which teaching pieces (rich in allusion and often in emotion)
meet concert works ranging from the uncompromising serialism of
the sonatas 1, 2 and 4 and the Ritual to the triumphant
and outstandingly powerful Hymna Titu.
Rob Barnett
MALCOLM WILLIAMSON: 1931-2003
Malcolm Williamson was a paradox, and perhaps nothing illustrates
this more clearly than his appointment in 1975 to the position
of Master of the Queen’s Music. He was inordinately proud of this
appointment, not only of itself, but also as being the first non-British
composer to hold the post. He was almost unquestioningly loyal
to the Royal Family, and a stickler for correct protocol, consulting
the appropriate reference books for apposite forms of address
for differing ranks of nobility. At the same time he was not prepared
for one minute to tolerate pomposity or ostentation, and would
turn up to an important premier of one of his works wearing a
kaftan, or something else equally ‘inappropriate’ and scandalising.
Malcolm adored gossip and scandal, and loved bating the establishment.
Many of the remarks which were to get him into trouble were often
made completely knowingly, in the awareness that the whole world,
and especially the establishment, were saying the same things
behind closed doors, but would be horrified (and terrified) if
anyone were to say them publicly. Malcolm was not afraid of these
people, but perhaps, finally he paid the price of his independent
spirit. At the time of his death there is barely a note of his
music in the CD catalogues (and yet virtually the entire oeuvre
of the most insignificant composers from the renaissance to the
present day seems to be available). There is no music of his in
the shops, and performances in concert are virtually non-existent.
There are perhaps many reasons for this, but the only reason that
is not valid is the quality of the music. Williamson will undoubtedly
come to be seen as one of the great composers of the twentieth
century.
Writing a conventional CV for Williamson is perhaps more difficult
than for most people. He was not a conventional man. He had the
most wide-ranging interests and enthusiasms; he mixed with royalty
and heads of state, and yet worked with the mentally handicapped
and underprivileged, feeling as comfortable with a Brazilian street
boy as with a bishop. A master of philosophy, literature and comparative
religion, but being one of the all-time great raconteurs of salacious
gossip and filthy jokes. A devout catholic who also embraced Judaism
and aboriginal beliefs, while thoroughly and guiltlessly enjoying
the pleasures of the flesh. He spoke several languages fluently
and qualified as a medical doctor, but never quite worked out
how to turn a tape over. He could be demanding, petulant and childish,
but moved to tears, and acts of remarkable generosity, by the
sight of undeserved suffering. He also wrote a vast quantity of
truly remarkable music. The fact that some of it was in C major,
and some of it was uncompromisingly serial was a fact that ultimately
served to confound and frustrate his critics. The fact that the
public also liked it, at a time when many composers were being
almost deliberately anti-populist, was a further offence for which
he was not lightly forgiven
As for the conventional aspects of his life; he was born in a
generation that produced a quite remarkable batch of eminent Australians,
including Joan Sutherland, Geoffrey Parsons, Peter Sculthorpe,
John Carmichael, Barry Humphries, Germaine Greer, Barry Tuckwell
and Clive James, all of whom have gone on to become international
household names, and, almost without exception, who have gone
on to make their careers outside Australia. Williamson studied
at the Sydney Conservatorium which was then enjoying the benign
and highly productive influence of Eugene Goossens, with whom
Williamson had composition lessons. He moved to London in 1950,
studying with Elizabeth Lutyens and Erwin Stein, as well as absorbing
the music of Messiaen, and learning the organ so that he could
play it. He supported himself playing the church organ, and also
playing jazz and cabaret in a night club, but by the end of the
1950s he was successful enough to become a full-time composer,
having also been taken on by Boosey & Hawkes. He was early
on championed by Sir Adrian Boult, who played his First Symphony
in 1957 – there are very few twenty-six year olds who have had
a more auspicious start to their careers. This was followed by
commission after commission – a violin concerto for Menuhin, an
organ concerto for the Proms, a major organ work for Coventry
Cathedral, the Symphony for Voices, The Display for
the Australian Ballet, the first three piano concertos (why isn’t
the second one of the top ten favourites?), and the operas. Our
Man in Havana was first performed at Sadlers Wells in 1963,
and it was followed by English Eccentrics, The Happy
Prince, Julius Caesar Jones, The Violins of St.
Jacques and Lucky Peters’ Journey. He also invented
the ‘Cassation’, a mini opera of about ten minute’s duration,
which is taught to the audience in the space of about an hour,
who then perform it. He was to write ten of these pieces, including
one which was to be one of the earliest sympathetic statements
on Aboriginal land rights. It was written to be performed in Australia,
in full knowledge of the political climate, but Williamson was
never to be deflected from doing the right thing. It was
these Cassations that were to begin to provoke the ire of the
critics and the establishment. They were described variously as
‘trivial’, ‘superficial’ and ‘simplistic’. This was, of course,
to miss their point entirely, and Williamson anticipated the concept
of interactive music education by some thirty years. Furthermore,
the audience at the Last Night of the Proms in 1971 who had to
perform ‘The Stone Wall’ (Malcolm would allow no pikers!)
certainly seemed to enjoy themselves immensely. He was also to
pioneer the use of music therapy with the mentally handicapped.
It was after his appointment as Master of the Queen’s Music that
Williamson’s popularity started to wane. In Australia there was
often a sense that he had abandoned his native land, and was therefore
something of a traitor. This despite regular visits and concert
tours to Australia, and a number of major works written specially
for Australia, or using Australian subjects or texts – the Requiem
for a Tribe Brother was written on the death of a young aboriginal
friend. Williamson always maintained that he, and his music, were
essentially Australian, ‘Not the bush or the deserts, but the
brashness of the cities. The sort of brashness that makes Australians
go through life pushing doors marked ‘pull’’. In Britain there
was a marked element of resentment that a non-Brit had been appointed
to so archetypally British a post, and resentment also that his
music was actually enjoyed, remembered and even hummed by the
public. There were very few British composers at the time, apart
from perhaps Britten, who could claim that level of popularity.
Ironically, it was Britten who had recommended Williamson for
the royal post. Rumours started spreading that Williamson never
finished works on time – a palpably absurd claim given the huge
number of works successfully completed on time up to now. Moreover
the small number of works that were late were not the fault of
the composer. There were crossed lines, cancelled commissions
(when a certain flute player suddenly demanded the finished score
twelve months before the performance – the BBC advised Williamson
to refuse), and ill health. It is also unlikely that there has
been a composer in history who has not missed the odd deadline.
The other rumour, and one that was perhaps to prove more damaging,
was concerning Williamson’s alleged drink problem. Malcolm liked
a drink as well as the next bloke, and many a hilarious hour has
been spent in the company of Malcolm and any number of bottles.
However the true culprit of the rumour was a mild stroke, suffered
around 1975, from which he made a complete recovery, apart from
the fact that he was left with slightly slurred speech. It was
perhaps due to his disdain for the self-interested establishment
that Williamson never saw the need to refute any of these rumours,
but ultimately he paid the price. He continued composing major
works, but they were rarely performed more than once, the critics
saw to that, despite Williamson’s continued popularity with the
public. There was to come more symphonies, the sixth and seventh,
both written for Australia, major vocal/choral and orchestral
works, a fourth piano concerto, unperformed as of the time of
writing this, and a number of works that remain unfinished, including
a further chamber opera, Easter.
In 1998 Malcolm suffered a further, serious stroke which left
him with limited movement, and very little speech. He was to live
for a further four years in rather lonely isolation, his mind
and intellect undimmed, his wit still razor sharp. He was, however
assailed by doubts as to the value of his music. He was somehow
too unworldly to understand the process that had gone on, too
uncompromising in his own behaviour to understand that other people
could act less than honourably. The standing ovation he received
at a Wigmore Hall concert to mark his 70th birthday
was a source of enormous pleasure for him, but apart from a concert
by the BBC Concert Orchestra, there were no other performances
in his seventieth birthday year. It is perhaps a truism to say
that he will begin to be appreciated after his death, now that
he’s not around to scandalize the establishment. It’s another
truism to say that it will be too late for him to realise …..
Working with Malcolm on his music was never less than entertaining,
but often far from conventional. Rarely would there be a simple
‘a bit faster here,’ ‘a bit softer there.’ One would probably
be referred to a painting by a painter one had never heard of,
a book one had never read, or a spot in Bulgaria one had never
been to, all delivered in an excited monologue punctuated by cigarettes,
with a slight affectation to grumpiness if he was interrupted
to be asked about a textual matter. These he would clear up with
a wave of the hand, almost as if they were a matter of indifference,
and yet he would remember two performances by the same artist
years apart, and remember a wrong note played both times, deducing,
correctly, a misprint in the score. He would tell you to go and
listen to a Mozart mass, or a Stravinsky cantata, a Delius orchestral
piece, and then say ‘Anyway, you know how it goes…’, and break
into a salacious story regarding someone or other, which, often,
one had heard once or twice before! Did it help? Being with Malcolm
was always stimulating. His passion for music, life and everything
else, was infectious and enlightening. He would sometimes play
snatches himself, not well in his later years, but passionately.
He would then maybe play it again, quite differently but equally
convincingly – the mark of great music? He also collected wooden
crocodiles…. © Antony Gray
Printed with the kind permission of Antony Gray and with acknowledgement
to the ABC who have issued a 3CD set of Williamson’s music for
solo piano played by Antony Gray
Antony Gray (piano)