In 1804, John Grant
was given the death sentence as a result
of his shooting Spencer Townsend in
the buttock. After a petition to the
King by his friends, the sentence was
commuted to transportation to New South
Wales. Rather surprisingly, among his
luggage he took a harpsichord with him
to Australia. This was the first harpsichord
to be taken there. Whilst in Australia
he wrote a diary and copious letters
to his mother; so we know much about
his stay, but frustratingly we have
little record of what music he played
on the harpsichord.
Australian harpsichordist
Elizabeth Anderson has assembled this
programme of pieces that Grant could
have played. All the music is taken
from books published in London between
1791 (when he was apprenticed as a clockmaker)
and 1803 (when he was arrested). The
programme was originally performed in
2001 at the City of London Festival
at a performance in the Old Bailey,
with the harpsichord pieces being interspersed
with readings by Samuel West from Grant’s
letters and diary.
The first two items
on the disc are sonatas in F minor by
Scarlatti from a collection of thirty
first published in London in the 1790s.
All thirty came from manuscripts in
the possession of the collector Viscount
FitzWilliam, and none had been printed
in London before.
Paradies came from
Scarlatti’s home town of Naples and
lived in London for 24 years, before
leaving in 1770, when he sold his collection
of manuscripts to Viscount Fitzwilliam.
The sonata on this disc, with its strong
Scarlatti-like influences, comes from
a collection published in 1791 to commemorate
his death.
The two Bach preludes
and fugues come from an English edition
of around 1800. Handel’s Suite No. 5
in E major was originally published
by Handel as part of a spoiler for a
pirated edition brought out by John
Walsh. Walsh’s plates were still being
used by his successors and an edition
was printed in 1795.
Scarlatti’s E major
sonatas on the disc come from editions
published by Clementi, from manuscripts
acquired on his European concert tours,
whereas the D major sonatas are from
one of the various other English editions
of his works.
Soler’s sonatas owe
their publication to Viscount Fitzwilliam
visiting Spain in 1772, when he met
Soler at the Monastery at El Escorial.
Up till then Soler was known primarily
for his treatise on modulation, but
Fitzwilliam’s manuscripts became the
basis for the publication of a number
of Soler’s sonatas in London. Owing
much to Scarlatti, Soler’s style incorporates
rather more daring modulations. The
cantabile in C minor R18 is a beautifully
poignant movement.
The final historical
work on the disc is Mozart’s set of
variations on ‘Ah vous dirai-je Maman’
(Twinkle, twinkle, little star).
The disc is completed,
though, by a piece by the contemporary
Australian composer Ron Nagorcka. This
combines the harpsichord with a didgeridoo
and sounds of the Australian bush played
from a keyboard sampler. It is Nagorcka’s
response to John Grant’s story. The
piece is undoubtedly atmospheric, but
Nagorcka has not expunged the harpsichord’s
distinctly neo-classical character so
that the piece wonderfully evokes the
idea of someone playing the instrument
amidst the Australian bush.
The booklet includes
copious notes by Anderson herself along
with a long, illuminating essay on Grant’s
Australian sojourn. The disc also contains
an 18 minute CD-ROM video of Grant’s
story which gives a good flavour of
Anderson’s show.
This is an enterprising
disc and Elizabeth Anderson plays the
pieces with a fine sense of style. She
uses a modern harpsichord but sometimes
I could have wished for a little more
variety of attack and timbre; overall
the performances lacked élan.
The recital is rather dominated by Scarlatti,
but I suspect that Grant’s repertoire
is just as likely to have included various
petits maîtres and arrangements,
things that Anderson has not included
here. Still, with the informative booklet,
the CD video (if you have a PC to play
it) and the recital itself, this disc
does prove an interesting sidelight
on the music of the period.
Robert Hugill