Fritz HART (1874-1949)
Violin Sonata No.1 in D minor, Op.7 (1911) [13:14]
Violin Sonata No.2 in D major, Op.42 (1920) [15:13]
Violin Sonata No.3 in G minor, Op.142 (1941) [19:23]
Prelude from St Francis, for violin and piano (1941) [5:24]
Two Bach Chorale Paraphrases (1925) [5:27]
Susan Collins (violin)
Stephanie McCallum (piano)
rec. 2017, Recital Hall West, Sydney Conservatorium of Music, Australia
TOCCATA CLASSICS TOCC0470 [58:43]
So little of Fritz Hart’s music has been recorded, and so little broadcast – at least in Britain – that any release is bound to excite curiosity in those who know him as one of the more remarkable members of the ‘English Musical Renaissance’. Here at a stroke is the first volume of his complete music for violin and piano which excavates, in first commercial recordings, his three violin sonatas and other smaller works.
The sonatas are not programmed chronologically so that we can jump from the 1920 Second Sonata forward to the Third of 1941 and then back to the First of 1911, should one wish to follow Toccata’s running order. Taken in strict order of composition allows one to hear Hart’s propensity for telescoping movements; thus, the two-minute opening allegro of the 1911 work is followed by a much longer movement that corrals both Adagio and Cantabile sections. The former is a lyric song, complete with deft slides from Susan Collins, whilst the latter has some Debussian coloration, though there’s also surely a tribute to Elgar in some of the sturdiness of the writing – and the instruction that this is Cantabile nobilmente seems to reinforce the point. The Second Sonata again evinces some impressionistic elements, but the piano chording reminds me much more of John Ireland, and so too the pastoral elements that course through this sonata, frolicsome and genial. Typically, the second movement – marked just ‘finale’ - contains both a lovely aria and then a jaunty Rondo.
Hart’s Third Sonata was his last. Once again this is music that taps into nostalgia and folk memory, given Hart’s use of the folksong The Jolly Ploughboy. There are touches of VW, perhaps, in the opening Adagio, but the Celtic twilight suffuses the Allegro, with its tantalising variations, both decorative and ruminative, on the folksong.
From the same year comes a transcription for violin and piano of the Prelude from his unfinished opera St Francis, which documents an incident in the Saint’s life. The five-minute prelude introduces the main themes, which are, very largely, slow and reflective and appealing. To mark the visit of Fritz Kreisler to Melbourne in 1925 – where Hart was director of the city’s conservatorium - Hart wrote two deft Bach chorale paraphrases and dedicated them to him, and the violinist duly played them in recital there. Hart cleverly insinuates a few more contemporary elements than the designation ‘transcription’ might lead one to suppose, though there’s nothing particularly exploratory here, rather a sympathetic appreciation of the potential of transcription.
Hart never studied composition formally, but his music shows the influences to be expected on a British composer of the time. His sense of form and structure is worthy of note, his propensity for singing lyricism and compression too. We have waited a long time for recordings such as this and the wait has been worth it. Susan Collins plays with refinement as she did in her recordings of the music of Raymond Hanson (review). Stephanie McCallum is well-known on disc and in recital and proves a splendid collaborator. The piano has certainly not been placed at a remove in Sydney Conservatorium’s Recital Hall. In some places it even tends to over-part the violin, though not damagingly.
Peter Tregear’s notes reflect his scholarship in regard to Hart’s music; he also conducted the premiere of Hart’s opera Riders to the Sea. Let’s hope that Hart’s representation on disc will soon match that of some of his esteemed students, such as Margaret Sutherland, Peggy Glanville-Hicks and Hubert Clifford.
Jonathan Woolf
