The Rhapsodies
Early on New Year’s Day 2004 I thought
to listen to the First Rhapsody and
ended up hearing all six! These recordings
were old friends since they came out
one by one coupled with the Symphonies
(now separately boxed), but I don’t
think I had ever made the experiment
of hearing them as a sequence. The experience
led me to a number of reflections.
The first was that,
if Ireland ever were to have a great
international musical festival equivalent
to the Prague Spring Festival, then
the Irish Festival should open each
year with a performance of these works
given as a cycle, just as the Czech
Festival always opens with Smetana’s
Ma Vlást. Yes, I know
that Smetana’s six symphonic poems were
planned as a cycle whereas the Stanford
Rhapsodies were written over a period
of just over twenty years, but, whether
by accident or design, they add up to
a remarkably satisfying sequence; a
vigorous, ear-catching prelude enshrining
Ireland’s best-loved melody (no. 1),
a sombre, elegiac, mostly slow piece
(no. 2), an idyllic miniature cello
concerto (no. 3), another sombre piece
which this time expresses ultimate faith
in his country’s destiny (no. 4), a
piece which is by turns lively and tenderly
reminiscent (no. 5) and a work with
a violin soloist (no. 6) which is practically
an extended slow movement, a grave and
tender farewell to the country which
Stanford was not to see again, with
a final brilliant coda to round it off.
Furthermore no. 6, by revisiting, lovingly
and tenderly, that same "Lament
of Owen Roe O’Neill" which had,
in a more grimly heroic mode, dominated
the Second Rhapsody, appears such a
perfect epilogue to the whole cycle
that it is difficult to avoid thinking
that the composer, while writing it,
must have cherished an untold dream
that the whole cycle might one day be
gathered together and heard as a whole.
Another obvious difference
with Smetana is that Stanford is using
traditional Irish melodies while Smetana
mostly used themes of his own (and the
Hussite hymns introduced in Tabór
and Blaník are generally
held to be the weak points of the cycle,
at least for non-Czechs); yet so convincingly
has Stanford absorbed them into a colourful
late-romantic-nationalist style that
I feel this point is of no real account.
What we hear is a cycle of fine pieces
that can be enjoyed by anyone who has
a taste for nationally-oriented orchestral
music written in Bohemia, Norway, Russia
and so on. And note that I make my comparisons
with composers like Smetana, Grieg and
Glinka rather than Kodály and
Bartók who were already active
during the years (1902-1922) in which
Stanford wrote his Rhapsodies; yes,
Stanford was something of a time-warp,
but need that matter a hundred years
later as much as it probably did in
his own day? It is no more reasonable
to criticise Stanford for not adopting
the more radical treatment of folk-melodies
practised by his English pupils Holst
and Vaughan Williams than it is to criticise
Smetana for not being Janáček.
And let us remember that, while Smetana
was followed by Dvořák, Janáček
and Martinů, no such comparable
Irish figures emerged in the mid-Twentieth
Century. All the more reason to value
Stanford’s fine work, then.
Yes, you will, be saying,
but Smetana is known the world over
and, if complete performances of Ma
Vlást are rare outside the
Czech Republic, Vltava is a "classical
pop" and From Bohemia’s Meadows
and Fields is pretty well known
too. Could the Stanford Rhapsodies have
the same worldwide appeal? Well, quite
frankly, I can’t for the life of me
see why not. The melodies themselves
are unfailingly beautiful – folk melodies
but shaped and extended with genuine
inspiration. Stanford’s orchestral colour
is as wide-ranging and imaginative as
anything else in the late-romantic line
and each piece is formally well-wrought
and satisfying.
It has to be noticed
that the sequence of Irish Rhapsodies
was a fairly late flowering in Stanford’s
composing career, gradually taking the
place of the symphony as his preferred
orchestral form; the seven Symphonies
were composed between 1876 and 1911.
Interestingly, however, the composition
of concertos for solo instrument and
orchestra covered virtually his whole
creative life (1873-1919). Another important
point is that between 1876 and 1900
Stanford published approximately 250
arrangements of Irish melodies for voice
and piano, mostly gathered into the
three collections with words by his
friend Alfred Perceval Graves: Songs
of Old Ireland (50 settings, pub.
1882), Irish Songs and Ballads (30
settings, pub. 1893) and Songs of
Erin, op. 76 (50 settings, completed
1900). To these must be added his loving
if somewhat controversial volume The
Irish Melodies of Thomas Moore, restored
and arranged, op. 60 (119 settings,
completed 1894) and a handful of single
settings. All this adds up to a treasure
house of beautiful tunes sympathetically
and often highly imaginatively arranged,
once the basic late-romantic standpoint
has been accepted. Towards the end of
this period he was also much occupied
with editing the Petrie Collection
of Irish Music, which was issued
in 1902-5 and has been much criticised
by later ethno-musicologists. Only a
very small number of further arrangements,
almost certainly requested by publishers,
appeared from 1900 onwards. It can be
seen, therefore, that the period of
arranging and assimilating all these
melodies was practically a prelude to
the period (1902-1922) of using them
creatively in the Rhapsodies. Contemporaneously,
Stanford’s first cycle of Irish songs,
An Irish Idyll, op. 77 (original
melodies but much more deeply Irish
in their manner of expression than anything
he had written previously) came out
in 1901, to be followed by Cushendall,
op. 118 (1910), A Fire of Turf,
op. 139 (1913), A Sheaf of Songs
from Leinster, op. 140 (1913) and
Songs from "The Glens of Antrim",
op. 174 (1920). So the Irish songs too,
as a parallel expression of Stanford’s
Irishness, built on the earlier experience
of the arrangements. The Irish elements
in the earlier and undeniably attractive
Irish Symphony (1887) seem a scissors
and paste job compared with the Rhapsodies.
We must remember, then,
that Stanford was using, in his Rhapsodies,
melodies which to him had titles and
words; in the cases where the poetry
was by Thomas Moore he would have encountered
it in his earliest childhood, and we
all know how indelibly tunes remain
coupled with the words to which we knew
them in our primary school days. Undoubtedly
the key to the tempi and the general
mode of expression of these Rhapsodies
can be found by hunting down the melodies
in the folksong collections (only no.
3 relies heavily on melodies to be found
elsewhere). It has worried me over the
years that Vernon Handley does not appear
to have done this. The clearest demonstration
can be found by comparing his lively,
racy handling of the first section of
the First Rhapsody (the words "Hurry
down, hurry down, hurry down ever, From
the wrack-ridden mountain and yellow,
rushing river" would become a tongue-twister
at this speed) with Stanford’s own remorselessly
steady beat in his 1916 recording. Dimly,
through the murk of the ancient recording,
something much more momentous, akin
to a Sibelius nature poem, can be discerned.
However, listening to the six Rhapsodies
consecutively and trying to take Handley
on his own terms, I have to admit that
the volatile, exuberant portrait of
Stanford which emerges is an attractive
one and, until such time as an alternative
view is available, there is little point
in going into detail. I shall merely
note some slightly fussy phrasing at
the opening of no. 4 (Nicholas Braithwaite’s
Lyrita recording of this piece remains
my favourite), undue haste in the first
part of no. 5 (try singing "Moan
ye winds, ye caverns call, / ‘Orro,
orro!’ to our sorrow, / While we bear
‘neath one black pall / Brian, Murrough,
from Fingal" to the bassoon melody
and you will see what I mean) and again
at the end of no. 6, which is marked
Allegro, not Prestissimo. This last
section seems unduly short, the one
formal miscalculation in the whole cycle,
but I have an idea it would not sound
so if it were taken at a more reasonable
pace. But still, it is all skilfully
prepared and given with verve and affection
so let us be thankful for what we have.
It may come as a surprise
to listeners today to learn that the
First Rhapsody was once so popular that
Stanford became enraged whenever he
heard of a performance. The inclusion
of the "Londonderry Air" was
doubtless the reason, but so was its
clarity and succinctness of form. It
also provoked a famous and vitriolic
attack from Elgar, in the first of his
Birmingham lectures (1905):
Twenty, twenty-five
years ago, some of the Rhapsodies of
Liszt became very popular. I think every
Englishman since has called some work
a Rhapsody. Could anything be more inconceivably
inept? To rhapsodise is one thing Englishmen
cannot do.
It is true that Stanford’s
Rhapsodies are under tight formal control,
but if this is to be taken as proof
of ineptitude, how terribly incompetent
Brahms’s various Rhapsodies must have
appeared to Elgar (in reality, we may
suppose that he admired them). Generally,
a rhapsody is unlikely to "rhapsodise",
in the sense of proceeding as a formless
improvisation; in the case of Brahms,
Dvořák
or Stanford himself, a rhapsody shares
many elements with classical sonata
form, while remaining free to import
variants which might not have prevented
a later composer from calling the piece
a sonata or a symphony anyway. Elgar
no doubt knew this, but "Stanford-bashing"
was to become an increasing obsession
with him and the occasion was too good
to be missed. It is true that Stanford
was not actually named (and Elgar, not
Stanford, was an Englishman), but he
believed himself the target and said
so publicly, and at no time during the
acrimonious wrangling that followed
did Elgar attempt to deny that it was
so.
Stanford always had
an ambivalent attitude towards music
based on the sonata principle. The classical
side of him idealised it as the epitome
of formal perfection, but the romantic
in him wished for the freedom to express
a more personal programme, if only a
basic one of a "darkness to light"
nature. In the First Rhapsody he resolved
this very neatly. Using only two themes,
he extracted two elements from the first
of them, allowing him to present the
theme in the form of a perfect sonata-movement
exposition. But the development is replaced
by the "Londonderry Air",
at first gentle and ruminative, then
expanding to considerable heights of
eloquence. After a varied recapitulation
of the first theme the "Londonderry
Air" is gradually reintroduced
to close the work in triumph. So an
emotional programme is combined perfectly
with classical formal elements.
This is not the place
for a detailed analysis of the remaining
works, which are all more complex (and
incorporate more themes), but each of
which succeeds in expressing an emotional
programme through a variant of a classical
formal type. Whether this amounts to
"rhapsodising" is doubtful;
but it is likely that the music is all
the better for its formal strength.
In one other respect
Elgar was wide of the mark, for he declared
that the English musician was little
respected abroad. This hardly tallies
with the fact that two of the Rhapsodies
(2 and 4) had their première
performances in Amsterdam’s famous Concertgebouw,
under the baton of one of the greatest
conductors of the day, Willem Mengelberg
(or with the fact that, previously,
two of his operas, one of his Symphonies,
his Suite for violin and orchestra and
some smaller works had been heard in
Germany before they reached Great Britain),
though it may reflect his own difficulties
in obtaining due recognition. More recently
the tables have been turned, but I am
convinced that the Rhapsodies deserve
a place in the international repertoire
(I am less certain of the Symphonies)
and I urgently recommend these discs
to lovers of late romantic music the
world around.
The Piano Concerto/Variations
Stanford wrote four
concertos for piano and orchestra. The
first was a very early work (1873) which,
after a single performance in Cambridge
in 1874, was suppressed by the composer.
Suppressed but not destroyed; however,
with so much mature Stanford still unknown
there seems no strong reason to revive
it now.
The "official"
First Concerto (available on Hyperion
and reviewed by me on this site) was
dated 1894. It has a good deal going
for it but it was the Second Concerto
(1911) which, after its first performance
in Norfolk, Connecticut in 1915, attained
a measure of popularity thanks to Benno
Moiseiwitsch’s championing of it (it
was also the only one to be published).
The Third Concerto (1919) belongs to
a group of late works for solo instrument
and orchestra which exist only in a
two-piano score. It was believed that
the full scores had been lost, but Jeremy
Dibble, in his recent book on Stanford
(also reviewed by me on the site) suggests,
surely rightly, that these short scores
were all that Stanford made. There were
no prospects of performance and, if
the occasion were to arise, his fluent
technique would have provided a full
orchestral score in a matter of days.
The late Geoffrey Bush, a strong advocate
of the Second Concerto, realised an
orchestral score of the Third which
has been performed, so maybe we will
have a recording of this one day.
In between the first
two concertos Stanford penned a set
of variations on "Down among the
Dead Men" (c.1897-8) which achieved
a number of performances in its day,
not least by Percy Grainger. Those of
an analytical mind may care to look
up Paul Rodmell’s comments in his book
on Stanford (this, too, was reviewed
by me together with the book by Dibble),
in which it is shown that the composer
(much as he was to do in the Rhapsodies)
cross-bred elements of sonata form with
variation form to produce a structure
which is both ingenious and satisfying.
Those less inclined towards musical
analysis will nonetheless appreciate
a clear-cut structure which sounds more
like a short concerto in four linked
movements than a set of variations.
All should note the way in which, while
the theme is often transformed out of
recognition, the descending four-note
motive heard at the opening (and extracted
from the theme) appears as a motto throughout.
More importantly still, the bluff nautical
Stanford we know from "Songs of
the Sea" and "Songs of the
Fleet" derives any number of rousing
new melodies from the theme, while finding
space for poetic meditation in the "slow
movement".
The Second Concerto
has been accused of opening with a virtual
plagiary of Rachmaninov’s Second Concerto
(which Stanford had recently conducted
with the composer at the piano). The
similarities are a) the piano starts
alone (but with arpeggios, not chords),
b) the music is in C minor and c) the
orchestra enters with a heroic theme
against piano arpeggios (but on the
horns, not lush strings). Too much can
be made of this when the continuation
is so different from Rachmaninov and
even the elements described above are
put to a quite different structural
use. Furthermore, hearing this work
together with the Variations, for which
no Rachmaninov model was available,
reveals a basic consistency in style
between the two. In the end, as so often
with Stanford, the composer’s natural
poetry wins out over his supposed models.
Margaret Fingerhut
is extremely responsive to the poetic
moments in both scores. If in moments
of great brilliance or weight she sometimes
sounds penny-plain compared with Stanford’s
gorgeous orchestral panoply, I’m afraid
this is because Stanford was an experienced
conductor with a flair for orchestral
colour, but was not a comparable pianist.
His piano-writing is sonorous and effective
up to a point, but without providing
that ultimate challenge to the performer
which in its turn inspires him to give
his all to the public (would he had
plagiarised Rachmaninov more in
this respect!). Fingerhut is truthful
while Malcolm Binns, on Lyrita, sometimes
tries to compensate by bashing, which
resolves nothing. However, it is Binns’s
mannered treatment of the opening of
the slow movement which decides my preference
for Fingerhut. It is on account of Stanford’s
piano writing that the pianists of his
days preferred to play not only Rachmaninov
(there could be other valid reasons
for this preference!) but concertos
by the likes of Scharwenka and Paderewski
which offered less musical substance
but were pianistically more effective.
In the same way, Dohnanyi’s "Nursery
Rhyme" Variations are unlikely
to be supplanted by "Down among
the Dead Men". All the same, one
wonders what a pianist such as Moiseiwitsch
could have extracted from the concerto;
frankly, neither Fingerhut or Binns
is in this exalted category.
Nicholas Braithwaite,
conducting for Binns, has the London
Symphony Orchestra in tow, and a number
of details are better brought off than
under Handley (whose horns are flabby
at the outset). On the other hand, the
Chandos performance has a greater sense
of structural coherence which seems
to emanate from Handley. In any case,
there would seem little point in buying
the Lyrita, a single full price CD containing
just the Concerto and the Fourth Rhapsody
(plus the brief Becket March
under Boult) when for less than twice
the price you can have the Variations
and the other Rhapsodies as well. The
recordings are good and Lewis Foreman’s
excellent notes have been adapted here
and there to their new situation.
Christopher Howell
Raphael Wallfisch (violoncello) (1), Lydia
Mordkovitch (violin) (2), Margaret Fingerhut (piano)
(3), Ulster Orchestra/Vernon Handley 