Off the Beaten Track

… was the title of last evening’s talk

November 2023

One of the aims of our Society is to play music from the less well known, the overlooked or even the yet to be discovered. Whether it is just composers is hard to say but there are a lot of composers and compositions who were – which were – once well known yet for various reasons seem to disappear never to be heard of again outside perhaps, a small group of aficionados.

Last night’s presentation by our Chair, Peter Horwood, was an attempt – a successful attempt – to bring to our notice just some of those compositions which have been undeservedly forgotten or neglected. We were doubly grateful to Peter who had to step in at short notice because of unforeseen circumstances.

We started with a piece by the sixteenth century German composer Michael Praetorius and one of his ballets – La Bourée. This was followed by a poem set to music by Rachel Portman. Rachel is well-known and was the first woman to win an Academy Award and also an Emmy.

This was followed by an extraordinary composition consisting entirely of percussion instruments of various kinds called Ku-Ka Illmoka, composed by Christopher Rouse III an American who has a wide range of compositions to his name including a Requiem and six symphonies.

An accomplished partita by Johann Gottfried Walther, contemporary of Bach, followed: an example of someone who seems to have been unfairly overlooked. Then it was a piece by Leo Ornstein, a Ukrainian born composer (as we would say today, then part of the Russian empire) who spent most of his life in America. A brilliant pianist, he suddenly gave it up to devote his life to composition. We heard the third movement of the Piano Quintet No 3. His work was controversial and concerts were sometimes riots of jeering and whistling. The piece we heard was outstanding and orginal.

Then a harpsichord piece by Richard Jones from his Suite No 1. A 17th Century composer, little of his work survives particularly his stage compositions. This was a lively harpsichord piece, an instrument which had not long been invented at the time he was alive.

Few will have heard of Nikolai Tcherepnin a Russian composer born in St Petersburg and studied under Rimsky-Korsakov. He was closely involved with Diaghilev’s Ballet Russes and conducted some of their performances. We listened to the prelude from La Princess Lointaine. After the Revolution he left for Paris and spent the rest of his days there.

Few may have heard of Hélène de Montgeroult who lived in France and who experienced first hand, the violence of the Revolution being the daughter of an aristocratic family. She was denounced and imprisoned. She was a brilliant pianist and we heard Etudes 6 & 7. What was astonishing about them was that they were composed not long after Mozart’s death but seemed a world away. Indeed, one commentator said she was the gap between Mozart and Chopin. Like so many female composers she largely disappeared from view.

Next to a composition by Oscar Fried a German composer who was the first to record a Mahler symphony. We heard a setting of Transfigured Night a poem by Richard Dehmel. Jolly Braga Santos is a Portuguese composer, arguably their greatest, born in Lisbon in 1924. He composed symphonies and other works and we enjoyed the 1st movement from his Symphony No 1. An impressive melodic work. He was encouraged in his work by Ralph Vaughan Williams.

We ended the evening with A Drop in the Ocean by Eriks Ešenvalds a Latvian composer born in 1977 who now teaches in his home country.

Few will have heard of these composers or of the compositions. They were in a wide variety of styles and spanned around four centuries. All were indeed off the beaten track and are infrequently heard in concert halls.

Peter Curbishley