Tag: Christopher Guild

Scottish piano music

Christopher Guild plays piano music from Scottish composers

October 2024

The Society was delighted to welcome back Christopher Guild who played a selection of largely unfamiliar piano music by Scottish composers. Many will remember his previous visit where he discussed the problems of producing recordings during the Covid lockdown.

One wonders whether the course of Scottish music might have taken a different turn if a certain Alexander Grieg had decided to stay in Scotland. Instead, he went to Norway and married a Norwegian girl who gave birth to a certain Edvard Greig – note the change in spelling – who put Norwegian music on the map. Just think what might have been …

Christopher is an accomplished pianist and has played at the Wigmore Hall and at St John Smith Square. He has also appeared on Radio 3. He has made a number of recordings and some of these were played this evening. Indeed, the Society was the first to hear one recording, a ‘world first’ in St Ann St, Salisbury no less.

A key influence is a form of music called ‘Pibroch’ an exact definition of which is a little challenging unless your Gaelic grammar is up to scratch and you have downed a few glasses of Scotland’s finest. A not altogether accurate summary is an extended compositional form for pipes – which effectively means bagpipes – with a number of variations. It is in contrast to shorter forms such as dances and reels.

We started with Eric Chisholm’s Piano Concerto No 1. Scottish born, he was highly regarded by fellow musicians and a number of his compositions were published and recorded. He is sometimes compared to Bartók, whom he encouraged to come to Scotland, and it was indeed possible to hear his influence in the piece. He was keen to encourage contemporary music.

This was followed by pieces by Francis George Scott and David Charles Johnson. We heard the latter’s Prelude No 6 which included an impressive fugue based on a Scottish folk song.

William Wordsworth, distantly related to the poet, had a somewhat troubled compositional history and was not always in favour. He was born in Surrey and moved to Scotland. We heard his Valediction.

Ronald Center, from Aberdeen, did not have a big compositional output – one symphony and a quantity of chamber music and solo piano works. The last composer was another Ronald, Ronald Stevenson who was born in Blackburn but spent most of his life in Scotland. Christopher introduced us to his work nine years ago. Much influenced by Grainger, he composed many works and was a teacher working in South Africa and New York. There is a society: https://ronaldstevensonsociety.org.uk

It was a pleasure to have an evening presented by someone with knowledge and enthusiasm for his subject. Here was a varied collection of pieces by a range of composers some, sadly, seldom heard. The Chair of the Society said it was an ‘ear opening’ evening.

The next meeting is on 21 October and is a members’ evening. Please let Robin know what your favourite piece is.

Making recordings during Lockdown

The pianist Christopher Guild discussed the problems of recording during Covid Lockdown

You might think that the Society, having been in existence for several decades now, would not have anything new to offer, yet Christopher’s presentation on 13 March was new in several respects. First, it was a description of the recording process itself (more later) second, we had we had recordings performed by Christopher and third, two recordings which had never been performed in public before. Christopher used to teach at Godolphin School in Salisbury.

One composer he featured was Ronald Stevenson who is somewhat neglected today and whose work Christopher has been exploring and unearthing new pieces. Other composers featured during the evening were by William Beaton Moonie, Berhard van Deeren, Ronald Center and William Brocklesby Wordsworth, great nephew of the poet of the same name. There were transcriptions of works by Purcell. Stevenson is no stranger to the Society as Christopher gave a presentation of some of the composer’s work in an earlier visit in 2015.

Recording, like many other aspects of life, was all but impossible during Lockdown although there were attempts at performing elements and then melding them together. One such was a recording with a poem in medieval French included.

Christopher explained the recording process generally. Except for major stars, the record company will not make any up-front payment. This means the performers need to secure finance themselves unless they self-fund. The process starts with an idea which is proposed to the record label. Then a recording studio needs to be located and in the case of a piano recording, with a full size instrument. This is to do with the dynamics of the sound and the harmonics which are important for the integrity of the final sound. Perhaps surprisingly, the piano has to be kept in tune several times during the day which of course is another expense. This arises because of temperature and other changes in the studio during the day. The studio Christopher used was near Beccles.

Each piece can be played three times together with ‘patching’ where there are mistakes or infelicities of playing to be corrected. This process can take two days.

This was a fascinating evening with several never before heard pieces performed by composers – such as Ronald Center – of whom few if any of us had heard before. The process of recording was especially interesting and it’s perhaps surprising to note that as a recorded music society we have not touched on the process itself before.

PC

The next meeting is on 27th March and concerns the conductor Leopold Stokowski who died at Nether Wallop.

Photo: SRMS