The next meeting of the Salisbury Recorded Music Society will be held on Monday 1st April 2019 at 7.30pm in our usual venue, when Ed Tinline will be presenting The trumpet (and other brass) shall sound – a focus on the brass section from Handel onwards. Given the date, although it will be a bit late in the day for tricks as such, Ed hopes to include a little musical humour during the evening.
We hope to see you on Monday.
The next meeting of the Salisbury Recorded Music Society will be held on
Monday 18th March 2019 at 7.30pm in our usual venue, when Stephen Tucker will present Great French singers of the past – a survey of their voices and repertoire.
Parking is free and convenient. We look forward to seeing you.
There are many people – even among keen classical music enthusiasts – who have never heard of this composer. At our meeting last night (4 March 2019) this was corrected with an excellent presentation by Alan Forshaw.
It was perhaps unfortunate that Alkan lived at the time of Liszt and Chopin who dazzled the Paris public with their playing and compositions. These are now household names and their works regularly played in concerts. Another factor is that Alkan composed largely for the piano so there are no symphonies, operas or song cycles etc. This narrowness of repertoire combined with the fiendish difficulty of many of his compositions may have led to his virtual disappearance.
Alkan was a prodigy entering the Paris Conservatoire at the age of 6 and giving a recital on the violin, at 7. He was born in 1813 in Paris. He started composing at 15 and this composition – Variations on a theme from Steibelt’s Orage Concerto – was the first piece to be played. The second was Concerto da Camera No 2 in C# minor which was first performed in Bath, England which he visited in 1833.
We then heard extracts from Trois Grandes Etudes Nos 1, 2 and 3. What was notable about these was that No 1 was for the left hand only and No 2 for the right. Listening to these justifies the word ‘fiendish’.
Although Alkan composed mostly keyboard works, the next piece was the finale from the Piano Trio with strings. We then heard four examples from Twelve Studies in all the major keys Nos 1, 5, 8 and 12. These were followed by some extracts from Concerto for solo piano.
Alkan was overlooked by the Conservatoire when they appointed Marmontel – a mediocre talent and former student of Alkan’s – to the post of head of piano studies. Following this acute disappointment and sleight, Alkan retired from public view for around 20 years although he did continue to compose.
He was a practising Jew being from a devout Jewish family and for a time, was organist at his local synagogue. He spoke Hebrew. Some of his later compositions had Jewish themes.
In some senses his life mirrored his compatriot Berlioz – 10 years his senior – who also had problems with the French musical establishment. Berlioz composed nothing for the piano but some commentators said Alkan was ‘the Berlioz of the piano’. They differed in that Alkan continued to follow the German tradition whereas Berlioz forged a new individual path whilst continuing to be an admirer of Beethoven.
The chair of the Society, in his vote of thanks said that, like many he suspected in the audience, he had heard little of Alkan, and Alan had shown what a remarkable and individual composer he was. His music follows fairly straightforward musical forms – variations for example are quite easy to follow – but he pushed his technique to extreme limits.
There is a society devoted to his works http://www.alkansociety.org
Peter Curbishley
The next meeting is on 18 March and continuing the French theme, is about great French singers of the past.
The next meeting of the Salisbury Recorded Music Society will be held on Monday 1 April 2019 at 7.30pm in our usual venue, when we shall be very pleased to welcome our own Ed Tinline who will be presenting an evening on the trumpet and other brass instruments.
I hope you will be able to come on Monday.
The second half of the season gets underway on Monday 4th February at 7:30 as usual with a presentation on organ music. We have not had such a presentation in recent years (if at all) and yet there is a large corpus of music written for this ‘king of instruments’. The music will included works in the 17th century and some written in modern times. At least one recording was made with the Cathedral’s organ.
Hope to see you there.
We shall be very pleased to welcome Duncan Eves from the Elgar Society, who will be presenting: Elgar – Orchestral Genius.
We look forward to seeing you on Monday. If you are not a member, the entrance fee is £3 for the evening. Parking is right outside and is free.
The next meeting of the Society is on Monday 29 October at 7:30 as usual and will be a presentation by Ian Lace on Debussy and Ravel – two great French composers. We look forward to seeing you there. It is GDP3 for non-members. Parking is outside the door and is free. Appropriate venue for people with mobility difficulties.
We held our first member’s evening this season and it turned out to be excellent. A small, but perfectly formed selection of music was put forward and we heard a mixture of old favourites and some completely new pieces.
We started with a concerto in D by Johann Fasch a contemporary of Bach and Telemann. Not a composer we have heard played before I think so it was interesting to hear this.
This was followed by the familiar K393 Solfeggio and the Great Mass in c minor by Mozart. This was followed by some extracts from Mendelssohn’s Elijah.
A surprise addition was John Downland’s songs Go Crystal Tears, Mrs Winter’s Jump and I saw my Lady Weep. Forward in time to the romance from Berlioz’s Damnation of Faust which resulted in a considerable financial loss for the composer.
Finally, and perhaps to shake everyone up, we heard the Drunkard from Shostakovich’s Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk. A rumbustious piece to finish the first half. This composition was banned from performance in Russia and led the composer to live in fear of his freedom.
After the break it was Darius Milhaud’s suite for alto sax Scaramouche.
This was followed by some songs which may have been played in Shakespeare’s plays presented from his own disc by Jeremy Barlow. This will merit a fuller presentation in future.
We finished with a live recording of Mahler’s symphony No 8 (final two sections) which rounded the meeting off wonderfully.
So we spanned the centuries and the styles and heard the new and the familiar.
Peter Curbishley
Next meeting on 29th October
The last meeting of the Society focused on the music of Central Asia. The area includes such countries as Dagestan, Armenia, Georgia and Chechnya. It has had a troubled history. There were the Armenian massacres after the Great War and recently there has been fighting in Chechnya.
The music from this area is a little overlooked as attention is normally paid to the big Russian composers such as Tchaikovsky, Prokofiev and Rachmaninov. Robin Lim’s presentation was a welcome peek into this area and an introduction to some overlooked composers.
The first is a composer not overlooked, namely Borodin and his lovely ‘In Central Asia’ which captures beautifully the expansive nature of the country. In addition to being a composer, Borodin was a chemist and made contributions to organic chemistry working on aldehydes.
Back in time to an Armenian composer from the 5th century, Stephanos Syunets with a performance of ‘Pharaoh with his Chariots.’
Khachaturian is of course famous and was the first composer to successfully fuse western and Armenian music and to make it accessible to the rest of the world. He was one of those who suffered during the time of Stalin, his music being deemed ‘unpatriotic’. One of his pieces Spartacus, featured in the ‘Onedin Line’ older readers may remember.
Alexander Arutiunian is not a name which comes readily to the lips but his allegro from Concertina for Piano and Orchestra composed in 1951 was quite unusual. We heard a version played by his daughter Narine.
Then on the Georgia to hear David Oistrakh play part of Taktakishvili’s Concerino for violin and small orchestra.
This was followed by pieces by Kancheli, Niyazi, Hajibeyov, Gliere and Amirov. Names almost unknown outside their countries.
The meeting took place on the day of Charles Aznavour’s sad death in Paris. Aznavour, originally, Aznavourian, was from Armenia.
Members thanked Robin for his hard work in ferreting out some most unusual items, pieces that are rarely played by composers who do not deserve to be forgotten. Once again the Society was successful in introducing members to lesser known works.
Peter Curbishley
While you’re here, members might like to see a video I made at a concert in Montpellier, France. It was probably unique in that the audience sat among the orchestra while it played. You can see it on YouTube. There were large numbers of children who despite fidgeting a lot, were quiet and absorbed with what was going on. They played Elgar amongst other composers and the event was called Au Coeur de l’orchestre. PC
The new season of the Recorded Music Society kicked off with a flying start with a presentation by Tony Powell entitled One Composer’s journey into silence and then resignation. He was of course referring to Beethoven who, as is well known, became progressively deaf starting at quite a young age in his 20’s. By 1816 he had lost nearly all his hearing and visitors had to write down what they wanted to say.
This clearly had a traumatic effect on his musical life. He was a fine pianist and conductor so he was no longer able to do these things. Even though the music was in his imagination, not to be able to hear what he had composed was a heavy burden to bear.
Tony attempted to take us through his musical life, starting with the youthful compositions and ending with some of the last completed pieces. It might be tempting to use the major pieces – the symphonies or concertos for example – but instead he chose the smaller scaled compositions: piano trios; ‘cello sonatas; string quartets and piano sonatas. These are often give a truer insight into a composer’s ‘soul’ if you will, and are harder to compose. Some may be surprised at this but even composers like Mozart, who could dash off pieces seemingly at will, found the shorter forms harder to complete sometimes taking months.
The big change in the piano trios Tony explained, between Beethoven and the earlier composers, was the role played by the other two instruments. With Haydn, they were in support of the piano, in the Beethoven’s work, they played an equal role. This was particularly evident with Op 1 in G Major composed in 1795 when he was in his 20’s.
The style changed and in Op 70 No 2 composed in 1808 we see a greater intensity. Events in Europe would no doubt had a role to play, in particular the French Revolution and the increase in enlightenment thinking.
He only wrote 5 ‘cello sonatas and we heard extracts from Op 5; Op 69 and Op 102, again a spread through his lifetime showing stylistic changes between 1797 and 1815.
Next to the string quartets and if you were not a Beethoven scholar and heard string quartet No 6 in B flat Op 18, you might be forgiven in thinking it was a piece by Haydn. The jaunty theme and structure of the quartet typical of that composer. You would not make that mistake with the last completed quartet (by Beethoven) No 16 Op 135 composed in 1826 the year before he died.
The piano sonatas were a compositional form Beethoven was most comfortable with, possibly because of his piano playing background. We heard extracts from three: No 1; No 23 (Appassionata) and No 32. The increase in intensity and complexity was most marked.
This was a most interesting presentation, showing the changing style of Beethoven’s work over his life. No doubt events in his life – revolution, the Napoleonic wars for example played their part – but his retreat into an inner life would also have been a powerful influence.
Peter Curbishley
Next meeting 1 October at 7:30 as usual
Salisbury Recorded Music Society 