Every so often someone’s life’s work of a project sees
the light of day. Looking back we might see such personal landmarks
as Cobbett’s Chamber Music in 1929, Kenneth Thompson’s listing
of works and first performances by twentieth century composers, or Alan
Poulton’s wonderful recently published encyclopaedic catalogues of 66
British composers. All seemingly impossible compilations of data which
once brought together become an invaluable cornerstone of the literature.
Inevitably getting such a work to fruition is fraught with all manner
of difficulties, and predictably, once published, while admiring it
for its ambition, we have the much easier task of nit-picking criticism.
It is good to welcome this latest example, an enormous list of first
broadcast performances of music in the UK from 1923 to 1996. At the
very least, it is compelling evidence of the unique role of the BBC
in maintaining the vigour of our musical life over more than 70 years.
However, I am afraid any review of this wide-ranging and fascinating
compilation tends to incline to the reporting of omissions, which in
my case are based on my card index of cuttings from the Radio Times
compiled over 40 years, and a first-hand knowledge of various composers’
surviving acetates of broadcast performances of their works. I regret
to report there are omissions.
In his introduction Alastair Mitchell tells us he has
relied on the BBC’s ‘Programme-as-broadcast’ daily programme log held
at the BBC Written Archives at Caversham. However, it has not resulted
in a compilation as comprehensively accurate as he clearly hoped, and
it might have been wise to correlate back to The Radio Times,
surviving acetates of actual broadcasts, and, for the big names, the
composer files at Caversham. Even checking against the British Institute
of Recorded Sound’s Handlist of Music by British Composers of the
Twentieth Century (which only appeared as a ‘preliminary draft’
in 1967) shows omissions. For example, according to the BIRS, missing
are Cardew’s Treatise (June 1967), Thomas Eastwood’s Solitudes
(August 1964), and not least something as well-known as Walton’s
The Twelve (January 1966), among quite a few others.
Soon after the book had arrived for review I found
myself faced with a real practical query to put to it. I had then just
been commissioned to write the notes for the new Dutton CD of Bantock’s
Violin Sonatas 1 and 2 (just out on Dutton CDLX 7119 – Ed), both of
which I knew had been first played on the BBC, but I did not have the
dates. Mitchell and Poulton score a 50% success rate from this test
- they list the First Sonata correctly, but of the Second they make
no mention. Fortunately, I did not believe them, and I ploughed through
a year of The Radio Times and eventually found it, broadcast
7 July 1940. Then, listening to the acetates (Leech collection in the
British Library) of the BBC broadcast of the first performance of Vaughan
Williams’s Fifth Symphony (24 June 1943), I had the unworthy thought
of double checking in the Mitchell and Poulton index – and again it
is not there. This is such a famous performance I had half expected
they would have known of it themselves without any resort to BBC sources.
Since then, whenever I have played an historical recording from an off-air
source I have checked Mitchell and Poulton and found a fair number of
omissions. For example, the broadcast of the first performance of Moeran’s
Symphony in G minor (Queen’s Hall, 13 January 1938), or later Robert
Simpson’s Piano Concerto (14 July 1967). Even more recently Trevor Hold’s
Symphony (April 1988) and Patrick Piggott’s Piano Concerto ‘The Quest’
(April 1991) do not show. Indeed one wonders if they have something
against poor Patrick whose other major orchestral works Prologue,
Action and Denouement (1955) and Rosanes Lieder (1990) are
not listed either, though I have the composer’s own off-air recordings
of both.
This problem is compounded by their inclusions/exclusions
policy. Take, for example, the Bloch Violin Concerto which had its first
British performance at Queen’s Hall on 9 March 1939, a performance available
commercially, with Szigeti and Beecham, which does not appear. But we
do get the first UK performance of Rachmaninov’s Fourth Piano Concerto,
broadcast from Manchester in 1928. The Bloch was, similarly, the British
premiere and surely worth listing, particularly with such prestigious
artists. Indeed less well-known works which were being given their first
British hearings are present – eg: Loeffler’s The Death of
Tintagiles listed as UK first broadcast performance, or Julian
Orbon Tres Versiones Sinfonicas described as first performance
in the UK. Or take Julius Harrison’s Bredon Hill, a work first
broadcast on the BBC overseas services, a performance then broadcast
at home from transcription discs, but presumably omitted because not
a straightforward mainstream broadcast from London.
It would also have been interesting to know when all
Elgar’s major works had their first broadcast performances. Having admitted
the principle of listing their first broadcasts by naming 21 Elgar works
one wonders why the rest were not listed, particularly when there exists
such a useful crib as Ronald Taylor’s chronological compilation of BBC
broadcasts up to 1934. Interestingly, Mitchell and Poulton cite their
earliest Elgar as Enigma on 24 October 1923. Taylor gives three
pages of earlier listings back to September 1922, including Cockaigne
in July 1923. Fascinating stuff: but highlighting a problem of what
should and should not have been included and of consistency of selection
criteria.
I can sympathise with the compilers’ problem: they
needed to find ways of restricting the enormous extent of their project.
The problem of doing this is that everything left out diminishes the
end product and upsets someone. It would have been much better to have
adopted a more compact on-page format, smaller type, and give more information
in fewer pages. I am still far from clear whether this is a compilation
of broadcast first performances or of first broadcast performances,
the latter a much larger proposition. Both criteria seem to have been
applied at different places and what we have is something which seems
to have set out to be the former with an inconsistent number of exceptions
as the latter.
One or two entries raise an eyebrow. What is Mozart’s
‘String Quartet in A, K 581’, which is listed as having a first UK broadcast
as late as 1961. This is the Köchel number of the Clarinet Quintet
– was it an arrangement? Then the fictitious Piotr Zak and his Mobile
for tape and percussion is listed with a perfectly straight face as
being an authentic work and ‘performance’, while the original workshop
reconstructions of Mahler 10 and Elgar’s The Spanish Lady are
not mentioned. Other works which were performed incomplete, a part at
a time, or as a selection of movements, such as Bantock’s The Song
of Songs in the 1920s and 30s, also do not show (though Bantock’s
Omar Khayyam does).
Some operas whose first productions were broadcast,
are not listed, presumably because the BBC chose to take a performance
after the first, examples include Walton’s Troilus and Cressida,
where the second performance was actually broadcast, and George Lloyd’s
The Serf which was broadcast during the tour. George Lloyd along
with Berthold Godschmidt, Karl Rankl, and presumably others, loses operatic
listings because extracts rather than complete performances of operas
were broadcast. Cyril Scott’s opera The Alchemist which many
readers might remember as one of the most interesting British operas
revived during the BBC’s ‘Fairest Isle’ programmes in 1995 was a British
first as well as a first broadcast anywhere, and should appear.
Another problem is the authors’ decision of what is
included from where. They have compiled a listing of nationally available
broadcasts. Thus the important output broadcast regionally, particularly
in Scotland between the 1950s and 1980s, and from local radio stations,
notably BBC Radio London in the 1970s, is omitted. As an example of
what is missing we might note the first performance of Constant Lambert’s
early ballet Prize Fight, broadcast in the Midland Home Service
(BBC Midland Light Orchestra) from the Bromsgrove Festival in May 1969.
Nevertheless the 724 pages of listings seem to have
achieved a high level of accuracy as far as the actual entries are concerned.
As a tool for reception studies of music in the twentieth century this
is fascinating and gives us material for future analysis – for much
the majority of the repertoire listed is, of course, the new music of
the time. To see what was new, say during the war, and to compare it
with the years immediately before and after is an eye-opener. Even more
to see the pre-Glock years and compare them with post-Glock is to give
a new complexion on our perceived history of the time. What would be
most interesting is to know which of the performances listed survive,
either on commercial issues, in the British Library or in private collections,
for the technology was available to record the majority of the these
performances and a high percentage probably exist somewhere. Enough
of nit-picking: this is an enormously valuable compilation, though,
as we have seen to be used with care as it is not the last word.
1) A Dictionary of Twentieth-Century
Composers. Faber, 1973
2) A Dictionary-Catalog of Modern British Composers. Greenwood Press,
3 vols, 2000.
3) A Chronological List of Live Broadcasts of Elgar's Music by the BBC
November 1922 to February 1934. New Barnet, 1996
LEWIS FOREMAN
