This is the second disc released under the imprimatur of the
English Music Festival. Pianist David Owen Norris has been a
stalwart of the Festival since its inception in 2006 and his
evident commitment to the cause of English music in general
and Roger Quilter in this instance is clearly displayed. One
little curio; the disc was recorded two years before the first
festival and as far as I am aware this is its first release
– since the recording venue was the university where Norris
is professor of Musical Performance perhaps this was a pet project
squirreled away awaiting a sympathetic distributor.
Any reputation that Quilter does enjoy tends to be based almost
solely on his songs. Only the suite from Where the Rainbow
Ends here claims to be a world premiere recording but certainly
it is invaluable for the bulk - if not the ‘complete’ as the
disc is titled - of Quilter’s piano works to be gathered in
one place and so well performed. Norris contributes an excellent
essay to the liner titled “playing Quilter” which deals with
the specific sound-world and technical aspect of the composer’s
work. Certainly one is immediately struck by the craft that
has been lavished on these small pieces – it brings to mind
a phrase I read once elsewhere: miniature not trivial. Once
you accept that the scale and emotional remit of these works
is deliberately small there is enormous pleasure to be had in
them. The music breaks down into two simple types – collections
of impressionistic or absolute music written for the piano and
movements transcribed from incidental or orchestral music. Both
types are characterised by a charming easy lyricism and no little
skill in writing adeptly for the keyboard. The earliest work
is the Three Studies Op.4 written between 1901-1909.
The half-dozen or so years before World War I seem to have been
some of Quilter’s most productive since the Three Pieces
Op.16, the first of the Two Impressions Op.19 and the
original version of the incidental music for Where the Rainbow
Ends all date from this time too. The latest music here
– the Four Country Pieces Op.27 although post-war, breathes
the same innocent air and can be heard in its orchestral garb
on the Marco Polo disc (8.223444) devoted to Quilter. A couple
of general thoughts start to nag away. The liner cover is a
reproduction of a lovely painting of an Edwardian picnic by
Wilfrid de Glehn featuring a reclining Quilter in the foreground
surrounded by books. This surely encapsulates the upper-middle
class idyll of Edwardian society. Combine that with the escapist
innocence of the incidental music for children’s plays and you
cannot help feeling that Quilter was emotionally locked into
an earlier and presumably happier age. Not that there is anything
wrong with that except that it rather defines and limits the
range of his music. The longest single work recorded here is
possibly the finest too – Summer Evening is No.2 in the
set of Three Pieces Op.16. This is a delightful tone-poem
with a hazy sunset and lingering birdsong evoked to perfection.
Here it is possible to detect the clearest influences on Quilter’s
keyboard writing which is not that of the English pastoralists
or folksong one might expect but instead Debussy and Grieg -
the trolls in Grieg’s Lyric Pieces sound like first cousins
to Quilter’s Goblins. By some distance this is also the
piece with the deepest felt emotion. Elsewhere, as in Rosamund
or Moonlight on the Lake Quilter can write with a
real melodic gift and considerable tonal beauty but this aspect
of the work reveals a profounder sensibility. Indeed as a set
the Op.16 pieces are probably the strongest group – Norris included
it in a recital for the English Music Festival in 2009 together
with the early Op.4 works. Lanterns from the Op.19 Two
Impressions is full of interest too – dedicated to Percy
Grainger it has an energy and flamboyance that is very compelling.
Much as I enjoyed this disc I could not rid myself ultimately
of the sense that for all the craft and skill on display other
English composers of the time wrote for the piano more challengingly
and on a far broader emotional canvas.
The pluses are a lovingly produced disc with good engineering
supporting Norris’s superbly executed, passionate and insightful
advocacy. His chosen instrument – a Bösendorfer – sounds magnificent
and suits the music ideally. Two linked issues I do have – playing
time is positively mean running to just 47 minutes. No doubt
the defence is that this is “the complete piano music” and you
cannot play more than there is. But even a cursory trawl through
the published catalogue shows that it is not. Norris, as mentioned,
plays a suite from the incidental music to Where the Rainbow
Ends. Dr Valerie Langfield in her liner alludes to the fact
that this music was published in various guises. My piano copy
published by Elkin in 1912 titled “Music from the Fairy Play”
includes six movements not included here. Obviously Quilter
reworked the material for the recorded suite since Rosamund
and Will-o’ the Wisp are identical - except for a
tiny final coda in the former. Norris’s Goblin Forest incorporates
material in the complete incidental music called The Dragon
Forest. In Moonlight on the Lake Norris uses Grainger’s
performing edition. This is a gorgeous movement but again I
feel the ‘spare’ room on the disc could usefully have allowed
the original and the Grainger version to sit side by side. As
it currently stands the movement is audibly more lush
than the appealingly chaste simplicity of the other music around
it – fascinating to hear but ultimately not authentic Quilter.
Nothing in the incidental music score says whether this
is arranged by the composer or not but the fact that it is identical
to the suite would imply that it was. Some of the movements
are clearly occasional, indeed simple, but I’m sure a pianist
of Norris’s stature could have mined beauties from them. Collectors
will be familiar with some of the ‘missing’ movements since
they appeared in the orchestral version of the suite on Marco
Polo’s British Light Music Series (not the finest disc
in that set by any means) or the finer by far EMI/Hickox version
that has variously appeared as A
Quilter Compendium or originally as part of a 1989 English
Miniatures disc (EMI Classics CDC 7 49933 2). Add to this
‘missing’ material from other incidental music available in
piano transcriptions (A Slumber Song and St. George
are excerpted on the back of the piano score of Rainbow Ends)
as are – apparently – the Op.11 English Dances and it
becomes clear that this is in no way the complete piano music.
I have not heard the other available recording from Clipper
Erickson which can still be downloaded from Amazon and elsewhere.
He chose to record only the original piano works as part
of a Quilter/Cyril Scott recital. Norris’s choice to record
some but not all of the incidental music-sourced material seems
inconsistent especially given its inherent beauty. Perhaps I
am wrong to be frustrated by something that is ultimately no
more than a promotional title but I wonder if this disc would
have been better served by recreating in part at least the 2009
concert programme Norris gave which featured this music. Certainly
I would have enjoyed hearing it juxtaposed against Bax and Lambert
Sonatas or perhaps more tellingly the Moeran miniature that
was featured. By no means trivial, my own particular jury is
still debating how much more than simply charming this music
is.
Nick Barnard
And a second review of this disc … this time by Rob Barnett
The Spirit of England – the rubric of EM Records – is
a capaciously catholic and accommodating church. That much is
apparent from the off in this collection of evocative piano
music from a figure usually bracketed in a rather miscellaneous
fashion with Scott and Grainger. That grouping reflects their
joint studying years with Iwan Knorr in Frankfurt.
The music here is suave, lovingly polished and weighted, surefooted
and not short on sentiment. Unsurprisingly the early Three
Studies content themselves – and us - with a variety of
manners predominantly Brahms but a dusting of Rachmaninov. They
are all very enjoyable but the Molto Allegro amabile is
a real lissom delight. Dance in the Twilight is rather salony in a heart-warming way
but is followed by a Delian-nuanced Summer Evening and
a bluff and genial At a Country Fair. The latter shares
the same lively country optimism as Lanterns, Goblins
and Pipe & Tabor. The hum of In a Gondola
recalls the harmonic world of the instrumental start of
RVW’s setting of Bredon Hill yet lovingly accedes to
the magnetic pull of Grez-sur-Loing. Forest Lullaby shares
a similar mien. Shepherd Song and Rosamund touch
on Warlock’s most direct pastoral idylls such as the piano line
in the song My Own Country. The four movement suite from
the incidental music to Where the Rainbow Ends includes
a touching, even Grainger-lachrymose, Rosamund, a swirling
sanguine Will-o’-the Wisp that might have been written
for a piano-roll, a rather Viennese-accented Goblin Forest,
the placid salon-weighted magic of Moonlight on the Lake
and a final sprightly yet unrushed Fairy Revels.
Everything presented here is done with élan in every aspect.
The performances are accomplished and impart a depth of passion.
The piano sounds well whether loud or quiet. The extensive English-only
essay is by Dr Valerie Langfield – the authority on Quilter.
DR Langfield’s definitive book on the life and music is published
by Boydell
& Brewer and reviewed here.
Her website
is well worth visiting as a complement to the fleetingly brief
delight of this music.
EM Records is a facet of the Em Marshall-Luck’s English Music
Festival and already has a more than promising catalogue. This
is soon to expand with Holst’s music for The Coming of Christ.
The other entries involve two English violin/viola sonata discs
one of which we have reviewed
here. The other also presents recording premieres: the original
version of the Holbrooke Second Violin Sonata (the revised version
is on Naxos)
and the epic Bantock Viola Sonata.
There are other and more celebrated facets to Quilter’s music
but this one should not be overlooked. This disc is a distinctive
and always intensely pleasing presence among compendiums of
English piano music of the last century.
Rob Barnett
Complete tracklist
Three Studies Op.4 (1. Molto Allegro con moto [2.37]; 2. Molto Allegro amabile [1.10]; 3. Vivace misterioso [2.26])
Three Pieces Op.16 (4. Dance in the Twilight [2.26]; 5. Summer Evening [5.07]; 6.. At a Country Fair [4.13])
Two Impressions Op.19 (7. In a Gondola [4.38]; 8. Lanterns [2.36])
Four Country Pieces Op.27 (9. Shepherd Song [2:47]; 10. Goblins [1:35]; 11. Forest Lullaby [2:22]; 12. Pipe and Tabor [1:37])
Suite from Where the Rainbow Ends (13. Rosamund & Will-o' the Wisp [3.59]; 14. Goblin Forest [4.02]; 15. Moonlight on the Lake [2.20]; 16. Fairy Revels [3.05])
David Owen Norris (piano) 
