With two orchestral collections already
out from Chandos and a third on the
bench Cyril Scott’s music is at last
making its way.
He died nine years short
of his centenary. Had he lived to experience
that iconic event he would have seen
a couple of articles and very little
else. In the 1980s things moved on a
little as it did for his copains
Granville Bantock and Josef Holbrooke.
For Scott this took the form of a rather
lacklustre orchestral collection from
Marco Polo. Since then there has been
a Chris Howell anthology of piano solos
on Tremula and three double CD sets
of the solo piano music played by Wilfred
De’Ath on Dutton. The BBC broadcast
the one act opera The Alchemist as
well as the choral piece La Belle
Dame Sans Merci and most recently
the Violin Concerto, itself rumoured
to be included on the next Chandos Scott
volume. Latterly the real impact on
the musical public’s consciousness has
come from those two Chandos collections
which in repertoire terms substantially
overlap the present disc; the only completely
new works there being the symphonies
3
and 4
and Neptune.
There’s no direct competition between
this disc and the Chandos pair. Lyrita
have here gathered the contents of two
LPs issued in 1975 and 1977 giving us
Scott’s principal output for piano and
orchestra. The recordings were the result
of a volatile collaboration between
Richard Itter, John Ogdon and the irascible
Anglophile conductor and composer Bernard
Herrmann.
Do not expect from these three works
frank heroics in the Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninov
or Brahms mode. This is not solo pianist
in adversarial contest with orchestra,
pugilistic and then subdued. The First
Piano Concerto was written just before
the Great War. Beecham conducted at
the premiere and the composer was the
soloist. Latterly it was taken up by
Kendall Taylor, Moura Lympany and Esther
Fisher. The work is subtly perfumed
with solo textures abounding and an
overpowering atmosphere of mystery and
idyllic lambency. After the Chinese
hieratics of the first movement the
second shares the enigmatic ritualism
of John Ireland’s Legend and
Forgotten Rite. The arcane beauties
of the piece can be sampled in the dialogue
of gong and celesta. Liquid Debussian
touches create a meditative art nouveau
kaleidoscope – a Klimt canvas in
motion. The mood changes for the finale
with its Handel-out-of-Grainger jocularity.
The beguilingly glittering waywardness
of the First Concerto can also be heard
- though with none of the oriental edge
- in Early One Morning. The folksong
itself is for the most part deeply subsumed,
rising in enchanting Copland-like mist
at 4:18. It is most clearly limned by
the piano at 5:03 onwards. This is by
no means the sort of conventional variations
on a theme that Stanford produced for
Down Among the Dead Men. The
recording sessions were the first performance
of the revision for single piano and
orchestra. The original was for two
pianos and orchestra.
The Second Concerto cannot be precisely
dated but it is known that the composer
was working on it in 1956. It is quite
short and is in three movements. A tougher
nut than the First Concerto, its themes
are more subtle. Its haunted swaying
harmonic world recalls an overgrown,
lichen-festooned castle. Herrmann’s
Xanadu was perhaps an influence; I wonder
if Scott saw Citizen Kane? More
plausibly we might hazard that the concerto
was influenced by Debussy’s Pelléas
et Mélisande. There is a
positively Baxian war-dance trope at
00:32 in I. Otherwise the stylistic
links are as with the other works: with
the last two piano concertos by Nicolai
Medtner, the Symphonic Variations
of Arnold Bax (contemporary with
Scott’s First Piano Concerto) and with
John Foulds’ Dynamic Triptych and
Essays in the Modes.
The cover of the CD
booklet is a detail from the cover of
the LP SRCS81: a portrait of Scott at
age 52 painted by George Hall Neale.
The notes are by Christopher Palmer
and Roger Wimbush and are taken from
the original LPs which are:-
SRCS-81 Piano Concerto No. 1 in C
/ Ogdon (piano) Herrmann LPO
SRCS-82 Piano Concerto No. 2; Early
One Morning (Poem for Piano and Orchestra)
/ Ogdon (piano) Herrmann LPO
This is a generously timed disc presenting
Scott’s subtly beguiling piano concertos.
The first is the more instantly captivating
of the two but the second has much to
commend it. Superbly done.
Rob Barnett
for
details
John Ogdon (piano) 
