Tippett Piano Concerto; R3 in Concert, Weds 14/6/17

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I'm a bit lost with some of your comments, S_A. The Hindemithian influences are most prominent in the works of the '30s to '50s, not "invaded" in Midsummer Marriage which is a part of that "early" couple of decades of works, which includes the Piano Concerto. The "break" in style is declared in King Priam, with a brittle, dry clarity (influenced as much by Brecht) replacing "natural clarity, freshness, and welcoming memorability" of those earlier works. "Second Period" Tippett contains many of his finest works - the Second and Third Piano Sonatas, the Concerto for Orchestra, and the Third Symphony (I have great problems with Tippett's vocal writing in this period and after - so the Finale doesn't yet convince me personally - the operas and choral works repel me, too; but "natural lyricism, freshness, clarity and welcoming memorability" sums up my reaction to the instrumental works of this time perfectly). The synthesis of the two earlier "periods" in his last works (starting with that wonderful gate-opening chord that starts the Fourth Symphony) also produced much, much wonderful Music - though still hose horrible (to me) "yo-ti-ho-ti-hoyata-hoe" vocal melismas.

But, yes - Tippett as CotW would be wonderful. (Something else those Forumistas who bemoan the lack of broadcasts of his Music can not listen to.)

[Pulcinella]

(starting with that wonderful gate-opening chord that starts the Fourth Symphony) also produced much, much wonderful Music - though still [t]hose horrible (to me) "yo-ti-ho-ti-hoyata-hoe" vocal melismas.

Yes, the opening of the Triple Concerto is for me just as wonderful, but I too can readily pass over the majority of the vocal works.

But, yes - Tippett as CotW would be wonderful.

Especially if the Osborne versions of the piano sonatas or Handel Fantasia are played, to convince you that you NEED
that 2CD Hyperion set, ferney.

[Serial_Apologist]

I'm a bit lost with some of your comments, S_A. The Hindemithian influences are most prominent in the works of the '30s to '50s, not "invaded" in Midsummer Marriage which is a part of that "early" couple of decades of works, which includes the Piano Concerto. The "break" in style is declared in King Priam, with a brittle, dry clarity (influenced as much by Brecht) replacing "natural clarity, freshness, and welcoming memorability" of those earlier works. "Second Period" Tippett contains many of his finest works - the Second and Third Piano Sonatas, the Concerto for Orchestra, and the Third Symphony (I have great problems with Tippett's vocal writing in this period and after - so the Finale doesn't yet convince me personally - the operas and choral works repel me, too; but "natural lyricism, freshness, clarity and welcoming memorability" sums up my reaction to the instrumental works of this time perfectly). The synthesis of the two earlier "periods" in his last works (starting with that wonderful gate-opening chord that starts the Fourth Symphony) also produced much, much wonderful Music - though still hose horrible (to me) "yo-ti-ho-ti-hoyata-hoe" vocal melismas.

But, yes - Tippett as CotW would be wonderful. (Something else those Forumistas who bemoan the lack of broadcasts of his Music can not listen to.)

Yes you are right about the Hindemith influence coming in earlier, ferney - I guess in my head my listening back was being "thrown" by the madrigalist sprung rhythms' predominance, whereas Hindemith, or at any rate the later Hindemith, can often seem rhythmically stolid. One very late work which I really love and can listen to over and over again is "The Rose Lake". Time to give the guy some attention, after having missed out on so much for so long.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Especially if the Osborne versions of the piano sonatas or Handel Fantasia are played, to convince you that you NEED
that 2CD Hyperion set, ferney.

I don't need "convincing" - I need CASH!

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Or the electronic equivalent thereof.

[ahinton]

Well ... for me it's as "classic Tippett" as Beethoven's 4th Pno Conc is "classic Beethoven" = very different from (say) the Fifth Symphony, but showing the fuller range of the composer's expressive arsenal.

Hear, hear!!!

[ahinton]

I'm a bit lost with some of your comments, S_A. The Hindemithian influences are most prominent in the works of the '30s to '50s, not "invaded" in Midsummer Marriage which is a part of that "early" couple of decades of works, which includes the Piano Concerto. The "break" in style is declared in King Priam, with a brittle, dry clarity (influenced as much by Brecht) replacing "natural clarity, freshness, and welcoming memorability" of those earlier works. "Second Period" Tippett contains many of his finest works - the Second and Third Piano Sonatas, the Concerto for Orchestra, and the Third Symphony (I have great problems with Tippett's vocal writing in this period and after - so the Finale doesn't yet convince me personally - the operas and choral works repel me, too; but "natural lyricism, freshness, clarity and welcoming memorability" sums up my reaction to the instrumental works of this time perfectly). The synthesis of the two earlier "periods" in his last works (starting with that wonderful gate-opening chord that starts the Fourth Symphony) also produced much, much wonderful Music - though still hose horrible (to me) "yo-ti-ho-ti-hoyata-hoe" vocal melismas.

But, yes - Tippett as CotW would be wonderful. (Something else those Forumistas who bemoan the lack of broadcasts of his Music can not listen to.)

Yes, that break is indeed marked by King Priam.

"Gone seems to be the natural lyricism, freshness, clarity and welcoming memorability of the "Trotskyist period"", writes S_A. I don't understand that - and what in ay case is this "Trotskyist period" in musical terms and how is it defined as such? To me, the "natural lyricism, freshness, clarity and welcoming memorability" of which S_A writes is present in all the works mentioned as well as the Third Quartet and Second Symphony; the Piano Concerto seems to me very much a part of that.

You write of "the Second and Third Piano Sonatas, the Concerto for Orchestra, and the Third Symphony" from that next period in Tippett's creative life; I find the Second Piano Sonata a very mixed bag of confusion and delight, the Third Piano Sonata the best work he ever wrote for piano solo, the Concerto for Orchestra as a brilliant showpieve but with so much more depth than such a description alone would convey and my feelings about the Third Symphony are, I fear, unprintable - so a far more inconsistent period, for me. Vision of St. Augustine comes from this time, too and that's a very sadly underappreciated work.

Tippett knew that he didn't possess Britten's "professionalism" and ease at his craft and almost admitted as much; for all his inconsistencies, however, I have no doubt as to which of the two was the greater composer...

[Pulcinella]

Or the electronic equivalent thereof.

Ah, you mean an ERNIE win?

(If any of my numbers comes up big time I'll treat you, ferney!)

[Serial_Apologist]

Ah, you mean an ERNIE win?

(If any of my numbers comes up big time I'll treat you, ferney!)

I think ferney was having a side-swipe at the "tickets for cash" thread, Pulcers!

[Pulcinella]

I think ferney was having a side-swipe at the "tickets for cash" thread, Pulcers!

Yes, I realised that, but thought I'd be 'inventive' (in an Alphabet Association sort of way), with the E of ERNIE standing for Electronic.

[Serial_Apologist]

"Gone seems to be the natural lyricism, freshness, clarity and welcoming memorability of the "Trotskyist period"", writes S_A. I don't understand that - and what in ay case is this "Trotskyist period" in musical terms and how is it defined as such? To me, the "natural lyricism, freshness, clarity and welcoming memorability" of which S_A writes is present in all the works mentioned as well as the Third Quartet and Second Symphony; the Piano Concerto seems to me very much a part of that.

There's an awful lot more I'd need to find out about before trying to answer that question, ahinton. Long before he became a "Sir", Tippett would have been one of the earliest advocates of Trotsky, this being at a time when the show trials were little publicised in the West, and the few intrepid socialists, such as the Webbs, prepared to visit the Soviet Union and discover for themselves what it was all really about (and not about) largely kept schtum on the repressions and exterminations, of which Trotsky's was on the agenda. Such was the fraternality between radical thinkers in the late 1930s, especially in artistic circles, that Tippett maintained his friendship with Alan Bush, or so one hears, though my betting is that they would have had a few arguments over Tippett's choice of alignment! My own view fwiw is that Tippett's choice of a relatively uncomplicated musical idiom was one of temperamental affinity, rather than advocacy of Socialist Realist "music for the masses" aesthetics - which, to be fair, didn't really interest Bush until after the Zhdanov edicts in 1948, though from the latter's Piano Concerto he was audibly beginning to move in that direction.

[ahinton]

There's an awful lot more I'd need to find out about before trying to answer that question, ahinton. Long before he became a "Sir", Tippett would have been one of the earliest advocates of Trotsky, this being at a time when the show trials were little publicised in the West, and the few intrepid socialists, such as the Webbs, prepared to visit the Soviet Union and discover for themselves what it was all really about (and not about) largely kept schtum on the repressions and exterminations, of which Trotsky's was on the agenda. Such was the fraternality between radical thinkers in the late 1930s, especially in artistic circles, that Tippett maintained his friendship with Alan Bush, or so one hears, though my betting is that they would have had a few arguments over Tippett's choice of alignment! My own view fwiw is that Tippett's choice of a relatively uncomplicated musical idiom was one of temperamental affinity, rather than advocacy of Socialist Realist "music for the people" aesthetics - which, to be fair, didn't really interest Bush until after the Zhdanov edicts in 1948, though from the latter's Piano Concerto he was beginning to move in that direction.

Tippett's political thinking, though never less than sincerely felt, went through a number of vacillations. At one point in the 30s, he seemed to be quite an apologist (sorry!) for Mussolini yet by the early 40s he had become a committed pacifist and was soon to write A Child of our Time. His fraternity with Bush went deep; I remember an interview with John Amis in which he mentioned Tippett having responded to someone's enthusiasm for something in his Second Quartet by exclaiming "oh, I got that from Alan!). Alan Bush, whose piano concerto is one of the finest English works for the medium (notwithstanding the Randall Swingler doggerel that he set in its finale - and the fact that the excellence of Bush as a composer was such as to enable him somehow to overcome what would otherwise have been a black spot on a fine work speaks volumes), attracted encomia from Tippett. Bush's Communist sympathies found favour to far better effect in his four operas, not least the final one, Joe Hill: the man who never died, which his longstanding friend Sorabji (hardly a man of like persuasions) though to be the peak of his achievement. What you write in your last sentence pretty much sums this up, I think. Tippett's music has fallen on rather hard times, for some unaccountable reason; Bush's has never really courted or (sadly) found the limelight.

Not wishing to jump to the wrong conclusions, what specifically did you mean by Tippett's "choice of alignment" in the context of Alan Bush and what he might have made of it?

By the way, the Hindemith connection, undeniable though it is, can easily be overplayed, I think, a reliance on quartal harmony and figurations being a not insubstantial part of it; Elliott Carter's fine Piano Sonata of 1945-46 evidences something not dissimilar and is perhaps the closest that he and Tippett at around the same time ever came to one another...

[Serial_Apologist]

Not wishing to jump to the wrong conclusions, what specifically did you mean by Tippett's "choice of alignment" in the context of Alan Bush and what he might have made of it?

Such was the quasi-religious fervour in which full signed up Communist Party members and sympathisers like Beatrice and Sydney Webb held Stalin and the Soviet Union in the late 1930s, believing (among other things) it to be the world's saviour against fascism, that anybody not rushing to the "socialist" state's defense while proclaiming themselves of the left was likely to be seen as a class traitor and spy at worst and an imperialist lackey at best - a situation only changing with the anti-fascist wartime alliance between America and the USSR leading to the CPSU announcing a relationship of "peaceful co-existence" between the Communist and non-Communist worlds that would in principle be maintained until the fall of the Berlin Wall - notwithstanding which the bad blood didn't end there, as I well remember from my days of political activism in the 1970s!

[ahinton]

Such was the quasi-religious fervour in which full signed up Communist Party members and sympathisers like Beatrice and Sydney Webb held Stalin and the Soviet Union in the late 1930s, believing (among other things) it to be the world's saviour against fascism, that anybody not rushing to the "socialist" state's defense while proclaiming themselves of the left was likely to be seen as a class traitor and spy at worst and an imperialist lackey at best - a situation only changing with the anti-fascist wartime alliance between America and the USSR leading to the CPSU announcing a relationship of "peaceful co-existence" between the Communist and non-Communist worlds that would in principle be maintained until the fall of the Berlin Wall - notwithstanding which the bad blood didn't end there, as I well remember from my days of political activism in the 1970s!

That's as clear and thorough an answer as anyone could hope for! Many thanks.

By the way, RB's mention of "accompanimental" figurations ion the solo part reminds me of Shura Cherkassky who told an interviewer that, although he had learnt Busoni's Piano Concerto, he wouldn't perform it because he couldn't come to terms with such hard work accompanying the orchestra for around an hour only to end up accompanying the choir as well (I'm unaware that anyone's ever made a similar obsrvation about Bush's Piano Conceto)...

[Richard Barrett]

just as mozart transforms the various types of alberti accompaniment into something rich and subtle

or does he?