Robert Matthew-Walker (b. 1939)
A Bad Night in Los Angeles
Nocturne and Aubade: Two pieces for piano Left-hand, Op 154 (2015)
Three American Pictures, Op 157 (2016-21)
The Evening of Memory – Adagio in B minor, Op 200 (2021)
Battledore – Five Children’s Pieces, Op 95 (1989)
Fantasy –Sonata: Hamlet (Piano Sonata No 3), Op 34 (1980)
Divertimento on a Theme of Mozart for piano duet, Op 57 (1984)
Fantasy on a Theme from Malcolm Arnold, Op 208 (2021)
The Fields are White Already; a contemplation for solo piano in memoriam John McCabe (2015-21)
Mark Bebbington (piano)
Rebeca Omordia (piano – duet)
rec. 2021, The Menuhin Hall Stoke d’Abernon, UK
SOMM Recordings SOMMCD0662 [75]
The name Robert Matthew-Walker will be familiar to classical music collectors in recent times as the writer of many illuminating liner notes. Dig a little deeper and going further back in time and the Wikipedia listing describes him as “English composer, writer, editor marketer and broadcaster, mainly involved in classical music”. Certainly his career heading up the Classical departments of RCA and CBS in the UK and Europe during the recording Golden Age of the 1970’s and beyond reads like a who’s-who of the musical great and good. The liner for this new release includes a photograph of a private party for Leonard Bernstein’s 53rd birthday which includes Bernstein, Boulez, Barenboim, Du Pré amongst others with Matthew-Walker in the group too.
Go a little further back still and it emerges that Matthew-Walker studied privately with Darius Milhaud in Paris in 1962-63. The result is a fairly prodigious output of music across all genres. The current disc includes a work with the Opus of 208 and the Wiki page mentions six symphonies. On disc, Guild released a survey of his chamber, vocal and keyboard works back in 2016 (along with the Sinfonia Solemnis For Six Percussion Players Opus 31) but that aside this generous survey of his piano music is the only other disc devoted to his music. This is a typically top-notch SOMM release; pianist Mark Bebbington is justly renowned for the technical quality and musical insight of his playing across a wide range of repertoire. Likewise producer Siva Oke and engineer Paul Arden-Taylor have returned to the tried and tested venue of The Menuhin Hall Stoke d’Abernon to produce a recording that is beautifully natural and well-balanced.
Unsurprisingly Matthew-Walker has supplied the liner for this release where he notes that “this album contains almost all of my piano music written since I left the mainstream classical record business in 1978”. There is a considerable range in scale and styles across the fifteen tracks of this CD although the essential musical vocabulary and style stays relatively unchanged across the 41 years of composition they span. In terms of simple duration timings run from the 16:09 of the Fantasy –Sonata: Hamlet (Piano Sonata No 3) Op 34 down to the 0:26 of Running About - the third of the Five Children’s Pieces – Battledore Op 95. It is a mark of Matthew-Walker’s success as a composer that in context both these pieces “work” so well and that is true of all the music presented here. Matthew-Walker is by no means a modernist composer, his idiom is resolutely tonal and the inspiration for the works is mainly pictorial or evocative of an extra-musical mood. Even in an objective piece such as the Divertimento on a Theme of Mozart Op 57 there is a humour and projection of character.
An observation rather than a criticism is that I am not completely sure compositionally who the ‘real’ Matthew-Walker is. While he most certainly does not write in a pastiche manner there are passages which strongly reflect the influence of other composers. Ravel is a recurring muse as is John Ireland. But then rigorous quite neo-classical Shostakovich of the Preludes and Fugues makes an appearance in the central panel of The Evening of Memory Op 200 [track 6] where the outer sections are pensively beautiful and reflective – this was one of the works I enjoyed most on the disc.
Another passion and area of expertise for Matthew-Walker is the world of Rock and Pop music. As a writer he has produced books on figures as diverse as Elvis Presley, David Bowie and Madonna to name but three. In his music this translates into passages reflecting this engagement with popular culture with disco music and Carlos Santana directly referenced by Matthew-Walker in the liner with the former occurring in the piece that gives this disc its title − A Bad Night in Los Angeles – the third and final movement of Three American Pieces Op 157. Personally I found this to be one of the disc’s less compelling works because curiously (given his interest in the genre) Matthew-Walker does not write very effectively in a jazz/pop idiom. If you compare this to say the keyboard writing of Frederic Rzewski who takes that idiom to another level of technical brilliance and stylistic fusion against which this light-hearted piece is rather underwhelming. The central panel – At Gershwin’s Grave – is in contrast touching in its simplicity and sincerity. Those are two qualities that are also brought to bear on the very effective and charming Five Children’s Pieces – Battledore Op 95. Battledore appears to be a reference to an early form of badminton but there is no explanation for its application here if indeed that is what it alludes to. This little suite is very much in the tradition of composers writing ‘proper’ music for very young students and as such it is wholly successful both for performer and listener.
Apparently Mark Bebbington has been a long-time advocate of the composer with several of the works on the disc written for him and the Fantasy – Sonata: Hamlet (Piano Sonata No 3) Op 34 having featured in concert by him. Certainly all of the performances on the disc are imbued with a sense of familiarity and interpretative conviction that shows them in the very best possible light. The sonata is another impressive work on the disc although Matthew-Walker is at pains to point out that the piece is “neither programmatic nor a character portrait….. it is… a metaphysical work.” Which rather begs the question why give it a title? But the result is musically well-argued with the strongly contrasted sections cogently constructed. I was less convinced by the humour of the piano duet Divertimento on a Theme of Mozart Op 57 very well-played though it is by Bebbington and his pianistic colleague Rebeca Omordia. The liner makes no reference to this being a sequence of pastiche variations but it did bring to mind Franz Reizenstein’s Variations on ‘The Lambeth Walk’ which does overtly parody other composers to great effect.
The disc is completed by two quite different but very recent works. The Fantasy on a Theme from Malcolm Arnold is the Opus 208 mentioned above and dates from 2021. The theme is derived from four letters of Arnold’s name (mAlColm ArnoldD) rather than a melody he wrote. This is not the only work in which Matthew-Walker sets himself fairly prescriptive compositional challenges – track 2 is a Toccata on three notes “without octave or intervallic displacements” – but the result here is very effective inhabiting a similar spirit to some of Arnold’s less overtly public music. The final work is a tribute to another composer; The Fields are White already which is subtitled “a contemplation for solo piano in memoriam John McCabe”. Matthew-Walker started a memorial work soon after McCabe’s death in 2015 but according to the liner he was unhappy with the original work and did not feel he had satisfactorily achieved the result he wanted until 2021. At 13:03 this is the longest single span of musical though on the disc – although the Fantasy Sonata lasts longer it is by its nature more sectionalised – the McCabe work is in one arching sweep encompassing a range of moods from contemplative to impassioned before sinking away into silence. This is an impressive end to the disc and one of the works which I suspect does reflect Matthew-Walker’s most personal utterance. Given that this was completed when the composer was over 80 it is a tribute to his remarkable creative drive that appears to be continuing unabated and undiminished.
Labels such as SOMM and Toccata Classics do the listening public a great service by bringing to our attention the work of composers who have not received the wider acclaim their music deserves. Certainly this new disc falls into that category; Matthew-Walker’s music is individual and accessible but with a sophistication and craft that repays attentive listening. All of the music except for the Fantasy-Sonata and the Divertimento are receiving first recordings. SOMM’s presentation and Bebbington’s performances are predictably top-drawer. Both composer and listener can be delighted with the results.
Nick Barnard
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