Ronald Center (1913-1917)
Instrumental and Chamber Music, Volume Three
Tamás Fejes (violin), Balázs Renczés (cello), Christopher Guild (piano)
rec. 2019-2023, locations provided below the review
Toccata Classics TOCC0723 [78]

Volumes one and two of this admirable series have featured Center’s main works for solo piano and his complete string quartets, (Toccata TOCC 0179 and TOCC 0533 respectively). They have been generously supported by Dr. James Reid Baxter. The music is immensely impressive and will surely enhance Center’s status as a composer of real significance. However, this third disc, as can be seen from the track listing alone, is by way of sweeping up the remaining relevant material. One word which can be applied to the entire disc is “energy”, creative and physical. There are quirky insistences, something of the self-knowing world of cabaret, and a capacity for mystery occasionally verging on the disturbing. It is not a settled world.

Many pieces on this disc would justify the description of Center as “essentially a miniaturist”, however, the previous discs, and Center’s Dona Nobis Pacem do not back up this comment. In the larger-scale works Center is economical, concentrating his moods, but they follow their own emotional trajectories and have a sense of scale and variety that is anything but miniature and are commonly as alarming as they are charming.

The temperamental Sonata for Violin and Piano is demonic in its outer movements, as the soloist Christopher Guild’s extensive liner notes suggest, but the variety of mood is both marked and condensed, ranging from cruel assertion to lyrical reflection. The insouciance of the gentler second movement is offset by the savagery of the final Allegro feroce.

We do not have dates for most of Center’s work – none was published during his lifetime – but it seems likely that the violin sonata and the string quartets were stimulated by the Centers’ friendship with two Polish musicians, the violinist Witold Nowaski and cellist Kazimir Lydzinski. The brief Little Canon for violin and cello is beautiful and thoughtful two-part writing. As such, it has its place with brief charmers such as Giglot and Toccata, a pastiche of a rumba followed by an exhilarating “warm-up for the fingers”, as Christopher Guild has it. There is much that is playful in this CD, and expressive of Center’s own pianistic and teaching skills, notably in pieces clearly designed for his own pupils such as From Childhood briefly epitomizing different genres. The remarkable Burlesca follows and is one of those jokes at the expense of all sorts of musical styles which surpasses its own cynicisms, even briefly achieving nobility in the midst of every kind of musical impudence. It has, of course, to come to a precipitous end. Precipitous endings are a hallmark of several of Center’s works as in the concluding Allegro vivace of the Suite for Piano here receiving its first complete recording.

Trajectory is a word that can be applied to the sudden and rapid travel of his ideas, some so violent that they seem deliberately thrown in one’s face. At first this characteristic might seem at odds with his lyricism, but in the Suite for Piano, following the aggressive energy of Allegro molto, Children at Play gives us an insight into that world with which, as a music teacher, he must have been very familiar; the capacity of children to veer instantly from innocence to viciousness. 

The Phantasy which follows is from 1940 and therefore an early work which lives up to its name as does the 1942 Mélodie. The Preludes are harmonically playful, slipping out of key or from consonance to dissonance. The last two preludes were re-worked into the Piano Sonata (recorded previously by Murray McLachlan (Olympia OCD 264) and Christopher Guild (Toccata TOCC 0179).

The three Preludes and Fugues are compositional experiments. The fugues, in two parts only, break out of counterpoint and tonality, and while cleverly written, the fugue subjects themselves come straight out of the dusty book of such things with almost aggressive cynicism. Guild finds in one of them “perhaps the most exciting, perhaps even experimental example of Center’s writing for piano.” That may be a pianist’s perspective: from a composer’s point of view, the music is comparatively arid and verging on the academic, especially that in G sharp which, with its Prelude, also appears in the Piano Sonata third movement where its setting lifts it out of the world of academe into a sinister register in which it takes on a sour satirical persona. Perhaps that is the best way to listen to these crabbit pieces, albeit that they draw attention to a quality of bitterness not uncommon in Center’s music. That however, is equally matched by a capacity for simplicity, lyricism and tenderness and, above all, humour and musical wit, all of which elements co-exist in the concluding Prelude, Aria and Finale.

Stylistically, many names have been invoked as sources for Center’s own style: and when dealing with a composer whose sophistication is marked by satire, that can be an entertaining area of research. But somehow through it all there is a very individual voice and one to be respected as well as enjoyed.

So what of the performances? They are excellent, thoroughly idiomatic and responsive to the variety of mood. The piano sound has depth as well as immediacy and Guild’s handling is always totally assured. He remarks on the difficulties ensuing from Center’s parsimony with dynamic markings and the absence of any performing tradition. These, however, can be construed as advantages and, in any case, Center’s music is eminently approachable. It has its mysteries and its uninhibited varieties, but the intention is always clear, the thought lucid.

Were one to be greedy and ask for anything more from the performances it might be for even greater volatility. The music itself is highly volatile, so much so that it asks for exaggeration – but then there would be a danger of slipping into vulgarity and, despite all the wit and irony of this music, it is never ever, not for one instant, vulgar. So hats off to Christopher Guild for steering an intriguing course through a whirlpool of inventiveness.

John Purser

Previous reviews: John France (May 2024) ~ Gary Higginson (June 2024)

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Contents
Sonata for Violin and Piano
Little Canon (violin, cello, piano)
Duet (violin, cello, piano)
Giglot and Toccata (Published 1988)
From Childhood (Published 1988)
Burlesca
Suite for Piano
Phantasy (1940)
Melodie (1942)
Seven Preludes
Prelude and Fugue in E
Prelude and Fugue in G sharp
Prelude and Fugue in A
Prelude, Aria and Finale

Recording details
26 June 2019 (Violin Sonata), 1 July 2019 (Little Canon, Duet)
RSNO Concert Hall, Glasgow, UK

2 April 2023 (Giglot, Phantasy)
Wyastone Hall, Wyastone Leys, Monmouthshire, UK

4 January 2021 (others)
Old Granary Studio, Toft Monks, Beccles, Suffolk, UK