Malcolm Williamson (1931-2003)
Chamber Music for Wind and Piano
Sally Lundgren (mezzo-soprano)
Joely Koos (cello)
Antony Gray, Iain Clarke, Joe Howson, Hamish Brown (piano)
New London Chamber Ensemble
St Paul’s Sinfonia/Matt Scott Rodgers
rec. 2024/25, St Michael’s, Highgate & Henry Wood Hall, London
Reviewed as a download
Divine Art DDX21120 [80]
Sir Arthur Bliss Master of the Queen’s Musick – he liked the old spelling – died on March 27th, 1975, and two Malcolm’s, Arnold and Williamson were suggested as replacements. Both sadly had emotional and alcohol problems which got worse in the coming years. For Williamson, who was appointed in 1976, this proved challenging as from the start he had difficulty in meeting some deadlines for high profile works and the British press got their knives out for him. From the early 80s it seemed he could do no right although he did write a number of significant works until a Parkinson’s diagnosis and a major stroke in the mid-90s limited his ability communicate verbally and put notes on paper. For whatever reason, by the late 90s he could not fulfil the role, but he did not resign as Master of the Queen’s Musick and when he died in 2003 the obituaries were not charitable about his considerable achievements. Most chose to dwell on his idiosyncratic personality or pointing out he was the only Master of the Queens Musick in 100 years not to be knighted. After his death the post was limited to ten-year terms and the name reverted back to Master of the Queen’s Music.
Live performances of Williamson’s has music all but disappeared. Of new recordings on CD there were few. Hyperion did record all of the works for piano and orchestra (review). For ABC Classic Antony Gray recorded the complete piano music (review ). A Chandos series of orchestral music only got to two volumes before stopping ( review, review ). This was tragic as he was a very fine composer and there is much in his large catalogue well worth exploring. This disc covering chamber music from over fifty years is therefore more than welcome as it shows just how wrong has Williamson’s neglect been.
While showing the undoubted quality of the music it does highlight a problem. Williamson’s music is wide ranging stylistically. At times it seems to be leaning towards Broadway and the downright popular, the next mixing plain chant with Messiaen and cerebral serialism. His friend Richard Rodney Bennett who, for most of his life, kept his more ‘difficult’ works separate from his popular ones likened his music to being from different rooms in his house. The fundamental design is the same, but each have a different ambience. In Bennett’s case it was a very tidy house, with Williamson it is more an open plan affair with the contents spilling over. So here, for the unsuspecting, some of the track changes will come as a shock but keep going. A number of works are appearing for the first time since following the death of his partner Simon Campion a previously hidden archive has become available.
The disc opens with and intersperses through the ensuing tracks, music cues from what seems to have been intended incidental music for a television show. The score calls it Gallery, but no such programme has been traced, and no further details are available. Whatever the programme was it must have been of ‘serious’ intent as the style is spikily Stravinskian. The eight tiny, punchy pieces, scored for six trumpets (including D and Bass) as well as two pianos and percussion and here perhaps receiving their first performance are a welcome amuse-gueule.
The Pas de Quatre for flute oboe, clarinet, bassoon and piano was commissioned by the Metropolitan Opera Ballet Workshop for the 1967 Newport, Rhode Island Festival. Taking its cue from the commissioners the structure is inspired by the pattern of a classical balletic pas de quatre. The whole ensemble are involved in the first and last movements, and the middle four movements being variations in the ballet sense, feature individual wind instruments with piano, and in the third Variation, flute and oboe alone. For all its fun and wit, it is a tightly worked out suite with the sinuous motive heard on the wind at the beginning of the first movement serving as a link between the variations. The solos for the instruments are perfectly suited to them with the flute having a florid spiky jazz influenced dance which here could perhaps be a little quicker. The clarinet comes of best with a wide-ranging lyrical barcarolle which Neyire Ashworth shapes beautifully.
The Clarinet Trio, dedicated to Imogen Holst, was premiered at the Aldeburgh Festival in 1958 where the performers were Harrison Birtwistle on clarinet and Cornelius Cardew on piano, before they became well known as composers, John Dow was the cellist. It is a short work that covers quite a few stylistic references in its six-minute duration. The opening clarinet solo is reminiscent of Messiaen who leaves very soon and a Poulenc like cello arrives with a seductive melody. Other members of Les Six or maybe Shostakovich appear in the second movement a joking scherzo in which the clarinet seems to try to reference other composers. It was long thought lost but it is a fun work that I hope players will take up.
Throughout his life Williamson was attracted to Scandinavian poets and in 1973 when he was asked for a work by the Athenaeum Ensemble, he chose texts by Pär Lagerkvist, calling the work Pieta after the title of the final poem. It is a twenty-minute Adagio in a single span scored for mezzo soprano, oboe, bassoon and piano which sets five poems from different collections in the original Swedish,. The poems are separated by interludes for the three instruments in different combinations. The poems all relate to Mary and the crucifixion and drew from Williamson, at the time a devout Roman Catholic, some of his most personal music. It is highly chromatic and tautly controlled but the vocal writing is strangely seductive and in Sally Lundgren with her unerring sense of pitch has a perfect interpreter. The wide-ranging oboe and bassoon lines are likewise impeccably shaped.
Williamson’s fiftieth birthday occurred when I was a student. To celebrate the event I organised a performance of the final work on the disc and one of his finest works his Concerto for Wind Quintet and Two Pianos, Eight Hands. It was a beast to get together, though tremendously rewarding to play, and I have waited over forty years to hear a ’proper’ performance. At last here it is! The concerto was commissioned by the Macnaghten (spelled Macnaughton in the booklet) Concerts for a 60th birthday concert at the Wigmore Hall for the composer Alan Rawsthorne on 9th April 1965 (the booklet gives 1966). The distinguished pianists on that occasion were Richard Rodney Bennett, Peter Maxwell Davies, Thea Musgrave and the composer, with the New London Wind Ensemble. For a celebratory occasion it is not all high jinks with the composer taking the opportunity to pay tribute to a distinguished musical figure with care.
The work opens quietly yet dramatically with a powerful movement full of dissonant counterpoint. A fanfare like tune introduced by the horn is often accompanied by unsettling, dense, cluster chords in the pianos. It is a tremendously impressive piece of writing which must have made the first audience sit up. The difficult balance between the instruments is beautifully captured by the engineers. The drama is blown away in the second movement a skittishly entertaining fugue. It is tough to bring off, with many awkward entries and timings but these expert performers are perfectly on cue. The third movement is based around an Italian sounding cantilena. The melody is subject to ever dissonant accompaniment culminating in some violently dense, dissonant, chords on the pianos before ending serenely. It is a powerful piece but needs a careful hand to shape the disparate events. Matt Scott Rodgers proves himself a more than capable director. If everything has been quite sober so far the party gets underway in the finale. This is basically a madcap ostinato chase with the pianos seeming to imitate some of Conlan Nancarrow’s studies for player piano. The wind try to bring in some tuneful melodic material but get caught up in the hijinks and the work ends with everyone enjoying themselves. It is enormous fun of the type that was so frowned upon in musical circles in the sixties.
In the archive Antony Gray found what appears to have been another possible opening to the Concerto, which was abandoned. Scored for the two pianos alone, it has the same dramatic feeling as the published first movement. It is interesting to hear but the published movement is far superior.
Other works on the disc include a study for solo horn taken from a notebook written when Williamson was sixteen and a student horn player. It is skilfully written but nothing earth shattering. There are also arrangements of three works originally for voice but here played on clarinet and piano. The two vocalises were written as gifts for friends while December is an arrangement by him of a movement from his 1995 song cycle A Year of Birds. The cycle a setting of verses by Iris Murdoch premiered at the 1995 Proms was his last success. All three work very well and make welcome additions to the clarinet and piano repertoire.
Overall the recording is a superb achievement. The technically difficult music receives wholehearted, idiomatic playing from all involved. Special thanks must go to Antony Gray who has been tireless in his support of Williamson’s music over the years. The booklet has some poignant black and white photographs of the composer in old age, his eyes still radiating energy. I hope that the release will prompt other, labels, or even this one, to explore Williamson’s chamber music further. The world is long overdue recordings of the many song settings with piano or the dark Piano Quintet or Piano Trio written in memory of Sir Arthur Bliss.
Paul RW Jackson
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Contents
Gallery Music (1966)
Pas de quatre (1967)
Vocalise in G (1985)
December (from A Year of Birds) (1995)
Vocalise in G Minor(1973)
Trio for Clarinet, Cello & Piano (1958)
Pieta (1973)
Music for Solo Horn(1947)
Concerto Fragment (1965)
Concerto for Wind Quintet & Two Pianos, Eight Hands (1965)
