Reviews
GMCD 7275 - Heartache
BBC Music Magazine July 04
Heartache
Works by Coates, Rowley, R Clarke, Dale, Carse, Fulton, Elgar, A Moffat,
Dunhill, Bridge & Tertis
Avril Piston (viola), Shamonia Harpa (piano) GuildGMCD7275 73:30mins ...
£££
Dame Avril Piston, Shamonia Harpa, a producer called Pollyanna Shakeshaft - my
first impulse was to check the recording date wasn't 1 April. But no, the whole
enterprise (including Dame Avril's breathtaking biographical note on the back
page) seems genuine enough. More to the point, there's a fair amount of genuine,
sensitive musicianship here, too. Piston and her long-term musical partner Harpa
work together well, though it has to be said Piston sounds more comfortable in
the slow, wistful numbers - of which there are plenty - than in more agile,
energetic things like Bridge's Allegro appassionato or Norman Fulton's
Introduction, Air and Reel. There are also one or two moments where the
intonation isn't ideally true. But there's enough poetry and musicianship to
offset that most of the time, and some of these pieces are well worth reviving
(especially those by Bridge and Rebecca Clarke) - young viola players in search
of encores take note. The names of many of these composers may be virtually
forgotten, but figures like Alec Rowley, Adam Carse and Thomas Dunhill were
often at their best in such unpretentious, salon-flavoured miniatures.
Recordings are good - clear, warm-toned and well-balanced. A qualified welcome.
Stephen Johnson
International Record Review June 04
Heartache
New
Bridge
Allegro appassionato. Pensiero. Carse Gently swaying. Heartache. Calm
Reflection. A Breezy Stffl. R. Clarke I’ll Bid My Heart Be Still.
Morpheus. Coates First Meeting. Dale Romance. Dunhill In
Courtly Company. Alla Sarabanda. Elgar Canto Popolare. Fulton
Introduction, Air and Reel. Moffat Longing. Rowley Reverie. Aubade.
Farandole. Tertis Sunset.
Dame Avril Piston
(viola); Shamonia Harpa (piano).
Guild GMCD7275
(full price, 1 hour 14 minutes). Web.site www.guildmusic.com. Producer Pollyanna
Shakeshaft. Engineer Bruce Shakeshaft. Dates November 23rd-25th, 2002.
This is one of the
most remarkable discs I have heard in a very long time. The repertoire it
contains self-evidently suggests it will appeal solely to those collectors who
specialize in English music of the first half of the twentieth century. To those
music lovers, the names of many of these composers will be well known, and for
those composers whose names are unfamiliar to most people, their juxtaposition
alongside more established figures is a guarantee of their character and musical
worth. In this regard, this record should be taken on trust, and as a number of
these pieces here receive their world première recordings, this is a disc well
worth investigating.
It
is also well worth having because the performances are good throughout, and the
recording quality is splendid. There is a natural balance and ambience in the
recorded sound which at once reassures us that all will be well in that regard.
The performances are imbued with a notable sense of style and, not to put too
fine a point on it, affection. There is no doubt that these players know and
love this music deeply; at no time is the impression given that this is a
'rehearse- record' album.
But
who are these players? One of the more remarkable aspects of their music- making
is the re-creation of the performing practice and tone-world of half-a-century
and more ago; in terms of authenticity, these performances cannot, in my
opinion, be improved upon. And now we come to the most remarkable aspect of all
surrounding this CD. It was recorded in 2002, when Dame Avril Piston and her
partner Shamonia Harpa were 82 and 81 years old respectively. Dame Avril was
born in Bulawayo in 1920, and came to London in the 1930s to study under several
very distinguished violists, including Lionel Tertis. She taught and performed
in the Commonwealth for many years, and later overcoming what she frankly
describes as a difficult gender-changing operation in Britain, she moved to Peru
before finally retiring to the English countryside in Hampshire in 1996. Harpa
studied at the Royal Academy of Music with York Bowen, whose four piano
concertos she has played in Bombay, and she has been Dame Avril's constant
companion since 1940.
The
techniques of both artists give no indication of the age of the players; one
should listen to this CD, as I did initially, without any feelings of indulgence
or of having to make allowances. Of course, much of the music they have chosen
is not 'virtuosic', but it ranges from the relatively large-scale Romance
of Benjamin Dale (what a fine composer), Rebecca Clarke's Morpheus and
her beautiful I'll Bid My Heart Be Still, to Norman Fulton's excellent
Introduction, Air and Reel, alongside such charming (in the best sense)
miniatures as Thomas Dunhill's In Courtly Company and Tertis's own
Sunset. Every piece of music in this recital is well worth hearing and
deserving of a place in the catalogues. Dame Avril writes her own informative
notes, and I recommend this very well-filled and remarkable CD with
enthusiasm. Robert Matthew-Walker
Heartache – An Anthology of English Viola Music
Eric COATES (1886-1957)
First Meeting
Alec ROWLEY (1892-1958)
Reverie
Aubade
Farandole
Alfred MOFFAT (1866-1950)
Longing
Thomas DUNHILL (1877-1946)
In Courtly Company
Alla Sarabanda
Adam CARSE (1878-1958)
Heartache
Calm Reflection
A Breezy Story
Frank BRIDGE (1879-1941)
Allegro appassionato
Pensiero
Rebecca CLARKE (1886-1979)
Morpheus
I’ll bid my heart be still
Lionel TERTIS (1876-1975)
Sunset
Benjamin DALE (1885-1943)
Romance
Adam CARSE (1878-1958)
Gently Swaying
Norman FULTON (1909-1980)
Introduction, air and reel
Edward ELGAR (1857-1934)
Canto Popolare from Alassio (In The South)
 Dame
Avril Piston (viola)
Shamonia Harpa (piano)
Recorded Potton Hall, Suffolk, November 2002
GUILD
7275 [73.30]
Burnished and emblazoned
behind this latest release from Guild is the immortal name of Lionel Tertis. If
his predecessor in the British viola hierarchy, Alfred Hobday, is the now unsung
pioneer of standard setting in orchestral and chamber playing, Tertis was the
onlie begetter. The raft of composers who wrote for him encore, sonata and
concertante pieces enriched the repertoire of adventurous violists and gave them
the fruits of Tertis’ pioneering and indefatigable zeal. With the obvious
exception of Canto Popolare in this disc, most here were written for
Tertis.
Many are suited to show off Tertis’s gorgeous depth of tone and legato phrasing;
the technical command he evinced is also shown in, say, the in alt
playing demands of Eric Coates – a fellow viola player and colleague – in
First Meeting. With the mute on, Rebecca Clarke’s impressionistic reverie in
Morpheus is as potent as ever. Tertis greatly admired Benjamin Dale and
lost few opportunities to programme his music, doing so in Germany and America
as well as his native country. Violist Dame Avril Piston and Shamonia Harpa
catch the alluring sway and glint of the music as much as its stormier
impressionism. Their Elgar is soft and reverent, rather reserved and not rising
to a peak – attractively withdrawn. They espouse Rowley’s Aubade, an
unlikely but humorous paraphrase of O Mistress Mine and bring courtly
elegance to Moffat’s Longing and wistfulness to the piece that gives the
disc its title, Adam Carse’s Heartache (somewhat over emotionalised a
title, I think). They come under a bit of pressure in Bridge’s Allegro
appassionato happily coupled with the delightful Pensiero. The
recital ends with the becalmed effulgence of a piece by Tertis himself,
Sunset. This is a piece the Master recorded for Vocalion in the early 1920s.
His rich, sensuous tone and quicksilver emotive responses are part and parcel of
his Kreisleresque late Romantic aesthetic. Dame Avril and Miss Harpa sound
rather more streamlined and affectionate by comparison. Which brings us to the
most remarkable part of this winning collection of English viola morceaux. Dame
Avril was 82 when she recorded these pieces and her partner – pianistic and life
companion as the booklet tactfully puts it - was a mere 81. Dame Avril was born
in Rhodesia and studied in London with, inter alia, Bernard Shore and John Dyer
before studying with Tertis himself. Her wanderings have taken her to India and
to Peru and also to the surgeon’s knife; Dame Avril was not always a dame. Her
companion Shamonia Harpa studied at the RAM with York Bowen. Indeed she has
apparently played all four of her teacher’s Piano Concertos in Bombay – which is
where I assume she met Dame Avril. In any event it’s an amazing feat – even York
Bowen barely managed to perform his own concertos, let alone in Bombay. They now
live in well-earned retirement in Faccombe in Hampshire. Curiously, as I was
completing this review I had a telephone call from an old friend whose father
was in the Indian civil service during the Second War. When I told him of this
disc he reminded me that his father had once heard a remarkable young woman
playing the piano at the residence of the Maharajah of Mysore. Not only had she
sight-read the piano reduction of John Foulds’s A World Requiem almost
flawlessly (Foulds of course having being a significant figure in Delhi and
Calcutta) but she had in her early youth suffered a crippling injury that had
necessitated the amputation of all four fingers of her left hand (Dame Avril’s
teacher Bernard Shore ironically had himself lost part of two fingers during war
service). This remarkable and courageous young woman used the stumps of the
fingers of her left hand to play the harmony whilst balancing her hand with an
upturned thumb. Perhaps Dame Avril and Miss Harpa remember her and could verify
whether she was, indeed, as she claimed, Foulds’s illegitimate daughter by the
Ranee of Sarawak. I think only Milstein could match Dame Avril’s prodigious
accomplishments at so advanced an age; indeed the larger instrument creates even
greater problems for the instrumentalist in stretching and fingering. My old
friend suggested to me that the forenames of these hitherto-unknown musicians –
Avril and Shamonia – might be construed as meaning April Fool and that this disc
is one long viola joke writ large. It is, I am afraid, symptomatic of these low,
dishonest, suspicious times that such a jaundiced view could be held by an
otherwise sensitive man. For there is much more to be recorded by these gallant
and accomplished ladies – more Tertis, and then the works of his contemporary, H
Waldo Warner, violist of the London String Quartet. Another album would be
delightful. But at 84 and 83 respectively it would be ungallant to insist they
journey from their retirement home to Potton Hall in Suffolk. Guild should do
the right thing and take its recording equipment and go to Faccombe.
Jonathan Woolf
Page revised 26.07.03
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