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The CD C. Hubert H. Parry: The Sonatas for Violin and Piano is now
available on the label Radegund Records (RR CD018-01), priced at £11.99,
plus postage and packing costs of £1.00.
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If you would like to
order a CD through this site, please click here for the ‘Purchase’ page. Alternatively, the recording is also available from Amazon.co.uk and
as a download from iTunes.
The CD is distributed in the USA by CDBaby.com.
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With the contemporary
prominence of such composers as Elgar and Vaughan Williams, it is
easy to overlook, or at least to underestimate, the revivifying effect
of Parry’s work. Musical life in Britain during the first half
of the nineteenth century was in a state of stultification: the innovations
of continental Europe were largely condemned by the Establishment
and there was a steady trend towards archaism, with the ‘pure’ musical
language of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries being upheld as
the ideal.
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It was due largely to his teacher and mentor, Edward
Dannreuther, that Parry was able to draw on wider musical influences
for his own compositions. Dannreuther was, as Parry wrote after
his first lesson, “a decided Radical in music”; he was a champion
of Brahms, Liszt and Wagner; and, as well as his introduction to English
audiences of piano concertos by Chopin, Grieg, Tchaikovsky and Scharwenka,
he instituted a series of chamber music concerts at his London home,
12 Orme Square. These concerts provided a vehicle for the first
performances of several of Parry’s own chamber works, including the
Piano Trios in E minor, B minor and G major; the Piano Quartet in
A-flat; and the String Quintet in E-flat; as well as two of the works
featured on this disc: the Fantasie Sonata and the Sonata in D major.
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The
edition used for this recording is Volume LXXX of ‘Musica Britannica’: ‘C. Hubert H. Parry: The Sonatas for Violin and Piano’, published
in 2003 by Stainer & Bell and edited by Professor Jeremy Dibble.
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| Adagio – Allegro |
| Andante |
| RONDO: Allegro con fuoco |
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Parry’s first Sonata for Violin and Piano was composed
probably between November 1874 and March 1875; the first movement
was revised during the winter of 1876–7 while Parry was staying in
Cannes with his wife, who was convalescing from an infected lung.
The work shows the influence of Schumann, especially in the opening Allegro, where the syncopated piano part of the development’s closing
passage is strongly reminiscent of the German composer’s Piano Quintet,
which Parry had first heard in February. The voice of Brahms
can also be heard: for instance, in the flatwards inflection over
a tonic pedal that occurs at the end of the second movement.
The Andante is also remarkable for the unusual tonal design of the
recapitulation: Parry at first restates the opening material in the“wrong” key of D major, before modulating back to the tonic of F major
for a wonderfully tender and heartfelt utterance.
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| Allegro quasi maestoso – Più moto – Tempo primo – Lento – Tempo primo– Più mosso – Lento – Tempo primo |
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During 1877 Dannreuther was preparing the
Piano Concerto by Xaver Scharwenka for a performance at the Crystal
Palace. This concerto is in one continuous movement with a cyclic
design and, upon hearing it, Parry was so impressed that he had the
idea of composing a similarly-designed work of his own. The
intent came to fruition in 1878 when, between 22 May and 2 June, he
composed the Fantasie-Sonate in einem Satz für Violine und Clavier [sic].
It is a tautly-organised work, using six themes which themselves show
a high degree of motivic unification; in this respect it may be regarded
as a natural development of the compositional processes used in the
Wind Nonet of the previous year. Within this structure Parry
incorporates four sections, delineated by means of tempo, key and
texture: a sonata-form movement; interrupted by a scherzo-like development
of the thematic material; a Lento, which earned especial praise from
Dannreuther; and a finale-like restatement, with a truly Lisztian
recollection of the slow movement before the brilliant coda.
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| Allegro |
| Andante sostenuto |
| Presto vivacissimo |
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By 1888, when
this Sonata was begun, Parry was an established and respected
composer, academic and teacher. The greater self-assurance which
this undoubtedly brought may be heard in the work’s fresh and direct
diatonic harmonic language and in its finely-judged phrase shapes
and instrumental textures. A broadly-painted, long-lined first
movement is complemented by an Andante that is, by turns, tender and
passionate, while the exuberant Presto vivacissimo shows the man whose
being was fired by risk-taking. Esteemed and venerable figure
of the establishment he may have become, but nothing could deter him
from temporarily abandoning London for strenuous yachting trips in
the Irish Sea, where, on one occasion, he insisted on attempting a
landing on Skellig Michael, a treacherous, jagged island outpost off
the coast of County Kerry, despite the adverse weather conditions:
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“It really was extremely exciting,
for it was risky for the yacht as well as for us. We saw a man
gesticulating wildly from a crag on the rock to warn us from the place
we were going to attempt; and he pointed out a narrow gully where we
might possibly get the boat near. It was a sort of lofty cave
with rough steps cast in the side, and I jumped from the stren and
the man on the rock caught my hand [and] there I was after all on
the big Skellig. I really bounded for joy.”
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Notes ©2007 R. G. Luck
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