Erik Chisholm Centenary Celebration
Murray McLachlan (piano) Wigmore Hall, London 4 January 2004 and
CDs
Bartók
Out of doors
Sorabji
Fantasiettina sul nome illustre dell'egregio poeta Hugh MacDiarmid
Chisholm
Pibroch Sonata (1939)[London premiere]
Janácek
Sonata I.X.1905 'From the Street'
Stevenson
A Threepenny Sonatina [world premiere]
Busoni
Fantasia contrappuntistica (Edizione Definitiva, 1910)
This challenging programme of Murray McLachlan's 'official'
Wigmore Hall debut recital was devised as an Erik Chisholm Centenary
Celebration at Wigmore Hall and given there first on the day
this once famous Scot had been born a hundred years before. A
musical polymath, Chisholm (1904-1960) was active in his relatively
short life as a composer who drew on diverse cultural influences,
and he worked too as organist, conductor and administrator, notably
in Cape Town where the centenary is being celebrated with productions
of his operas. It did Chisholm and his memory a great service
for McLachlan to have devised this sequence, centring on the
presentation of the London premiere of a major sonata, surrounded
by music which significantly influenced him, a testimony to Erik
Chisholm's wide ranging enthusiasms.
Out of Doors was a reminder that Chisholm was a friend of Bartók,
and the first to bring him to UK, where he purchased “all
the piobaireachd music he could lay his hands on!” The
'small piece' by Sorabji (no easy one though), brief but typically
wild, reflected this maverick composer's friendships with Ronald
Stevenson and Chisholm. Stevenson was present, amongst many luminaries
of an earlier generation, and his Sonatina after the Weill-Brecht
opera struck a welcome lighter note in the second half, following
Janácek's memorial sonata which had received a luminous
and moving performance from McLachlan, none better to my recall
(Chisholm was an authority on Janácek and wrote the first
major study of his operas in English).
Each half had one extremely demanding major work. Chisholm's
35-minute Sonata (1939) “fuses Bartókian textures
and harmonies with Celtic-inspired melodies, rhythms and colours”.
The opening of the first movement suggests a Scottish piper and
the pianism is of the kind that exploits the orchestral potential
of the piano, unfashionably as of now, but welcome to hear again.
I found the Scherzo a little heavy and relentless (often a misnomer,
q.v. Brahms and Chopin) and wondered if the textures might not
be lightened a little and the dynamics more varied? The Lament
for the loss of the submarine Thetis (an event shortly before
War was declared which I remember well, though only 12 at the
time) is an expansive slow movement, and the rhythmic energy
of the finale brought to mind the first sonata of Tippett, composed
around the same time.
Finally, the 'operatic' Edizione Definitiva of Busoni's great
Fantasia, in which “extensive use of the sostenuto pedal
in performance can cast fearful shadows” over the Bach
fugues. McLachlan's exemplary programme note stresses how ahead
of its time was the “plethora of futuristic harmonies” in
which Busoni realises new possibilities, “rising on the
shoulders” of Bach's fragment towards a new future. It
is possibly unrealisable in its totality, rather as there can
never be a last word on Beethoven's Hammerklavier sonata, and
it is relevant that Chisholm brought Egon Petri to Glasgow's
Active Society for the Propagation of Contemporary Music for
a Busoni recital. To bring us down from the heights, Murray McLachlan
finished with two little Chisholm Scottish Airs as encores, exactly
right. He had demonstrated sensibility, concentration and endurance
throughout a notable recital, for which he was duly acclaimed
by a near full Wigmore Hall audience, marred only by some persistent,
uncovered coughing from the keyboard side. An indication of the
north/south divide in Britain is that whilst this programme is
to be toured widely up north and recorded for CD, apparently
nothing else is scheduled in Southern England by the Erik Chisholm
Trust, so do look out for the release of this recital programme
on CD.
Click above to view www.dunelm-records.co.uk
Of the two CDs of Erik Chisholm's music available I would recommend
first Murray McLachlan's studio recordings of solo piano music
on Olympia OCD 639. This is well documented by the composer's
daughter and by the pianist. Under the influence of his friendship
with Bartok, which led to his becoming known as McBartok, Chisholm
has demonstrated that Scottish folk-song is as fruitful a source
for art music as have been those of Poland and Hungary; Chisholm's
Scottish Airs are good equivalents to Bartok's better known Improvisations
on Hungarian Peasant Songs; his sonatinas are delightfully inventive,
and his early music is always well crafted.
Transfers from earlier live recordings of Chisholm's 1st Piano
Concerto and more solo compositions, all played by Murray McLachlan,
are available from Dunelm. The Elegies (1929-40) combine Bartokian
and Celtic influences, and With clogs on is a 'wildly rhapsodic,
fierceley defiant and delightfully unpredictable' piece intended
for a Cornish Suite, the rest of which remains to be discovered.
Definitely a composer worth exploring and revaluing at this time.
Click above to view www.dunelm-records.co.uk
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