On Saturday 18 January at 3pm the Rotherhurst Ensemble is putting on a concert for Naomi House at St Peter’s Church in Petersfield. Graham Bint (piano) tells us more.
The biggest piece is the Schumann Piano Quintet in E flat, which probably needs very little introduction. But we’re starting with two shorter pieces – the Scène Andalouse by Joaquín Turina and then the Phantasy for Piano Quartet by Frank Bridge, both written round about 1910, but in very different styles.
Turina was quite an important figure in Spanish music in the first half of the 20th century, along with de Falla and Albéniz. Like them, he studied in Paris, between 1905 and 1914. He wrote his first work, his Opus 1, which was a massive piano quintet, very much in the style of César Frank. Albéniz apparently attended the premiere of this huge work, and said “Never write anything like that again.”
That’s is not quite the feedback you want as a composer, but his point was that Turina should “listen to more familiar voices” – meaning Spanish folk music, and he took that to heart and thereafter his music is essentially based on Andalusian folk music.
His music also has some North African influences, and there’s a Habanera section in this piece, which originally comes from Cuba. So the Scène Andalouse embodies that sort of Iberian culture.
He gave it a French name because it was first published in France, but later on gave it its Spanish name. It is the first piece that he wrote that really absorbed all these sorts of Spanish influences. There’s lots of pizzicato strings like a guitar. There are Habanera moments in it, and an unusual combination of instruments, with the solo viola and piano quintet, which is not a not a common combination. It’s an amazing piece: Helena Moore is playing the solo viola and I am on the piano.
When we were rehearsing the next piece, the Frank Bridge Phantasy, somebody asked about the person to whom the piece was dedicated – a certain W. W. Cobbett. He was a self-made millionaire in the manufacturing industry and also a keen amateur violinist and chamber music player. He had a bit of a bee in his bonnet, claiming that all chamber music was too long, typically with four big movements, with works such as the Schumann Quintet and the Beethoven String Quartets in mind. He wanted shorter pieces of chamber music, so he founded a competition to write one-movement chamber works of 12 minutes duration or less. The other stipulation was that all the parts had to be of equal importance within it.
Frank Bridge wrote a piano trio first of all, fitting those criteria, and that won the prize. Cobbett liked it so much that he commissioned Bridge to write another fantasy piece, which is the quartet that we’re going to play. Again, it’s 12 minutes long, as stipulated and in a single movement, and all the parts have an equal “say” in it, if you like.
It’s an amazing piece. It’s so brilliantly constructed. It’s in a kind of “arch” form – ABA, but within that the B section is also a little “arch” in itself. Frank Bridge was a meticulous composer, not allowing a spare note. His technique was very sparse: he taught Benjamin Britten, who had nothing but praise for him. It’s a heartbreaking piece, so nostalgic and melancholy, as much music around that time seems to be, doesn’t it?
And then we play the Schumann Piano Quintet in E flat, which probably is one of the best known bits of chamber music around, but a constant joy to play and to listen to, with a kind of boundless invention and lyricism throughout. Every movement is an absolute gem.
The Rotherhurst ensemble is a Hampshire-based flexible chamber group with a string quartet at the core. We’ve been playing together on and off for many years, and it’s ranged from a trio of organ, violin and piano up to this sextet who will be playing in the concert. The quartet does a lot of weddings, as you might expect and functions and things like that, but we like to do two or three chamber music concerts a year.
We choose the repertoire quite democratically in the sense that Janice and Helena were very keen on the Turina piece and sold it to us all, and Sue (Bint) discovered the Frank Bridge piece, and didn’t really need to sell it because it’s such a wonderful piece. Wendy has long wanted to play the Schumann Piano Quintet, but I’ve resisted so far because it’s such a handful!
We do tend to explore odd corners of the repertoire. Certainly the Turina isn’t really mainstream in the UK. And last year we did the Dohnanyi second piano quintet, which isn’t heard much outside of Hungary but is a fantastic piece.
We’re doing this concert for a charity – the Naomi House Hospice. It’s a local charity, a children’s Hospice near Winchester. It provides critical care and end of life care for very seriously ill and disabled children. And in particular Sue, Wendy and Janice all worked for Hampshire Music service on and off over the years, and Lucinda (one of their colleagues) had two children who benefited greatly from end of life care at Naomi House, so they thought it would be a nice charity to support. Read Lucinda’s story.
