Interview, Lynn Arnold and Charles Matthews on Vaughan Williams and more

Not surprisingly, the restrictions on large-scale performance that have been in place over the past two years have led to a resurgence of interest in smaller-scale transcriptions of orchestral repertoire. Piano duos, in particular, have inherited the earth, and some fantastic arrangements (made either by the composers at the time, or subsequently) have emerged into the light, allowing us to hear anew works we thought we knew inside-out.

Among these is Archibald Jacob's transcription of Vaughan Williams's evocative London Symphony, which receives a new recording on Albion alongside Maconchy's Preludio, Fugato e Finale (a piano duet "original", rather than a transcription) and Finzi's ever-popular Eclogue in a version for piano and organ. Pianists Lynn Arnold and Charles Matthews were kind enough to share some of their thoughts about these pieces.

The version of the symphony that you’ve performed here is Archibald Jacob’s 1924 transcription of the 1920 version – neither the 1913 original, nor the final iteration from 1936 which of course didn’t yet exist. How different a piece is it from those other two versions?

CM: Generally the various revisions to the London Symphony made it shorter, eventually reducing it from an original length of nearly an hour to around 45 minutes. We had to decide whether to stick with the published piano duet version, which as you say used the 1920 version, or whether to adapt it slightly, to incorporate the cuts Vaughan Williams made to the orchestral score in the 1930s. In the end we decided to keep to the slightly longer version arranged by Archibald Jacob.

LA: The major differences lie between the 1913 original and the shorter 1920 version, which Vaughan Williams revised as well as cut. He revised many works, and the results were always shorter. The original was widely criticised for its length, even by Butterworth, but it may have been ahead of its time and I wonder whether critics would be less critical today.

George Butterworth’s tragic death (alongside millions of others) in the First World War cut short a promising musical friendship with Vaughan Williams, which had produced among other things the initial suggestion to write the London Symphony. How did this relationship arise and what made it important?

LA: George Butterworth, who was 13 years younger than RVW, became friends with both Vaughan Williams and Cecil Sharp while studying music at Oxford. He made a number of trips to collect folk songs with RVW, and collected several hundred of them himself. He was an expert folk dancer, actually putting this down as his profession in the 1911 census. At this early stage in RVW’s career, he liked to be advised by people who he respected, and there is some evidence that Butterworth worked on the (lost) original score of the symphony under VW’s direction. Vaughan Williams was quick to recognise people of ability who shared his musical philosophy, and perhaps Butterworth’s friendship might have rivalled that between VW and Holst had he survived the war.

In the era before recordings became widely available, piano-duet arrangements of orchestral repertoire seem to have been a popular method of disseminating and enjoying these pieces. How much evidence is there of Jacob’s transcription entering widespread use?

CM: We are not aware of any public performances of the duet arrangement until recent years. Transcriptions such as this were predominantly for use in the home, to keep alive a new orchestral piece that might otherwise be largely forgotten after a few performances. If anyone else wants to give the London Symphony a try, we’d recommend it as a very satisfying experience, but the published duet score is littered with mistakes, and you might want to refer to our list of corrections, which can be found on the Notes page of www.charlesmatthews.co.uk.

LA: In terms of the piano duet as a genre, although we are playing a transcription of a symphony and have aimed to portray the various instrumental timbres, the duet itself takes on its own character: the harmonic bones of the symphony are arguably more clear, and rhythmic crispness comes to the fore due to playing the one instrumental timbre, especially in the Scherzo.

Vaughan Williams’s pupil Elizabeth Maconchy is described as using a tonal language that is dissonant yet coherent, using centres rather than true keys. How much of this do you think can be traced back to Vaughan Williams’s own experimentations with non-functional tonality spilling over into what he passed on to his students?

CM: It’s hard to say. Had Maconchy been taught only by RVW’s teachers such as Stanford and Parry, it’s hard to see how one person could have made such a leap in style: there probably needed to have been a somewhat freer approach instilled by somebody else along the way. Having said that, Maconchy’s earlier works are much more obviously traditional than this; her musical language (like that of Vaughan Williams, incidentally) evolved into something altogether more dissonant in the later part of her career.

There isn’t a great deal of music specifically written for piano duet (as distinct from transcriptions); Maconchy’s Preludio, Fugato e Finale is a rare example of one. Are there particular things that this form allows composers to explore that other forms perhaps don’t?

LA: Well, the duet form isn’t as rare as you might think: composers such as Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Mendelssohn, Schumann and Brahms all wrote substantial pieces for it, for example, and there is a wealth of English music composed specifically for the piano duet ensemble.

CM: It’s true that people have sometimes rather looked down on the duet format – I’m reminded of a pianist who refused to have anything to do with it because it looked too middle-class! For a composer, the challenge of writing for a pianist with 20 fingers must be exciting. Of course, you can achieve that by writing for two pianos, but for the performers it’s perhaps easier to synchronise four hands on one piano rather than when you’re sitting at quite a distance from one another – in addition to the logistical and financial challenge of finding two pianos in the same venue.

LA: The sound of four hands at one piano is more concise, and the physical challenge of keyboard logistics is rather fun – for both composer and pianists. When the Primo player plays a tenor part, one can argue that there is a certain depth to the line that wouldn’t necessarily be achieved if the composer had scored it for merely the Secondo upper hand. The fugue, in particular, of the Maconchy sees both players exploring the range of the keyboard.

It's well known that Finzi’s Eclogue, here performed in an arrangement for piano and organ, was originally planned to be the middle movement of a piano concerto which never materialised due to Finzi’s premature death. How did it manage – seemingly against the odds – to become such a popular work by itself?

CM: No, it wasn’t death that put paid to his piano concerto – that project was abandoned or put on hold about 30 years earlier. The concerto was not going anywhere. If Finzi had anticipated his later popularity, might he have persevered with it? He adapted the middle movement as a stand-alone piece, but for whatever reason it was not published during his lifetime. Perhaps the opportunity for performing this short concertante work never arose. His family published it posthumously after his death, and even came up with the name, which means a ‘pastoral poem’.

LA: Much of Finzi’s music oozes nostalgia, regret and calm; this work promotes an aural appreciation of space and freedom from the first phrase until the last, exploring keys, colours and textures predominantly through one theme. Perhaps this unusual work has done well because there are so few orchestral works by Finzi; from a programming point of view, in its original instrumentation, a string chamber orchestra and piano is easily manageable.

CM: We’re obviously not discounting the very special beauty of this piece, but perhaps “Eclogue” is a rather catchier title than “the middle movement of the Piano Concerto” might ever have been!