You are on page 1of 12

Arthur Benjamin

Violin Sonatina
Viola Sonata
violin & viola Lawrence Power
piano Simon Crawford-Phillips

ARTHUR BENJAMIN
(18931960)

Violin Sonatina

(1924)

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

1 Tranquilly flowing . . . . . . . . . . .
2 Scherzo di stile antico . . . . . . . .
3 Rondo: Con moto ma non allegro

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Three Pieces for violin and piano


4 Arabesque (The Muted Pavane)
5 Carnavalesque: Tempo di valse .
6 Humoresque: Non troppo allegro

(1924)

. . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

A tune and variations for little people (1937) . . . . . . . .


8 Le tombeau de Ravel Valses-caprices (1957) . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Viola Sonata (1942) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
7

9 Elegy: Adagio e mesto . . . . . . .


bl Waltz: Quasi improvisatore .
bm Toccata: Allegro ma non troppo

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

From San Domingo Allegro ma non troppo (1945) . . . . . . . . . .


bo Jamaican Rumba (1937) arranged by William Primrose (1904 1982)
bn

LAWRENCE POWER violin 1 7 viola 8 bo


SIMON CRAWFORD-PHILLIPS piano
2

[16'10]
[7'44]
[2'43]
[5'42]
[11'30]
[4'31]
[3'35]
[3'23]
[3'23]
[13'15]
[17'07]
[7'07]
[5'48]
[4'12]
[2'51]
[1'51]

RTHUR BENJAMIN, wrote Herbert Howells in an


appreciation published in the Autumn/Winter 1960
issue of Tempo, after the death of his lifelong friend,
endured two serious disabilities. He had conquered a
large part of the listening world with an enchanting
brevity (Jamaican Rumba). And he was an unashamed
Romantic. By these two circumstances, rather than on
evidence of greater validity, he was assessed. The first
enormously extended his popular fame but reduced his
stature in the view of high-powered criticism. The second
appeared to make him an anachronistic figure. Howells
went on to cite other factors: Benjamin was a pioneer
composer of film music, perishable and short-lived. He
had a brilliant flare [sic] for pastiche. He seemed to be
a man minus technical problems; so much at ease in
workmanship as to appear superficial. All the published
obituaries (Benjamin had died in April) had taken note of
these points. Expected judgements were delivered. Final
assessment neatly and mechanically performed its pigeonhole task. Status was fixed. There was more than a glance
at his gifts as a first-rate amateur cook.
Thus, eloquently and with civilized regret, Howells
defined the critical problem surrounding a most unproblematic composer. Benjamin was a brilliantly assured
all-rounder, a master of many ingredients, whose gifts ran
counter to the perceived evolutionary direction of serious
music in his time; and his obvious flair (or as Howells would
have it, flare) and commercial success in writing pieces
that were popular, entertaining, or served a modest subsidiary purpose led to the discounting of his very substantial
achievements.
Ten years younger than Percy Grainger, Benjamin was,
like his compatriot, one of the first Australian musicians to
forge an international reputation. Though he was born in
Sydney on 18 September 1893, his familyboth parents
were musicalmoved to Queensland when he was three

and he was educated in Brisbane. Taught piano by his


mother, he was something of a prodigy, giving piano recitals
at the age of six, and began to study with the city organist
when he was nine. After a period playing in a piano store to
prospective customers, at the suggestion of Thomas Dunhill
he entered and won an open scholarship that took him to
London at the age of eighteen to study at the Royal College
of Music, where he studied harmony and counterpoint with
Dunhill and the piano with Frederic Cliffe. For composition
he had Stanford, whom he considered a great teacher despite his bigotry (You Jews cant write long tunes!, Stanford
would tell Benjamin). Almost immediately Benjamin made
his mark as a star pupil, and he became a leading figure
in a circle of close friends that included Howells himself,
Arthur Bliss, Ivor Gurney and Leon Goossens. He appeared
at Queens Hall as soloist in Howellss first piano concerto.
Bliss recalled how they would all visit the Diaghilev ballet
and opera productions at Drury Lane together. He seemed
already to be a cosmopolitan, recalled Howells, widely
travelled, confident, urbane, mature in conversation which,
even so early, he could already sustain in three languages of
which Australian was not one. In 1914 Howells celebrated
some members of this circle in his remarkable orchestral
suite The Bs, reserving the finale, a brilliant and even
grandiose triumphal march, for Arthur Benjamin under the
sobriquet of Benjee.
Like Bliss and Gurney, Benjamin eagerly enlisted for
service in World War I, first in the infantry in the trenches
from 1915; he then transferred in 1917 to the Royal Flying
Corps as a gunner. He was shot down over Germany in July
1918 (the commander of the enemy squadron was an air
ace called Hermann Goering), and spent the remainder of
the war writing music in Rheleben prison camp, where his
fellow prisoners included the composers Edgar Bainton and
Benjamin Dale.
In 1919 Benjamin returned to Australia at the invitation

ARTHUR BENJAMIN

of Henri Verbrugghen to become professor of pianoforte


at the New South Wales State Conservatorium of Music. He
remained in Australia for only two years, however, and
in 1921 returned to London to pursue his composing
ambitions. In 1924 he won the Carnegie Award for his
4

Pastoral Fantasy for string quartet. He became a professor


of composition and piano at the RCM in 1927 (Stanley Bate,
Benjamin Britten, Muir Mathieson and Bernard Stevens
were among his piano pupils; much later Alun Hoddinott
was a private pupil) but he had also discovered talents
as a conductor. In 1931 his opera The Devil Take Her,
championed by Thomas Beecham, confirmed his position
among leading composers in Britain. In 1938 he resigned
from the RCM and moved to Vancouver, where in 1941 he
was engaged to conduct the new Canadian Broadcasting
Corporation Symphony Orchestra. In 19445 he also held
the position of lecturer at Reed College, Portland, Oregon.
Returning to Britain in 1946, Benjamin resumed his
position at the RCM, where he remained until his retirement
in 1953. Continuing to compose and teach privately, he
stayed interested and quietly influential in contemporary
music, but his health was failing. Cancer was first detected
in 1957, and though he had a remission long enough to see
his opera A Tale of Two Cities put in production by San
Francisco Opera, it recurred and he died on 10 April 1960
at Middlesex Hospital, at the age of sixty-six.
In his unfinished autobiography Benjamin related how
as a boy in Australia he discovered, played and fell in love
with many different kinds of musicBeethoven, Grieg,
Ethelbert Nevin, Chopin, Sidney Joneswithout knowing
anything of their relative critical standing. Until his first
trip to Europe in 1907 he had no idea that they could be
considered to be of different quality: they were different in
style, yes, but not in value. In a sense he retained this
outlook, and it was a key to his own versatility, his ability to
turn his hand to modest works sheerly designed to entertain
(one light-music suite is unabashedly entitled Light Music)
and to ambitious, sophisticated and even profound scores
in the great classical genres. As Hans Keller put it (in
an article entitled Arthur Benjamin and the Problem of
Popularity): Untouched in the most formative years by the

conceptions of great and deep, and not having to intend,


therefore, to be either, his mobile mind grew to incorporate
modern moods and methods and to attain the modern
marvellight music which is not slight, and serious music
which renounces depth without risking shallowness.
Benjamins creative output, which encompasses about
eighty works altogether, thus manifests a great variety of
idioms and genres. It includes many light-music miniatures,
many of them infused with a jazz or Afro-Caribbean flavour:
the most famous of these is the Jamaican Rumba. But
there are also some impressive pieces of chamber music
and several concertos, ranging from the Romantic Fantasy
(19367) for violin, viola and orchestra, a work that seems
a modern counterpart to Mozarts Sinfonia concertante for
the same combination, to the once-popular Harmonica
Concerto written for Larry Adler (1953). There is the
magnificent Symphony, the deeply felt Ballade for string
orchestra, the ballet Orlandos Silver Wedding (1951) and
five operasfour for the stage and the fifth, Maana, an
early example of opera for television. As Howells noted,
Benjamin was also highly successful as a film composer,
beginning in 1934 with The Scarlet Pimpernel and
Hitchcocks The Man Who Knew Too Much, for which he
composed the cantata Storm Clouds for use in the climactic
Royal Albert Hall sequence. The cantata was used again in
Hitchcocks 1956 remake of the film, even though the
other music for that version was composed by Bernard
Herrmann. Benjamins later film scores includes An Ideal
Husband (1947), The Ascent of Everest (1953), Above Us
the Waves (1956) and Fire Down Below (1957).
The Three Pieces for violin and piano are among Benjamins earliest published worksthey appeared together
in 1925, though Carnavalesque and Humoresque were
written in Sydney in 1921 and Arabesque at the village of
Beare Green in Surrey in 1924. Arabesque is dedicated to
5

the well-known English violinist Sybil Eaton, who was also


the recipient of works by Stanford and Finzi, and bears the
subtitle The Muted Pavane (the violinist plays con sordino
throughout). In this beautifully effective piece, as the title
suggests, the piano treads a grave dance-measure while the
violin spins an ecstatic, floridly decorated line above it, to
which the pianist adds amiable counterpoints from time to
time. Carnavalesque is a waltz whose flexible, bittersweet
melody is first spun over a single tolling tone in the piano
before launching into full ballroom colours, subito e
bruscamente; thereafter lyrical and full-bloodedly romantic
ideas alternate until the piece delicately evanesces into
silence. Humoresque bears a dedication to the leading
Sydney-based violinist Cyril Monk (18821970), an advocate
of modern music who gave the Australian premieres of
many works. It is a blithe and brilliant toccata for the two
instruments, taking a delight in virtuoso display, passing
through a wide range of contrasted moods and textures, with
much effective use of pizzicato.
The Violin Sonatina is, like the Three Pieces, dated
Beare Green 1924; it is dedicated To Millicent (possibly
Millicent Silver, who though later renowned as a harpsichordist began her career as a pianist and violinist). The
diminutive generic title is perhaps hard to justify. This
ambitious, virtuosic and formidably accomplished work is
neither a little nor a particularly light sonata (perhaps the
lack of a slow movement was felt to debar it from full sonata
status). Overall the Sonatina traces a tonal course from
B minor to B major. The spacious and sometimes ecstatic
first movement begins with a peaceful, evocative melody,
5
beautifully adapted to the prevailing 4 time, over a calmly
undulating figure in the piano. A more skittish triplet motif
forms a transition to a sonorous, grandly melodic second
subject, first heard on piano and taken up by the violin
against a bell-like ostinato in the pianists left hand. A
passionate development section puts these ideas (and others

that arise along the way) through some strenuous paces


before the movement subsides to a serene close that recalls
the opening theme.
Benjamin entitled his E major middle movement
Scherzo di stile antico, but there is little that immediately
strikes the ear as archaic in this very rapid scherzo that
skitters its way above a single nagging repeated bass note.
Perhaps he was thinking of the more or less strict canonic
imitations (an antique discipline) between the violin and
the pianos right hand. The romantic tune of the trio section
turns itself after a while into a suppressed waltz; the scherzo
returns, deftly abbreviated.
The finale is a good-natured rondo with a rather French3
pastoral main tune. Very soon, however, the basic 4 time
5
changes to 4 and the first movements opening idea is briefly
heard; indeed the episodes of this rondo tend to reveal
reminders of the first movement, often intermingled with
the rondo theme as if through a mysterious osmosis. The
movement drives towards its conclusion with increasing
brilliance, rising at last to a cadenza-like outburst from the
violin marked con summa forza ed ectasia (with fullest
force and ecstasy) before the decisive final bars.
Both the Sonatina and the Three Pieces show the
influence of near-contemporary French music, perhaps
Ravel above all. But Benjamin is already able to adapt that
vocabulary to his own individual, more Anglophone ends;
and he would later broaden his stylistic palette by reference
to North American and Caribbean music.
The best-known of all Benjamins light-music pieces,
Jamaican Rumba was based on a tune he heard in the West
Indies while examining there for the RCM. First composed
for two pianos in 1937, as the second of Two Jamaican
Pieces, it was arranged for many combinations. The original
version was in fact composed in a single morning for two of
Benjamins students, Valerie and Joan Trimble, who were
about to give their first recital. The composer made a violin6

and-piano version, dedicated to Jascha Heifetz; and this was


in turn arranged for the viola by William Primrose and
published in 1954. The high-spirited melodic and rhythmic
confection of the piece (Howellss enchanting brevity)
answered to a current vogue for South American and
Caribbean idioms created by American jazz and popular
music of the 1930s and 1940s.
From San Domingo is another Caribbean-style miniature. The title refers to the old Spanish name for the island
that now accommodates the republics of Dominica and
Haitia racial and musical melting-pot in which Spanish,
African and Creole influences were freely mixed. Though
this may have been intended to exploit the market opened
up by the Jamaican Rumba (and like that work, it was
originally scored for two pianos), it is in fact a quite different
sort of piece. The version for viola and piano, dedicated to
Primrose, appeared in 1945. The pianos opening rhythmic
ostinato calls for the player to rap with the knuckles on the
piano lid, producing a rhythmic figure of five rapid quavers
which becomes an integral motif in the violas melody.
Though the mood is generally raffish and carefree, towards
the end comes a melancholy snatch of song in Spanish style;
in the coda the violist is instructed to play the rhythmic
figure col legno, the wood of the bow answering the wood
of the piano.
A tune and variations for little people for violin and
piano was composed in 1937 and published two years later;
it consists of a theme, three variations and a coda. The
theme is a simple melody with a slightly old-fashioned air,
like a gavotte, and the variations are simple too: the first is
2
a study in pizzicato; the second shifts the prevailing 4 metre
5
into 8 in order to set some mild rhythmic challenges. In the
third, slower variation we are presented with a romantic,
nocturne-like version of the theme. The first part of the coda
modulates back to a final statement of the tune. Altogether
this is an unassuming but charming educational piece.

At the other end of the scale as far as ambition goes, the


Viola Sonata was composed for and dedicated to William
Primrose in 1942 while Benjamin was working in Vancouver, Canada: he almost simultaneously made a version
for viola and orchestra under the title Elegy, Waltz and
Toccata (combining the titles of the three movements,
which are played without a break). Benjamins association
with Primrose went back to 1925, when they had presented
one of the earliest performances of the Violin Sonatina; and
they gave a series of performances of the new Viola Sonata
throughout Canada in 19423, beginning in Vancouver on
14 October 1942. Primrose had large hands and was said
to play the viola as if it were a violin, and in this impressive
and powerful work Benjamin set him many technical
challenges.
This wartime Sonata also manifests a spiritual affinity
with the large-scale and often elegiac Symphony that
Benjamin was about to begin composing, and it contains
the bleakest and perhaps the most deeply felt music on the
present album. The opening E minor Elegy is a chill and
desolate meditation whose vein of dissonance and chromatic disquiet are reminiscent of Alban Berg or Frank
Bridge; the central section has sinister march music in
F sharp minor, driving to an Appassionato e largamente
climax with sonorous viola octaves. The transition to the
central Waltz, starting with a brief rhapsodic cadenza and
then pitting viola pizzicato against piano trills, is powerfully
and imaginatively achieved, and the waltz music itself,
marked quasi improvisatore and con morbidezza, is a
phosphorescent and fretful affair that sustains the dark
mood of the opening movement, the violas circling triplets
suggesting a moth beating its wings against a window, unable
to escape. Against it Benjamin juxtaposes a quicker, frostily
glittering episode, quoting the urgent march theme, that
starts up as if offering a would-be playful contrast, but
rapidly turns hectic and sinister, stopping just short of
7

catastrophe. The reprise of the waltz music also refers to the


opening Elegy in its impassioned transition to the finale.
This is the Toccata, which begins in powerful, almost
mechanistic style but soon turns into a chattery and
boisterously dancing piece that gives both performers a
strenuous work-out while overturning the prevailing moods
of the previous two movements and replacing them with one
of pugnacious but basically good-humoured determination.
The music culminates with a breathtaking coda in E major.
This masterly work is one of the finest viola sonatas of the
twentieth century.
There is a distinct feeling of a debt being repaid in
Le tombeau de Ravel, a set of Valses-caprices for clarinet
or viola and piano composed in 1957 and one of Benjamins
most delightful yet affecting works. This is among the
composers last completed works. It sends us back to the
early violin works of the 1920s when the French influence
was at its height in his music. Though the original clarinet
version was written for the young Gervase de Peyer, in July
1957 Benjamin informed his pupil Richard Stoker that he
had completed a version for viola and piano as Brahms did
with his clarinet sonatas. As with the Brahms works, it is
possible to feel that the substitution of the viola gives the
music an added plangency; and, as with the Brahms, the
viola part is no simple transposition of the one for clarinet
but has many incidental differences in substance. The title
recalls Ravels own memorial work, Le tombeau de
Couperin, though the music from time to time is more
redolent of his Valses nobles et sentimentales.
The introduction, six waltzes and finale are played
without a break. The very fast, agitated F minor introduction
leads into the melancholic first waltz, which has echoes of
both caf and ballroom and becomes more fretful as it
proceeds. The second waltz (Presto, volante), played with
a light touch and sparsely accompanied, hurries us into the
F major third (Andante semplice), whose melodic intimacy

and apparent simplicity over quietly sophisticated harmonies, though rising to an unexpectedly desolate central
climax, mimic Ravel better than any quotation. No 4
(Allegro, vigoroso) is a choppy, energetic dance vanishing
in an upward spiral of triplets. No 5 (Allegretto, preciso, in
F minor again) at first pits pizzicato viola against a simple
accompaniment in the pianists left hand but soon opens
out into a kind of hesitant firefly serenade, linking at last
into the C major sixth waltz (Lento, intimo). Here the

memorial function and deeply elegiac vein that ultimately


underpin the entire work become most delicately, stylishly
explicit. The finale, however, banishes these shadows in a
concluding waltz-fantasy that intermingles several themes,
including reminiscences of previous waltzes, and that
eventually returns us to the unquiet mood and music of the
introduction, as Benjamin closes the circle with a defiant
gesture of dismissal.

Recorded in All Saints Church, East Finchley, London, on 7 9 December 2012


Recording Engineer BEN CONNELLAN
Recording Producer MATTHEW DILLEY
Piano STEINWAY & SONS
Booklet Editor TIM PARRY
Executive Producer SIMON PERRY
P & C Hyperion Records Ltd, London, MMXIV
Front illustration: Track by Charlie Baird (b1955)

CALUM MACDONALD 2014

Also available from Lawrence Power and Simon Crawford-Phillips


YORK BOWEN (18841961)
The complete works for viola & piano
2 compact discs & download CDA67651/2
What a delicious recording Bravo!
(International Record Review) Once again
Hyperion hits the jackpot (Gramophone)
JOHANNES BRAHMS (18331897)
Viola Sonatas & Trio
with TIM HUGH cello
Compact disc & download CDA67584
A superlative artist [Lawrence Powers] playing
is so full of imagination, sensitivity and gorgeously
ample phrasing (The Guardian)
PAUL HINDEMITH (18951963)
Viola Sonatas
Compact disc & download CDA67721
Not since the days of William Primrose have I
heard Hindemiths viola music played with such
warmth and conviction (Gramophone) All the
performances are superb (The Guardian)
DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH (19061975)
Music for viola and piano
Compact disc & download CDA67865
One of the worlds finest exponents of the viola
This new recording fulfils all of my expectations
(International Record Review)

All Hyperion and Helios recordings may be purchased over the internet at

www.hyperion-records.co.uk
where you will also find an up-to-date catalogue listing and much additional information

Lawrence Power is one of the foremost violists today and in


2011 was shortlisted for the Royal Philharmonic Society
Instrumentalist Award. He is regularly invited to perform
with some of the worlds greatest orchestras, including the
Chicago Symphony, the Boston Symphony, the Royal Concertgebouw, Bayerischer Rundfunk, Stockholm Philharmonic,
Warsaw Philharmonic and the Bergen Philharmonic.
Lawrence has performed Berliozs Harold in Italy
with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra conducted by Sir
Mark Elder; Mozarts Sinfonia concertante with the
Philharmonia at the Royal Festival Hall, Boston Symphony
Orchestra at Tanglewood Music Festival, Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks and the Royal
Stockholm Philharmonic; York Bowens Viola Concerto with
the Philharmonisches Staatsorchester in Mainz; Takemitsus
Concerto, A String Around Autumn, with the Orquesta
Sinfnica de Tenerife, and Rzsas Concerto with the BBC
Scottish Symphony and Royal Liverpool Philharmonic
orchestras. He has performed Pendereckis Viola Concerto
in a series of concerts with Camerata Salzburg conducted
by the composer, and has also made critically acclaimed
orchestral debuts in Australia.
Lawrence has made many recordings for Hyperion,
including concertos by Bartk, Rzsa, Britten, McEwen,
Walton and Rubbra, sonatas by Shostakovich and Brahms,
and York Bowens complete works for viola and piano with
Simon Crawford-Phillips. His three-disc Hindemith survey
has become a benchmark recording of this repertoire. He
has been Artist in Residence with the Bergen Philharmonic
Orchestra, and also enjoys a close relationship with the
London Philharmonic Orchestra, with whom he has
performed Waltons Concerto with Yannick Nzet-Sguin and
Brittens Lachrymae with Vladimir Jurowski.
Lawrence Power has been appointed International
Professor of Viola at the Zurich Hochschule der Kunst, and
10

Jack Liebeck

LAWRENCE Power

is the founder and Artistic Director of the West Wycombe


Chamber Music Festival.

Simon Crawford-Phillips has established an unusually varied


career as soloist, chamber musician, lieder accompanist
and most recently as a conductor. Concerto appearances
have included performances with the English and Scottish
Chamber Orchestras, BBC Scottish Symphony, Hall, NHK
Symphony and St Martin-in-the-Fields.
Simon Crawford-Phillips is a founding member of the
Kunsgbacka Trio. He also performs regularly in a piano duo
with Philip Moore, and in collaborations with Alison Balsom,
Emily Beynon, Colin Currie, Martin Frst, Daniel Hope,
Andrew Kennedy, Jakob Koranyi, Pekka Kussisto and
Lawrence Power. These have led to concert tours of Australia,
North and South America, China, Japan and all the major
European concert halls as well as several performances at
the BBC Proms. Simon has made numerous recordings,
including discs of Brahms, Bowen, Hindemith and
Shostakovich with Lawrence Power for Hyperion. He is a
regular guest with The Nash Ensemble and the Danish,
Dante, Elias and Saconni string quartets and a visitor
to numerous international festivals including the City of
London, Edinburgh, Mecklenburg, Oslo, Savannah and
Verbier.
Simon holds teaching positions at the Royal Academy
of Music in London, where he was awarded a Fellowship
in 2010, and at the Academy of Music and Drama in
Gothenburg.

Copyright subsists in all Hyperion recordings and it is illegal to copy them, in whole or in part, for any purpose whatsoever, without
permission from the copyright holder, Hyperion Records Ltd, PO Box 25, London SE9 1AX, England. Any unauthorized copying
or re-recording, broadcasting, or public performance of this or any other Hyperion recording will constitute an infringement of
copyright. Applications for a public performance licence should be sent to Phonographic Performance Ltd, 1 Upper James Street, London
W1F 9DE

11

Urban Jren

SIMON Crawford-Phillips

12

www.hyperion-records.co.uk

You might also like