Search - York Bowen, Stephen Hough :: York Bowen: Piano Music

AND THOSE IN FRONT CRIED 'BACK!'

DAVID BRYSON | Glossop Derbyshire England | 10/30/2005

(5 out of 5 stars)

"York Bowen's name has been familiar to me since I was a child. It used to appear on the cover of books of pieces set for piano examinations. I just assumed that he must be someone frightfully famous, and I have never known the first thing about him until now. The liner-note with this outstanding disc goes about promoting him in exactly the right way so far as I'm concerned. Firstly the long essay by Francis Pott is knowledgeable, thoughtful and informative. In the second place there are individual paragraphs on each of the pieces making up the recital. Best of all, there is a combative contribution by Hough himself, laying about certain fashions and trends in music during the 20th century and in effect saying `good riddance'. I read very little musical journalism these days, but it's not the first time recently that I've seen this tone adopted, and there seems to be a new mood. I never myself thought it was unduly conservative or reactionary to think that a fair amount of avant-garde composition was really pretentious nonsense. However to call it a load of rubbish was just not done in enlightened circles. What seems to be happening now is that the enlightened circles have themselves come full circle and that once-sacrosanct essays in musical modernity now have an official and certified status as, well, a load of rubbish.



Time to dust off York Bowen in that case. Not all of his music even got into print, but what we have here is not only of good quality, it is of consistently good quality. I suppose the idiom could fairly be called early 20th century romantic. The harmonic style is tonal, and any flirting with whole-tone scales is minimal. The music is approachable and even slightly melodious, not in any sense forbidding although I readily believe Hough when he says that it takes time to reveal itself properly. Some of the titles - preludes in all keys, ballade, berceuse - are obviously borrowed from Chopin, but I don't hear much direct influence of Chopin's style. What I do hear is the Russians, who of course trace their descent more to Chopin than to Schumann or to Brahms, and I think I hear not only Rachmaninov and Medtner as Mr Pott does but also Scriabin in his less mystical phase. It is however `absolute' music, not autobiographical, descriptive or representational music, and to that extent it could be said to hark back to Chopin himself, who kept his distance from the literary influences that so strongly imbued the music of his contemporaries and musical descendents. In fact in the Ballade that Hough gives us here there is a clear and explicit reference to Chopin's own second Ballade, but that is a gesture of deference, a musical doffing of the cap, rather than any sign of direct stylistic influence.



By all accounts Bowen himself was a pretty formidable virtuoso of the piano, which is exactly what one would infer from the difficulty and obvious professionalism of his piano writing, which strikes me as far more skilful and adept than that of, say, his friend and contemporary Arnold Bax. It takes someone who is more than just the next virtuoso to handle it, and it presumably needs no saying by now that Stephen Hough is exceptional even by today's formidable virtuoso standards. He is the complete professional, meaning that in the right sense, namely that he is sternly self-disciplined in everything he does. His technique is prodigious, but one could say that too of our late beloved Ogdon, who rivalled Hough in musical insight too but projected a very different persona and took a more autoschediastic approach. A lot of Ogdon's charm was that we never exactly knew where we were with him. With Hough we have a much better idea of that. He is not precisely calculated to the nth degree as Michelangeli was, but n minus 1 might describe the effect - intellectual, calculated certainly, but calculated very accurately and with emotion and belief behind it.



This is music that I find it difficult to imagine anyone disliking or being bored by now that it is back in official favour. To me it is highly attractive stuff and quality stuff too. I could not help noticing that it seems to have attracted much more comment than other British music of the period that has interested me personally, music by Bax, Bliss and Rawsthorne for instance. A great bonus and relief for me is that it is entirely innocent of contamination from what Constant Lambert well termed `the cowpat school' of British music, and while it avoids modernism even to the modest extent that Walton went in for that it is music with integrity and consistency. It has been a pleasure to me to make its acquaintance and the pleasure is one that I recommend in general."

Opulent and impassioned music

scarecrow | Chicago, Illinois United States | 05/10/2000

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This is wonderfully compelling piano music, Bowen has an original voice which he locates admirably within the Romantic language.Bowen lived when Listz was still a contemporary still harboring an air of pianistic innovation and conceptual challenge to locate a voice within this transitional period to modernity. Great Britain in many respects was insolated from the the dual revolutionary threats on the continent with the Stravinsky ballets score for the Diagaliev troup and the dodecaphonic innovations suggested with Schoenbergs chamber Pierrot Lunaire. Bowen's Preludes although written with a Bach scheme of Major to Minor Keys is indebted to the brilliance of Chopin. Yet Bowen's sense of lyricism is incredibly different,with less adventurous affinity than Chopin. Bowen's music always constitutes itself with a classical shaped length. There are no mere mists of textures, as Chopin's E-flat minor prelude. Bowen's music can grow and set up tremendous impassioned fury, with continuous momentum, yet Bowen knows the mysteries of his durational time. His music never extends itself beyond the structural frames his music implies or suggests. It is forever more powerful because of it. At more ambitious forms however as the Sonata in F minor, the movements work extremely well, the Exposition, the Moderato admirably proclaiming itself containing the second movement the beautifully introspective Andante semplice. The Berceuse as well finds an original lyrical scheme with fine nuanced pianisitic colours. Bowen's modernity constitutes itself with the delight in pure textural excursions, indeed within breathtaking virtuosic gestures, fast spellbinding arpeggios, surfacing the upper sonoric realms here. Bowen was also an accomplished horn and viola player. He played horn during the War in a Wind Band. Stephen Hough is brilliant with this music with a fine sense of architecture and control,yet reading Bowen's lyrical lines with sensitivity."

Little known music but a piano "must"

Barry De Boer | Huddersfield, West Yorkshire United Kingdom | 07/24/2000

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Before buying this CD my only knowledge of York Bowen's piano music was struggling with an "Albumleaf" as a youngster. I bought this record on the strength of "Gramophone's" recommendation, and was delighted with it. Hough's playing is absolute magic - a spectacular technique but always employed to serve the music, not his ego. The music itself is a revelation, "modern" for its time but not oppressively so. Listen to the excerpts from the 24 preludes to be astounded by Hough's piano mastery, but hear the two Romances which end this disk to get to the real heart of York Bowen's music. If they don't persuade you to part with your money, you have no soul!"