Music
Private pleasures
Robin Holloway
The timely arrival in this week's mail of a slim new volume* on piano duos by the distinguished composer, editor and long- time duettist Howard Ferguson (now in his 87th year) provides the perfect occasion for a long-intended piece on a subject close to my heart.
It is also well timed for the season. The annual national shut-down looms, with nothing to do for days on end. For any two who can manage the piano, there is no more sociable way to pass the hours. The great epoch of piano-duet consumption (c.1800-1914) was above all domestic, cen- tred as the century progressed on the upright in the parlour equally with the grand in the drawing-room. Even the weightiest originals were never intended for public concerts (where duetting still shows only a shy and embarrassed face). And in pre-recording days its other branch, transcriptions of classical symphonies and chamber music, served the purpose since superseded by broadcast, tape and disc — a substitute for the original that (unlike the technology) could involve some degree of interpretative and executive skill however modest, together with the satisfying sense of getting one's fingers onto the sounds of music not often available live.
There is no question that the monarch of this special domain is Schubert. In quantity and quality alike he is supreme. His lighter side is unmistakable — marches, divertisse- ments Hungarian French and Viennese, sometimes routine, more often charged with surprising twists and turns. At the other extreme come monumental concep- tions like the turbulent allegro called Life's Storms, where the frustrations of the sym- phonist with no real-life outlet become almost audible. Indeed, the mightiest of these, the Grand Duo, has been several time orchestrated, though I believe that the strain and willpower enforced by the origi- nal make a stronger impact.
Between these edges lie the master- pieces, a handful of works so inspired, flaw- lessly realised and (with the greatest of all, the late Fantasy in F minor) original, that one would say the limits of the domestic medium were transcended, were it not for the complete felicity of the writing, superi- or in sonority, spacing and playability to his solo piano music however fine, and clearly constituting a self-sufficient category that requires neither apology nor alteration.
The same does not go for the three first- water piano duets by Mozart. Only one is original, a magnificent and ample sonata in F that sounds as if it would be more at home on his favoured medium of string quintet. The other two are both transcrip- tions — late curiosities written for clock- work organ. The first comprises two para- graphs of passionate yet withdrawn melan- choly enclosing an almost Mendelssohnian fairy-scherzo; the second sets a lyric pearl of great price between a grandiose baroque fantasy and fugue. Both are usually played on the organ-proper, which suits neither. They sound better on piano 4-hands, and better still in versions for wind instruments, able to realise in full some of Mozart's pro- foundest thoughts, so incongruously placed (at first) within the belly of a mechanism. Mozart and Schubert are the best; but distinction is not lost later when the duet, now frankly commercial, aims to milk the bourgeois of the civilised world by means of honeyed east European delights. The immense success of Brahms's Hungarian Dances for piano duet spurred the the pub- lisher to elicit similar from Dvorak. This acumen resulted in the two sets of Slavonic Dances, some of the most successful light music ever composed, financial as well as artistic. Though all these pieces have been orchestrated, Dvorak's by his own inim- itable hand, their authentic flavour is best preserved by the humble medium to which they were born. And the same is true of the delicious French compositions. They make their own sub-category, with a vein of infantine fanta- sy and playfulness present usually in the titles and always in the music — Bizet's Jeux d'Enfants (ten titles taken from games and toys), Faure's Dolly (including two valses, one for Kitty and one for the cat), Debussy's Petite Suite and Ravel's Mother Goose (five fairytales after Perrault). All have been orchestrated, the last by Ravel himself. No composer before or since can equal Ravel's instrumental finesse, yet the simplicity of his 4-hand original, together with writing so natural to the instrument (clattering on the black notes in the orien- tal number, glissading up and down the white notes at the triumphal close of the whole), makes it more touching and true. Ravel's fairytales, appearing in 1910, almost close the gold and silver epochs of original work. And it is with the first world war that the craft, and the habit, of 4-hand transcription was lost. A few generations before, virtually every larger work by the classic composers had been arranged and disseminated in millions. Nor was it just the obvious symphonies and quartets. I possess some curiosities from this period that I've never yet dared press upon even the most compliant collaborator: the Matthew Pas- sion, Haydn's Seasons, Beethoven's Missa Solemnis, Gotteraimmerung; all carefully laid out for the ludicrously unassuming domestic arena.
Moreover, the 4-hand version of sym- phonic and chamber works sometimes came out simultaneously with the original, and more often preceded it. Initially at least, there would be more renditions on suburban pianos than in civic concert-halls. Plenty of this was useful hackwork, but an exception has to be made for the transcrip- tions of Brahms, so skilful, euphonious, and intelligently attuned to nuances of style that the composer's participation must be suspected — unless he did it all himself! If one can't get a clarinet quintet or even trio, let alone a symphony orchestra, into one's room, the subtlety and richness of these 4- hand piano substitutions can be reward enough. And at least as interesting as mak- ing the music by inserting a sliver of tinfoil into a slit and pressing the knob.
*Oxford University Press. It is, though slim, stuffed with excellent advice.
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