Edmund RUBBRA (1901-1986)
Piano Concerto (1956)
Benjamin BRITTEN (1913-1976)
Piano Concerto (1938)
Prelude and Fugue for 18-part string orchestra (1943)
Rubbra: Denis Matthews
(piano)/BBCSO/Sargent rec Kingsway Hall, London, 30 Aug 1956
Britten Concerto: Jacques Abram (piano)/Philharmonia/Herbert Menges. rec
Abbey Rd, 25 Jan 1956
Britten: RPO/Norman Del Mar, rec Studio 1, Abbey Rd, 9 July 1964
EMI CLASSICS CDZ 5 74781 2 [68.03]
Here’s something worth investigating, even if the sonic evidence carries the patina of mid-century Abbey Road and Kingsway Hall. EMI has bundled together two piano concertos from the 1930s and 1950s—one famous, one unjustly obscure—and thrown in Britten’s Prelude and Fugue for good measure. The bargain price shouldn’t deceive you. There’s serious music-making here.
Edmund Rubbra’s Piano Concerto in G has languished in semi-obscurity for decades, which tells you more about postwar British critical fashion than about the work’s intrinsic merits. This is a substantial piece, running just over half an hour, with a grave lyricism that owes something to Rubbra’s deep immersion in Tudor polyphony—those long, arching melodic lines don’t behave like Rachmaninoff, thank heaven, but neither do they capitulate to the neoclassical astringency that was de rigueur in 1956. The opening movement unfolds with an almost Sibelian sense of organic growth, themes emerging from what initially sounds like atmospheric preparation. Denis Matthews, who championed this concerto and recorded it with Sargent just months after the premiere, understands the work’s refusal to make easy gestures. His tone is pellucid without being precious, his phrasing alive to Rubbra’s long paragraphs. The slow movement—marked “Dialogue“—really is a conversation between soloist and orchestra, not the usual accompanied rhapsody. Sargent, often accused of superficiality, proves here that he could think structurally when the music demanded it. The BBC Symphony plays with conviction, though the 1956 Kingsway Hall sound has that characteristic dryness, strings a bit recessed.
The Britten Piano Concerto is another matter entirely. Written when the composer was twenty-four, it’s full of the nervous energy and brilliant surfaces that mark his early work—think Our Hunting Fathers or the Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge. But there’s something unsettled at its core, a quality that has divided listeners since the premiere. The toccata-like first movement glitters and chatters; the slow movement veers between Mahlerian irony and genuine pathos; the finale’s “Impromptu” throws in music hall references that can sound either witty or merely glib, depending on the reading.
Jacques Abram—a name unfamiliar to me, I confess—brings considerable technical address to the solo part. His fingerwork in the outer movements is admirably clean, though he doesn’t quite capture the work’s underlying anxiety, that sense of a brilliant young composer showing off while simultaneously questioning the whole enterprise. Herbert Menges and the Philharmonia provide solid support, nothing more. The 1956 Abbey Road sonics are marginally better than the Rubbra, with more bloom on the strings, but the piano still sounds a touch boxy in the tuttis.
Norman Del Mar’s 1964 release of the Prelude and Fugue offers the disc’s best sound—Studio 1 at Abbey Road treating the Royal Philharmonic’s strings with proper warmth and definition. This is Britten at his most Purcellian, the prelude’s tolling bells and the fugue’s rigorous working-out showing a composer who could think contrapuntally without academic stiffness. Del Mar, always an underrated Britten director, shapes the long lines beautifully and doesn’t rush the fugue’s accumulating intensity. When those eighteen string parts converge in the final pages, you hear what Britten learned from his study of the English cathedral tradition—and what he did with it that no one else could have done.
The transfers sound honest enough, with minimal digital intrusion. Yes, you can hear the limitations of 1950s technology, particularly in the concertos. But these are historical documents that happen to contain distinguished performances, and EMI deserves credit for keeping them in circulation at bargain price.
The Rubbra alone justifies purchase. It’s a major work that deserves to be far better known, and Matthews’s advocacy carries the weight of absolute conviction. The Britten concerto may not be the composer at his greatest, but it’s fascinating early work, and the Prelude and Fugue remains a masterpiece of its kind. For anyone interested in mid-century British music beyond the Vaughan Williams–Walton axis, this disc is essential.
