Ronald Stevenson: Stevenson: Piano Music Vol.1

This is a welcome addition to the catalogue of new recordings of piano works by a 20th-century musical treasure. Stevenson’s compositional output for his own instrument is as far-ranging as his influences, from children’s pieces based on simple folk tune arrangements to his second piano concerto The Continents, an essay in world music that was undoubtedly ahead of its time. Much like Liszt and Busoni, for whom he held special affinity, Stevenson was a master of transcription and arrangement, able to distil the essence of an existing piece and blend it with his own language and techniques.

This first volume in Kenneth Hamilton’s survey of Stevenson’s piano music is sensibly programmed to reflect the breadth of the great composer-pianist’s invention. We hear works that directly link to, in no particular order: John Bull, Britten, Liszt, Richard Tauber, Robert and Clara Schumann, Ivor Novello, Rachmaninov, and the Scots folk music that Stevenson found so much inspiration in. Peter Grimes Fantasy, using material from Britten’s opera, is dark and brooding, full of drama, and with ethereal plucked piano strings adding a suitably mysterious element.

Three Scottish Ballads give an insight into the depth of storytelling Stevenson can reach through the piano. The first two are based on murderous folk stories from the Scottish Borders, rich in re-harmonisations of melodies and depictions of other instruments. The last ballad, the Newhaven Fishwife’s Cry, is a jolly reminiscence of the fishwife going through the streets, busily selling her wares.

Heroic Song for Hugh MacDiarmid and Beltane Bonfire are similarly Celtic-influenced. Hamilton’s booklet essay enlightens us to the myriad references to earlier music found in both, and gives interesting technical and programmatic information on performance of these works.

Symphonic Elegy for Liszt is the largest single work on the disc and perhaps the most difficult to digest, but with Hamilton as interpretative guide the curious listener is repeatedly drawn back. Toward the end of the disc, and in a notably different vein, we hear a heart-wrenching arrangement of Ivor Novello’s bittersweet We’ll Gather Lilacs, set with a left-hand figuration derived from Rachmaninov’s song Lilacs from Twelve Romances Op.21.

This selection of pieces encapsulates Stevenson’s rare ability to educate and expand the musical horizons of the listener whilst at the same time offering something of innate beauty. Hamilton is a sensitive advocate with an obvious love for this music. Excellent programming plus three recording premieres make this an ideal disc for anyone interested in the “other side” of post-1950 piano music.

About the composer

Ronald Stevenson was a respected but contentious figure in the cultural life of Scotland and the UK as a whole. His multifarious musical passions, the wide scope of his output, and his outright rejection of the more alienating elements of contemporary Western composition led him to be labelled by some as a neo-Romantic reactionary, especially ironic, given his left-wing social and political views, or even as a socialist-realist composer, which at least took those views into account.

Stevenson had been born out of his time, as the aesthetic winds were then blowing in a different direction. A generation of slightly younger students from the same music college, most prominently Harrison Birtwistle and Peter Maxwell Davies (both born in 1934), would go on to represent the so-called New Manchester School of musical modernism, while Stevenson carried on in a decidedly different vein. Despite this, the sheer scope, power and mastery of his Passacaglia on DSCH (1963) finally brought him international recognition.

About the performer

Scottish pianist Kenneth Hamilton, himself a student of Ronald Stevenson (and of Lawrence Glover), performs worldwide as a recitalist, concerto soloist and broadcaster. He was described after a concerto performance with the St Petersburg Symphony Orchestra as “an outstanding virtuoso, one of the finest players of his generation” (Moscow Kommersant), by the New York Times as a performer “full of energy and wit,” and by the Singapore Straits Times as “a formidable virtuoso.” He’s appeared frequently on radio and television in Britain, the US, Germany, Canada, Australia and Russia.

Hamilton is a familiar voice on BBC Radio 3, and has numerous festival engagements to his credit. Well-known also as a writer on pianists and pianism, he is Professor of Music at Cardiff University. His book After the Golden Age: Romantic Pianism and Modern Performance (Oxford University Press) was welcomed as “full of wit and interest, and written with passion” by Charles Rosen in the Times Literary Supplement, and as “a wonderful book” by James Fenton in The Guardian.