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Part I
Introduction and background
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1 Introduction
Pianophiles growing up in England in the later decades of the twentieth century may recall familiarising themselves with the piano repertoire by means of budget-label LP recordings, such as those issued on ARC (Associated Recordings Company), Decca Eclipse, Classics for Pleasure, Vanguard and, of course, Saga – especially if ‘pocket-money’ was the sole financial resource. Artists whose names were often associated with these recordings will also have a certain resonance: Maurice Cole, Iso Elinson, Albert Ferber, Sergio Fiorentino and Clive Lythgoe, to name but a few.
These names conjure up a now seemingly distant past – fondly remembered by those with long enough memories – a pre-internet world of LPs, record players, stereophonic reprocessing, cartridges, background noise, surface damage and the needle getting stuck! In the 1950s and 1960s, access to music was considerably more ready than it had been eighty-or-so years previously when there were no recordings at all, only live performances. However, the means of access just described now seem primitive and cumbersome compared with the ease and sophistication of more recent methods whereby music may be retrieved via the click of a mouse from a variety of websites, not to mention through the wealth of CD recordings that are still available.
However, the hegemony of the internet is bringing with it an intriguing consequence for those interested in pianists who were active in the middle years of the twentieth century. The World Wide Web is now drawing the predigital decades of recording into its ever-expanding orbit, thereby interfacing present with past and introducing artists whose names have otherwise been almost forgotten to a new generation of listeners. For example Maurice Cole, Iso Elinson and Albert Ferber are all represented on YouTube, quite significantly in the case of Ferber, but hardly at all in CD catalogues. The internet is thus serving a useful purpose in raising awareness of a fast-disappearing generation of pianists and related playing styles, and my hope is that this book will awaken further interest.
Rationale and primary method
Memories of vinyl recordings heard in my youth were the inspiration and starting point for this book. A suitably informed listener may be able to deduce something of a pianist’s musical training, outlook and personality from the acoustic evidence of recordings, but little beyond this is likely to be revealed, other than perhaps through a brief biographical note that may or may not appear on the CD liner notes or record sleeve. However, even this does not necessarily disclose to the reader why this pianist and not another one was hired to make a recording or how the pianist was brought to a recording company’s attention in the first place. In the western classical sphere, an ‘album’ is often a token of success, and its appearance can herald the presence of a new artist or demonstrate the musical development of an established one. In either case, the artist behind the release invites closer scrutiny.
Time-period and location
The purpose of this book then is twofold: to assess performance style from the evidence of recordings but equally to examine how concert pianists in the western classical tradition were trained, got started in the profession, then developed and sustained their careers. This is a very broad statement of intent and one that needs some parameters establishing if the book’s content is to be manageable. The first parameter is temporal in that the focal period for the study is approximately 1935–1970, although there is necessarily some latitude, especially where the earlier years of the period are concerned. The second parameter is geographical in that all the pianists chosen to represent the time-period under discussion were English-born and English-trained. Reasons for these choices are many: the time-period tracks developments during the Second World War and its aftermath; it demonstrates a shift in English music-making from a rather domestic scene to a more international one; it broadly coincides with the development of the long-playing record; and as my opening paragraphs suggested, it is far enough in the past to bespeak a modus operandus within the musical community that contrasts, often strongly, with the present one but is nonetheless within living memory, thereby allowing for some robust primary-source research. The choice to confine my subjects of investigation to England was made partly because they have not been featured heretofore in any extended study but also because this delimitation focuses the research sources around a single national culture within which it is possible to compare like with like and identify some common trends and practices.
Rationale for a case-study method
Having established that the focus of the study was to be English pianists who were starting out and then active during the period c. 1935–1970, various investigative strategies presented themselves. One such was simply to compile a list of names and present a brief profile of each pianist. Whilst this approach can claim inclusivity and comprehensiveness, it would also be ungovernably wide-ranging and repetitive, hampering the development of a coherent narrative and the precise articulation of any useful conclusions. I have therefore adopted a rather more concise way of managing the subject, which is to select a relatively small number of representative pianists and use their careers as illustrative case studies. Although each study is individual and not in itself necessarily indicative of a general state of affairs, cumulatively, the studies enable a general state of affairs to emerge, especially where it is possible to corroborate one research source by means of another. To avoid undue repetitiveness and too much treading of the same ground, I have not necessarily used evidence from each and every case study for all areas of investigation but have selected the most telling or pertinent data according to need and relevance.
Choice of subjects
Selecting the particular subjects for study was the next step. This in itself posed a challenge because there were many fine English pianists who were active during the years in question and who therefore presented themselves as candidates. Amongst my criteria for inclusion were that the artists were well known and widely admired for their work, were not already firmly established as a concert artist before the time-period of the study, were consistently active throughout much or all of the period under investigation and had reasonably contrasting profiles in terms of repertoire and performance personality. I have therefore selected Malcolm Binns (b.1936), known for exploring the byways (as well as the highways) of piano repertoire; Peter Katin (1930–2015), who was primarily known for his performance of the virtuoso Romantic repertoire and, later, of Chopin; Moura Lympany (1916–2005), who was one of the earliest English champions of Rachmaninoff’s music; Denis Matthews (1919–1989), who was renowned for his playing of music from the Classical period as well as for his scholarship; Valerie Tryon (b.1934), a pianist with a wide-ranging repertoire covering all the aforementioned areas; and David Wilde (b.1935), initially known as a Liszt specialist. The advantage of including Binns, Tryon and Wilde is that, at the time of writing, they were alive and available for interview, thus providing valuable primary research sources. During the earlier years of research, Peter Katin also agreed to be interviewed, and an intermittent email correspondence continued until shortly before his passing in March 2015. There are three obvious omissions from this list of names: Clifford Curzon (1907–1982), Myra Hess (1890–1965) and Solomon Cutner (1902–1988), who were amongst the most distinguished of English pianists and who were active for at least some of the focal period (all of it in the case of Curzon), but, as has already been indicated, one of my areas of investigation is the ways in which artists established themselves in the profession. These three pianists were therefore ruled out as they were already firmly established long before 1935.1 For the opposite reason, I did not include John Ogdon (1938–1989) and John Lill (b.1944) because, although they were certainly active in the 1960s, they were building their careers in the final few years of my period of investigation, and, as international competition winners, really belong to the generation of pianists that came after the one I am studying. Furthermore, Ogdon’s rather tragic career is already well documented in two books.2
Although my chosen case studies yield insights into a bygone age of pianism, there were contemporaneously many other pianists on the domestic scene representing a wealth of English talent in the wartime and post-war decades. So where relevant, I have drawn on this wider arena to complement or reinforce my central investigations.
Then and now
A study of English pianism in the central decades of the twentieth century reveals many interesting aspects of concert life as it was then, and this in itself is illuminating to the modern researcher. However, to place my findings into sharper relief, a comparative element has also been included, one which seeks to determine, on a ‘then-and-now’ basis, if career paths, career profiles and performance practices have changed a lot, changed a little or not changed at all. From the results of this research, it was possible to gain insights and draw some conclusions about such changes: whether they have been for the better, for the worse or a mix of both; whether they have affected what is expected of a pianist or, indeed, whether musical (and other) norms themselves have shifted. Thus, in addition to the pianists mentioned earlier, I have included in the study several much younger pianists as models for comparison, and I am particularly grateful to Clare Hammond, Viv McLean, Ashley Wass and Llŷr Williams3 for their cooperation. Here, my choices were determined by the need for subjects who are young enough to have benefited from schemes such as the British Broadcasting Corporation’s (BBC’s) New Generation Artists but who are old enough to have had ample experience of the demands of career sustenance. Other pianists from more recent times have nonetheless also been cited where wider points and/or comparisons needed to be made. In this context, the term ‘now’ is hereafter replaced by ‘more recently’, given that the inbuilt obsolescence of the former is absent in the latter. Nevertheless, it is worth stating that ‘more recently’ broadly refers to the period spanning the late 1990s up to c. 2016.
A focus on mainstream performance
Use of the term ‘concert pianist’ in the title of this book suggests an emphasis on performing activities and the mechanisms that supported these, both in the middle of the twentieth century and the early years of the twenty-first. Concert pianists have often engaged in a variety of other related activities such as teaching, editing, composing, writing and, in more recent times, interdisciplinary performance. Such complementary activities lend strength and breadth to a career but, in order to keep the book’s narrative focused, I have not dwelt on these activities although mention of them is made in passing where relevant. It can be taken as understood that many – though not all – concert pianists have developed portfolio careers and that non-performing or alternativist performance activities have sometimes contributed quite significantly to their work profiles. It is, however, their profiles as mainstream concert pianists that I am here concerned with.
Sources and other methods
Interviews
As is customary with case-study-based research, my methods involved interviews and correspondence with, where possible, the focal pianists of this book. Where this was not possible, their surviving relatives, friends and/or pupils were contacted. Interviews and correspondence with former BBC Radio Three producers were very valuable in gaining insights into broadcasting practices of both time-periods under review. Interviews with senior staff from four concert agencies provided a useful perspective on the recruitment of artists, artist management and promotion. Interviews with the Heads of Keyboard at the Royal Academy of Music (RAM), Royal College of Music (RCM) and Royal Northern College of Music (RNCM) yielded insights into current training practices. Also, interviews with music critics provided valuable material for the sections of the book that refer to reviews.
Archival and literary sources
Archival material, such as programmes, brochures, posters, back issues of Gramophone,4 press reviews and concert agency artists lists – notably those of Ibbs and Tillett – has been central in helping to piece together areas such as a pianist’s favoured repertoire, a significant career event, highs and lows in his or her career, and types of engagement that seemed especially important in sustaining the career (for example, music club recitals). In this regard, various archival collections (hard copy and virtual) associated with concert halls, orchestras and college and university libraries provided vital research material, the BBC Written Archives and Proms Performance Archive being especially valuable sources. Archive photographic material gleaned from old programmes, brochures and internet sources has been particularly valuable in helping to access information concerning areas such as promotion, publicity and image. Information gathered from archival collections has also been useful in corroborating the aforementioned pianists’ statements, made in interview, wherein doubt was expressed concerning accuracy of memory by the subject him or herself, or where the statement seemed to call for further amplification. If verification of the one by the other proved to be impossible, I have adopted a ‘best guess’ policy, all instances of which will be identified.
With regard to literary sources, there are autobiogra...
