Piano and Wind Quintet

Sir Lennox Berkeley was one of the so-called ‘Cheltenham Generation’, those fine British composers – Michael Tippett, William Walton, Gerald Finzi, William Alwyn, Elizabeth Lutyens and Arnold Cooke – who were born in the first decade of the twentieth century and whose music was so often commissioned by, and featured in, the Cheltenham Music Festival in the 1950s and ’60s.

As Peter Dickinson has observed, Berkeley admired the music of his friend and contemporary, Alan Rawsthorne, and it is both easy and interesting to draw comparisons between the two men’s music. Both composers have suffered from a certain neglect on the concert platform, and it would be true to say that they still do. In the 1930s their music was considered modern by the conservative British taste, but by the 1960s it was often dismissed by the modernist younger generation of composers as conservative, old-fashioned and even no longer relevant. Today there are the beginnings of a serious re-evaluation of these musicians alongside their contemporary Arnold Cooke. The three composers wrote important chapters in the history of British twentieth-century music, each with his distinct style and very personal musical idiom.

Berkeley writes melodically and his forms are essentially neo-classical. Although his music makes use of a certain Stravinskian dissonance, he himself said to Peter Dickinson, in 1978, that ‘my music has always been fundamentally tonal’. The Quintet, centred around A minor/major, with the ‘Scherzo’ in F, bears this out; furthermore it has some of the quirkiness and sense of humour that are hallmarks of his style.

Rawsthorne and Berkeley both wrote quintets for piano, oboe, clarinet, horn and bassoon after the model provided by Mozart; Alan Rawsthorne in 1963 and Lennox Berkeley in 1975. Berkeley’s work was commissioned by the Chamber Music Society of the Lincoln Center, New York, and first performed in Alice Tully Hall in January 1976. It is dedicated to Frank Elijah Taplin (1915-2003), industrialist, philanthropist, patron of the arts and amateur pianist. Both Sir Lennox and Lady Berkeley travelled to America for the première. According to Peter Dickinson’s excellent book, The Music of Lennox Berkeley, the composer took nearly six months to compose the Quintet, which he considered ‘slow going’, but this length of time has certainly not affected the compositional integrity of the work or its clear musical logic.

The four movements are ‘Andante, Allegro, Andante’, ‘Scherzo and Trio’, ‘Intermezzo’, and ‘Theme and Five Variations’. The first movement opens with a 27-bar ‘Andante’, polyphonic from the outset with the wind instruments operating in pairs: bassoon and horn, then oboe and clarinet. The piano is heralded in the tenth bar and enters with a concertante flourish. The music builds towards the ‘Allegro’, the main body of the movement. The style is imitative, with Berkeley’s characteristic clarity of texture and part-writing, and, for the most part, the piano and winds are set against one another, maintaining the concertante impression of the introduction. A short, lyrical section punctuates the music before a long build towards an exciting climax, and it ends as it began, the coda reflecting the opening ‘Andante’.

The ‘Scherzo’ second movement is in a quick one-in-a-bar. Fun and rhythmically taut, it calls to mind other music by Berkeley when at his most playful – much earlier works such as the Sonatina for Piano Duet and the Sonatina for Recorder and Piano. Despite the five instruments and the quick tempo, the composer never overloads the texture, which maintains a dance-like feel, alternating with more lyrical, waltzing phrases. The central ‘Trio’ section is a gentler, simple melody for solo horn and piano, and the whole movement comes to a conclusion with a return to its beginning, fizzing with energy.

A 38-bar ‘Intermezzo’ serves as the third movement. In mood it is melodic and peaceful and the composer creates an arch-like structure which leaves the piano on its own to introduce the final ‘Theme and Variations’.

The ‘Theme’ is vocal and expressive in four phrases, each taken in turn by oboe, clarinet, bassoon and horn, accompanied by gently rocking piano chords. ‘Variation 1’ is in immediate contrast; a quirky 5/8 rhythm dances into ‘Variation 2’, a militaristic march with strong, dotted rhythms. This is cleverly distorted into three-time by the winds, which are, once again, set against the piano as in a concerto. ‘Variation 3’ is a virtuosic one, principally for the piano, and runs into the beautiful ‘Variation 4’. This is slow and melodic and features the wind instruments singing in turn over the ‘Theme’s original piano accompaniment (albeit in the different key of B major). The French horn brings it to a close with wind accompaniment alone. The fifth and final ‘Variation’ returns to the first movement’s imitative style, and a concertante piano part accompanies pairs of wind instruments before all five instruments finish the variation. A fraction of the ‘Theme’ is revisited, and then a virtuosic flourish ends the work with a burst of energy.

I was thrilled when the Pleyel Ensemble received a return invitation to the Budleigh Salterton Festival on 11 July 2016, to give a concert of music for piano and winds centred on the Mozart Piano and Wind Quintet, K. 452. (We had previously played the Schubert Octet and Mozart Clarinet Quintet there in 2014.) I had played Berkeley’s Quintet only once before – in the Chester Festival some fifteen years ago – and had been looking for the opportunity to programme it ever since. Budleigh Salterton seemed particularly appropriate as the Artistic Director of the Festival, the composer and horn player Nicholas Marshall, is a former composition student of Sir Lennox. He had in fact been studying with him shortly before the composition of the Quintet in the 1970s. Nicky was enthusiastic about the suggestion to include Op. 90, and we programmed the two quintets, Berkeley’s and Mozart’s, alongside Madeleine Dring’s Trio for Flute, Oboe and Piano and the Poulenc Sextet.

As an Ensemble, the Pleyels have two stated aims: the promotion and performance of chamber music by British composers of the 20th century, and the exploration of works by lesser-known classical composers – hence the name of the group. We have found the public reception of British music to be overwhelmingly positive, and we were delighted that the 200-strong crowd appeared to love the Berkeley, despite its unfamiliarity. There were many generous appraisals, including one from somebody who had confessed to disliking Berkeley’s music, but, having been completely convinced by the Quintet, was now revising his opinion.

From the players’ perspective it was not a particularly difficult work to rehearse and put together, thanks to its clarity of form and line, and Berkeley’s clear performance directions. The music is tightly constructed with great economy, and the writing for each instrument reveals the mastery of the composer in that it is always idiomatic, even if virtuosic at times. Some of the dissonance could, perhaps, be described as cold, but it always serves a logical, harmonic purpose.

The Berkeley Quintet is a truly fine chamber work, representative of the composer at his best, and it deserves to be much better known.