MAESTRA: Piano Concertos by Julia Perry and Doreen Carwithen

Samantha Ege features here in works by Julia Perry and Doreen Carwithen: a stimulating pairing.

The name of Julia Perry was new to me. This fascinating composer was born in Kentucky, USA, moved to Ohio, and trained at Westminster Choir College in New Jersey, as well as Tanglewood, Juilliard, and later with the Nadia Boulanger (under whom she won the Prix Fontainebleau at the American Conservatory). She also studied with Luigi Dallapiccola in Italy.

Perry's Concerto in Two Uninterrupted Speeds is fascinating. Here's Dr Samantha Ege on this piece:

Note how her [Perry's] concerto is not in two movements, but in two speeds, as if she is playing with spacetime. The first speed, "Slow," is, as Maestra Martínez calls it, “celestial”. Emerging out of a haze of strings and winds, the piano's opening solo unfolds. the irregular time signatures evoke.suspended temporality. But the second speed, “Fast,” brings us back down to earth. Energetic rhythms seasoned with Afrodiasporic syncopations dance round the pulse. Here, the piano cadenzas ae more virtuosic as you might expect to hear in a more conventional concerto (like Dorren Carwithen's). But Perry is experimenting more with cool than technique; the pianist must paint other than play.

The first movement begins almost inudibly, and it seems to find is way into existence via its own musings. Martinez finds just the right sense of suspension of temporal space; Ege's quiet chords in response speak of huge beauty.In contrast comes the angular swirling of the second speed, "Fast". Those syncopations Ege mentions above motivate the music on, but it is this sense of painterly composition that predominates. It is absolutely fascinating: best we have the whole concerto together so you can fully experience experience the contrasts. Ege adapts her touch from movement to movement, soft in the first, more hard-edged in the second, her articulation in the latter superb:

There is not the much Julia Perry around. I am aware of.a Koch CD from around 1994 that included her songs Free at last and I'm a poor lil' orphan (the disc is entitled Watch and Pray: Spirituals and Art Songs by African-American Women Composers). That disc may however be rather tricky to locate. There is also a hyper-beautiful Stabat Mater you can hear via this Spotify link: the Japan Philharmonic is fabulous under William Strickland, but I am unconvinced by the (unnamed) vocal soloist. This release was on the enterprising CRI label, from around 2010.

The piece that has gained greatest currency by Perry it seems is a short Prelude (1946, revised 1962). Andrew Armstrong (who we previously featured with James Ehnes in a numbest of posts) performs it on his Rubicon disc, In Blue, and also says this:

Julia Perry’s “Prelude” makes an outsized impression in light of its short duration. To my ear (and heart), it occupies a special space between Thelonious Monk and church music of the American South. The Prelude played here is of such uncertain tonality that the real constant is the repeated melodic gesture, 2-, 3-, and 4-step descents that try out and live through a variety of harmonic dressings, sometimes sumptuous, jarring, jazzy, spiritual, and more. The clangorous final chord is at least as surprising as it is emphatically conclusive.

The harmonies are hard-edged here, and Armstrong absolutely revels in the dissonances:

Some readers may know the name Doreen Carwithen from Leah Broad's award-winning book Quartet, which takes the lives of four composers: Carwithen, Dorothy Howell, Ethel Smyth and Rebecca Clarke.

Carwithen was probably best known as a film music composer: her score for British Pathé's Elizabeth Is Queen (the official film of the coronation of Queen Elizabeth I), was written in just three days. The film's titles gives "Music arranged by Sir Adrian Boult assisted by Doreen Carwithen with the London Philharmonic Orchestra". Here's the first reel:

Born in Buckinghamshire in 1922, Carwithen entered the Royal Academy of Music in 1941, studying first harmony then composition with William Alwyn. Adrian Boult premiered her overture One Damn Thing After Another (sometimes known simply as ODTAA) at Covent Garden in 1947.

Carwithen became Alwyn's secretary, and they were married in 1975; she also worked at the RAM.

That Overture, ODTAA, was recorded by the London Symphony Orchestra and Richard Hickox for Chandos (coupled, among other things, with the present concerto). Hickox extracts a stonking performance from the LSO, caught in Chandos' trademark excellent sound:

There is a notable competing account of the Cawithen Concerto: that on Chandos, Howard Shelley is fabulous, but the LSO strings do sound a little compromised high up on occasion. The recording is close and focused. The Lontano Orchestra has a touch more grit, and Ege's contribution is well considered. Here they are, side-by-side:

However, I find Ege and Martinez more convincing in the lovely slow movement (Lento). The solo sings of Lontano excel here, with an especially touching violin solo towards the movement's end, and the whole just sounds more heartfelt than the Chandos:

The finale is marked Moderato e deciso ma con moto: that 'deciso' is certainly in evidence in this Lorelt recording initially, emphasised by the somewhat dry acoustic (made at my alma mater, the University of Surrey, in 2023). There is a reflective solo cadenza, brilliantly delivered by Ege with a real sense of growing grandeur; Carwithen's equivalent of a Chopin Ballade, perhaps. The music's subsequent softening could perhaps have benefited from plusher strings, but the trade-off is an increased in linear awareness, something which seems emphasised by the underlying pedal bass. The Chandos seems upholstered in comparison. There is no denying Shelley's superb pianism, though;

The Lorelt disc is undeniably short measure (44'24).

A companion disc could be a terrific disc on SOMM Recordings of piano concertos by Dora Bright and Ruth Gipps, performed by the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra under Charles Peebles, with Samantha Ward the soloist in Dora Bright's Concerto No. 1 in A-Minor and the Variations for Piano and Orchestra, and Murray McLachlan featuring in Ruth Gipps' Piano Concerto in G-Minor (with its Finzi-like Andante).

Bright's writing is decidedly Romantic (England meets Schumann/Brahms), and the disc concludes with the tone-poem by Gipps, Ambervalia, Op. 70. Dora Bright is the rarer of the two, so let's hear the first movement of her Concerto:

The Ege is available for purchase a Amazon here; the Bright/Gipps disc here.

Let's start off with a link to that Perry Stabat Mater, then on to the relevant Maestra links: