Bliss: Piano Concerto / Piano Sonata / Concerto For 2 Pianos

Description

Arthur Bliss (1891-1975)Piano Concerto Concerto for Two Pianos Piano SonataArthur Bliss was half-American on his father's side. Hestudied with Charles Wood at Cambridge, where he also came under the influenceof Edward Dent, and then at the Royal College of Music. In 1912 he met Elgarwho encouraged him. After distinguished service in World War I, in which he waswounded, gassed and mentioned in despatches, he returned to England and gaineda reputation of some notoriety with works for ensembles (often exploiting thevoice) such as Madam Noy (1918) and Rout (1920), which were deemed to be modernand experimental. During the 1920s A Colour Symphony (1921-2), Introductionand Allegro (1926), the Oboe Quintet (1927), and Pastoral (1929) establishedBliss as an important voice. His war experiences found musical expression inthe profound choral symphony Morning Heroes (1930), while the Clarinet Quintet(1932) and Music for Strings (1935) showed his command of absolute forms. In1934-5 he composed the music for Alexander Korda's film of H.G. Wells's Thingsto Come, the first of several remarkable artistic collaborations, which alsoincluded the choreographer Ninette de Valois with the ballet Checkmate (1937),Robert Helpmann, the choreographer of the ballet Miracle in the Gorbals (1944),J.B. Priestley, who wrote the libretto for the opera The Olympians (1948-9),and Christopher Hassall and Kathleen Raine in the choral works The Beatitudes(1961) and The Golden Cantata (1963) respectively. These works indicate therange of Bliss's art, which also included concertos for piano (1938-9), violin(1955) and cello (1970), vocal works and a substantial body of chamber music.Among his other major achievements are the orchestral Meditations on a theme byJohn Blow (1955) and Metamorphic Variations (1972). Bliss was knighted in 1950and appointed Master of the Queen's Musick in 1953, a post he served diligentlywith distinction. In 1938 Bliss was an adjudicator at the Ysa??e InternationalCompetition for pianists; in his autobiography As I Remember he recalled that'Hearing ... so much brilliant playing made me wish to write a work for theinstrument myself. I must have put intense concentration into the wish foralmost immediately afterwards the opportunity arose'. It came from the BritishCouncil, which commissioned Bliss to compose his Piano Concerto to mark BritishWeek at the 1939 New York World's Fair. The premi?¿re took place on 10th Junethat year, with Solomon as the soloist, and the New York Philharmonic Orchestraunder Adrian Boult.As to the character of the concerto, Bliss described it inhis own programme note: 'It was to be played by Solomon and dedicated to the peopleof the U.S. so obviously it had to be a concerto in the grand manner and whatis loosely called \romantic. Surely the Americans are at heart the mostromantic in the world'. 'Grand' and 'romantic' are certainly the key words forit is both. Here is a big-boned work, energetic, ebullient, and forthright, butwithin t