Another week, another piano
Professor David Owen Norris reports on another interesting week!
Since I appeared on Radio 3’s special folk-music In Tune from the Ralph Vaughan Williams Memorial Library last month, I’ve been inundated with RVW-related things, from articles with confidential theories concerning which I must not breathe a word, to happy anecdotes. Most interesting, however, is the invitation to play the composer’s piano, which is taking up residence at Leith Hill Place, the childhood home that Vaughan Williams gave to the National Trust. It was a media occasion – I appeared live on national BBC television news and on Radio 3’s In Tune, and clips were featured in news programmes all through the day, including Radio 4’s PM (In Tune is on iPlayer here, the piece is about 35 minutes in). Several of the papers sent photographers and journalists – including the Guardian (article here).
We know a bit about how Vaughan Williams composed with the piano. When he studied with Ravel in Paris in 1909, Ravel was amazed to find that he hadn’t got a piano in his digs. Perhaps he was trying to show off – that macho ‘I can compose away from the piano’ thing. Ravel had a short way with that. ‘How can you find new harmonies without a piano?’ he asked. We can imagine Vaughan Williams giving an inward sigh of relief, for he’d already been composing at this piano, a Broadwood upright, for four years, since he bought it from the Royal College of Music. And he continued to compose at it for the rest of his life.
All very interesting. What I’m really working on this week, however, is memorising Sterndale Bennett’s Fourth Piano Concerto for a performance on Saturday night.