Music for solo piano
Simon Smith
Sketches in Time published by Chester Music
All other works published by ITM (Icelandic Music Information Centre)
Fley dedicated to Simon Smith [11.37]
1 Í birtu for right hand only [3.40]
2 Í rökkri for left hand only [4.46]
3 Ávallt saman for both hands [3.11]
Bagatelles [9.28]
11 Andante [2.32]
12 Larghetto [1.47]
13 Largo [1.49]
14 Largo [1.37]
Sketches in Time [6.27]
4 Venetian Waltz [0.55]
5 Changing Time [0.43]
6 Inside the Cathedral [1.09]
7 My Own Song [1.09]
8 Left Hand Singing [1.00]
9 Rondino [0.37]
10 Marching [0.54]
15 Andante [2.13]
Five Pieces [9.26]
16 Forspil (Prelude) [0.56]
17 Ský (Clouds) [2.31]
18 Speglun (Reflections) [0.45]
19 Hillingar (Mirage) [1.30]
20 Draumur (Dream) [2.59]
Ten Pieces [12.44]
21 A fine fish in the sea [0.54]
22 Homage to Harpo Marx [1.20]
23 Echo [0:00]
24 Homewards [1.14]
25 A sweet memory [0.46]
26 Outside the music school [1.08]
27 Walking in parallel [0.45]
28 Old sacred window [2.18]
29 Hungarian march [1.15]
30 Pas de deux [0.53]
Four Icelandic Folksongs [12.23]
31 Lullaby on a winter’s night [2.33]
32 Setting sail for Siglunes [3.09]
33 The narrow beam of light [3.20]
34 Comic verse from a northern farm [3.21]
Homage to Mondrian [15.56]
35 Largo [2.08]
36 Largo [2.51]
37 Allegro [1.47]
38 Larghetto [2.09]
39 Adagio [3.42]
40 Molto vivo [3.19]
Recorded in the Reid Concert Hall, the University of Edinburgh on 26 & 27 March 2008
Producer: Paul Baxter
Engineer: Beth Mackay
24-bit digital editing: Adam Binks
24-bit digital mastering: Paul Baxter
Photograph editing: Raymond Parks
Photography © Delphian Records
Cover painting: Hafliði Hallgrímsson
Design: Drew Padrutt
Booklet editor: John Fallas
Delphian Records Ltd – Edinburgh – UK
www.delphianrecords.co.uk
Supported by the Nordicon Fund
With thanks to the University of Edinburgh
Total playing time [78.14]
World premiere recordings made in the presence of the composer
Music for solo piano • Simon Smith pianoThe North Atlantic island of Iceland has a long indigenous tradition of folk song, and a shorter but distinguished history of composed music. One of the current leading exponents of the latter is Hafliði Hallgrímsson, born in the small town of Akureyri on the north coast. He began his career as a cellist, studying in Reykjavík and Rome and then at the Royal Academy of Music in London, and eventually settling in Edinburgh as principal cellist of the Scottish Chamber Orchestra. But after leaving the Academy he took composition lessons with Peter Maxwell Davies and Alan Bush, and the urge to compose never left him. In 1983 Hallgrímsson gave up his orchestral post in order to devote more time to composition.
He has been rewarded by numerous prizes and commissions in Scotland – where he has continued to live – and throughout northern Europe; and in March 2008 he was appointed composer-in-residence to the Iceland Symphony Orchestra.
The list of Hallgrímsson’s compositions is headed by music-theatre works and orchestral compositions, several of the latter featuring solo string instruments. It also includes a substantial body of chamber music (some already recorded on Delphian DCD34059). At first sight, the catalogue of his piano music seems relatively slender, consisting mostly of sets of miniatures, some designed for teaching purposes. But one of Hallgrímsson’s
preferred modes of expression is the series of concentrated epigrams. And, although he describes himself modestly as ‘not a proper pianist’, the pieces – whether for virtuosos or beginners – all show an imaginative ear for colour, texture, resonance and the singing line. Many also suggest a composer’s eye for landscape and the visual arts – not so surprising since Hallgrímsson is himself an accomplished artist, whose manuscript scores are a model of clear but expressive calligraphy.
Several of the works on this disc have their origins in Hallgrímsson’s early years as a composer: among them Fley , which consists of pieces written around the time he left the Royal Academy of Music in 1968, rediscovered in a cardboard box many years later, and thoroughly revised in 2007. In its final form, the work is a triptych of demanding piano études, with a pictorial element hinted at by the title, an archaic Icelandic word for a vessel floating on the sea. The first piece, ‘In brightness’, is for the right hand only, and employs Lisztian techniques of combining melody and accompaniment, though the harmonies of the later stages with their frequent major seconds are far from Liszt’s. The second piece, ‘In darkness’, is for the left hand only, often in the deep bass, and creates something of a Debussyan sea-swell. Finally, ‘Always together’ combines the two hands, chiefly with regular semiquaver movement in
the right hand supported by syncopated lefthand chords moving in the same direction, but in the faster coda with four-against-three rhythms and more varied textures en route to a surprise A major conclusion.
Hallgrímsson wrote Sketches in Time in 1992, in response to a request from his publishers Chester Music for an album of short pieces for young pianists, illustrated in a frontispiece by his own drawings. The title refers both to these allusive and amusing illustrations and to the alternating time signatures and syncopations of ‘Changing Time’, ‘Rondino’ and ‘Marching’. Other challenges are presented by the gradually widening right-hand intervals of the opening ‘Venetian Waltz’, the wide-spanning lefthand part of ‘Inside the Cathedral’, and the Schumannesque cantabile melodies of ‘My Own Song’ and ‘Left Hand Singing’. And throughout the set there are touches of Bartókian bitonality well calculated to widen the musical horizons of younger players.
Like Fley , the Bagatelles are recent reworkings of much earlier music. They stem from a series of pieces which Hallgrímsson wrote some years before his first formal composition studies, in the winter of 1963-4, when he was playing in the Iceland Symphony Orchestra and living in a rented basement room in Reykjavík. More than forty years later, in 2007, he decided to
‘rework, extend and polish’ five of the best of them. The pieces exemplify some recurring characteristics of Hallgrímsson’s keyboard music. The first, with its insistent undulating minor thirds in the right hand, begins in a clear C major, challenges this with a conflicting line and the blurring effect of the sustaining pedal, but finally re-establishes its original tonality. The second has a texture of two singing lines, breaking into chords only at the climax. The third creates a distinctive colour out of quiet broken octaves again blurred by pedalling. The fourth is made out of pulsing thirds, major as well as minor this time, punctuated by flurries of grace-notes. The toccata-like final Bagatelle returns to the undulating minor thirds of the first piece and the two-part texture of the second, breaking into chords at the summit of a long crescendo.
The Five Pieces were written in 1971 as part of Hallgrímsson’s studies with Peter Maxwell Davies, and have remained unrevised. Their starting-point was his teacher’s suggestion that he should try his hand at serial technique in a set of piano miniatures. But, the composer recalls, as he struggled to carry out this instruction, ‘my mind – through my hands – started to bend the strict rules of serialism to obey my natural musical instincts’. So the relative austerity of the scherzo-like ‘Prelude’, with its preponderance of tonality-denying diminished octaves, is subverted in ‘Clouds’ by snatches of melody
with the hands two octaves apart, and by the haze created by keeping the sustaining pedal held down. The sparse, flickering textures of ‘Reflections’ take on a different aspect when they are surrounded in ‘Mirage’ by the resonances created by holding down three bass notes silently throughout. And the drifting effect created by the absence of bar-lines after the first piece is especially effective in the final ‘Dream’, in which a repeated six-note chord is opposed by more melodies with two-octave spacing, halfdisappears in another haze of pedal, and is finally vanquished by clean, clear double octaves.
Like Sketches in Time , the set of Ten Pieces is a collection of miniatures designed to challenge the technique and imagination of younger pianists. It was written in the summer of 1995, when Hallgrímsson was staying with his family in his home town of Akureyri, in a flat within a museum which had been the home of the poet Davið Stefánsson. Visitors offered the use of this flat were expected to contribute in one way or another to the cultural life of the town, and Hallgrímsson chose to compose a set of pieces for the young pupils of the Akureyri Music School. He made a revised version in 2004. Many of the textures can be recognised as characteristic of the composer: in ‘A fine fish in the sea’ undulating thirds over a left-hand melody; in ‘Homage to
Harpo Marx’ lithe two-part counterpoint, punctuated by a recurring semiquaver figure; in ‘Echo’ the pedal-sustained resonance of the opening bass gesture, under pulsing chords and a left-hand octave melody; in ‘Homewards’ a brittle bitonality. ‘A sweet memory’ creates the effect of four hands with two; ‘Outside the music school’ is made up largely of scraps of scales and arpeggios, mingling as if heard from the distance; ‘Walking in parallel’ is a modal tune followed by a variation. ‘Old sacred window’ suggests Messiaen with its calm C major chorale punctuated by dissonant flurries in the high treble; ‘Hungarian march’ Bartók with its short –long rhythmic figures (though, as Hallgrímsson well knows, these are also ‘Scotch snaps’); ‘Pas de deux’ Bartók again with its additive ‘Bulgarian’ rhythms.
The Four Icelandic Folksongs once more stem from Hallgrímsson’s years of composition studies, and specifically from an assignment set by Alan Bush to arrange seven folk melodies for cello and piano. In 1985 the English pianist Philip Jenkins asked Hallgrímsson to arrange four of these arrangements for piano solo, and he responded with a thoroughgoing and virtuosic transcription in which the original scoring is now hard to discern. The folk tunes are stated clearly at the outset of each piece and then treated more freely: ‘Lullaby on a winter’s night’ with notes alternating
between the hands in a pedal haze, evoking crystalline frost and ice; ‘Setting sail for Siglunes’ in an energetic allegro in rapidly changing metres; ‘The narrow beam of light’ beneath continuously undulating right-hand semiquavers; ‘Comic verse from a northern farm’ with a Copland-like open-air freshness and a powerful climax.
Homage to Mondrian is described by Hallgrímsson as his ‘most serious and ambitious attempt at composing contemporary virtuoso music for the piano’, and is the result of his admiration for the great Dutch painter of bold, geometrically conceived abstracts in strong black and white and bright primary colours. The first three pieces to be composed (Nos 1, 2 and 6 here) were written in 1995 for the Indonesian pianist Ananda Sukarlan; two more (Nos 3 and 4) were added in 2006 for the Chinese pianist Quian Wu; another (No 5) followed in 2008 for Simon Smith. Hallgrímsson intends to add further pieces to the collection in future. Of those presented here, the first freely rotates three elements – a discordant double strand, a consonant murmur, and a spiky scherzo – as if they were colours in one of Mondrian’s ‘Compositions’. The second is suffused by the resonances produced by holding down the keys of a bass chord of C major silently throughout a varying sequence of textures. The third has even more varied textures and figuration,
from which a singing left-hand melody emerges from time to time. The fourth puts a fresh spin on some familiar Hallgrímsson figures: undulating thirds, pulsing chords, grace-note-inflected flourishes. The fifth has an opening section and coda of strong triads and crotchet triplets, and in between flowing, pedal-blurred triplets and sextuplets. The final piece was suggested by Mondrian’s last, unfinished work, ‘Victory Boogie-Woogie’, and makes use of jazzy syncopations over continuous bass semiquavers, also syncopated with a threenote pattern repeated through groups of four notes, in a long, gradual crescendo to a tumultuous climax.
© 2008 Anthony BurtonAnthony Burton is a former music producer and manager for BBC Radio 3 in London, and now a freelance writer, broadcaster and pre-concert speaker. He reviews CDs regularly for BBC Music Magazine, edited the Associated Board Performer’s Guides , compiled and wrote The Story of British Classical Music for Naxos, and has written programme notes for many orchestras, festivals, concert series and record labels on literally thousands of works of all periods.
Hafliði HallgrímssonBorn in 1941, Hafliði Hallgrímsson began playing the cello at the age of ten and studied in Reykjavík and at the Accademia Santa Cecilia in Rome. On returning from Rome, he continued his studies in London with Derek Simpson at the Royal Academy of Music and was awarded the coveted Madame Suggia Prize in 1966. The following year he began compositional studies with Dr Alan Bush and Peter Maxwell Davies. On leaving the Academy, he remained in Britain, eventually making his home in Scotland on being appointed Principal Cellist with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra.
Despite his success as a performer, the urge to compose became stronger and in 1983 Hallgrímsson left his post with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra to devote himself to this activity full-time. His catalogue includes instrumental, chamber and orchestral works and he achieved international recognition for the highly successful Poemi for solo violin and string orchestra, which was awarded the prestigious Nordic Council Prize in 1986 after winning second prize at the 1985 International Wieniawski Competition and the Icelandic Dagbladid Visir Cultural Prize.
Poemi turned out to be the first in a series of works for soloist and string orchestra; it was followed by Ríma (1993) for soprano and string orchestra, commissioned by the Olympics committee for the opening of the
1994 Winter Olympics and premiered by the Norwegian Chamber Orchestra, and Herma (1994-5), a concerto for cello and string orchestra for William Conway and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra. The last in the series was the viola concerto Ombra (1999), which was commissioned by the Icelandic Broadcasting Corporation and premiered in Scotland by Lars Anders Tomter and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra under Mikko Franck in October 1999.
Although he admits to some major influences, Hallgrímsson’s musical style is entirely original, showing a sensitivity to line and colour, shape and texture, not surprising from a composer who in 1969 performed one of his earliest compositions, Solitaire for solo cello, surrounded by an exhibition of his own drawings and paintings. Such involvement with the visual arts remains a key influence on Hallgrímsson’s musical style and in 1996 he was commissioned by the Scottish Chamber Orchestra to write Still Life, in conjunction with a specially commissioned painting by Craigie Aitchison. Aitchison’s work is also an influence behind Hallgrímsson’s Symphony No 1 (Crucifixion) (1997), commissioned by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra as part of the Maxwell Davies Millennium Programme of commissions.
theatre. Mini-Stories (1997) for narrator and ensemble set translated texts by the Russian absurdist Daniil Kharms. Its deft evocation of a unique world of humour, nonsense and melancholy has been widely acclaimed by audiences and critics, and since its premiere the piece has been taken up by several ensembles. In 2003 Hallgrímsson turned to Kharms’s texts once more in the absurdist opera Die Wält der Zwischenfälle, co-commissioned by the Lubeck Theatre and NetzZeit in Vienna. The opera was acclaimed as a great success in Germany and also in Iceland, where it received a concert performance in 2007.
Also in 2003, Hallgrímsson finally produced a long-awaited Cello Concerto, commissioned jointly by the Oslo Philharmonic, the Iceland Symphony Orchestra and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra for cellist Truls Mørk, who has since championed the work in a number of performances across Europe. Two years later, he produced his largest chamber work to date, Notes from a Diary (2005) for viola and piano, an intensely moving evocation of the feeling of standing outside Anne Frank’s former house in Amsterdam. Notes from a Diary is recorded with other chamber music for strings and piano on a Delphian disc (DCD34059) performed by the Fidelio Trio and violist Matthew Jones.
Recent years have seen a constantly increasing amount of interest in Hallgrímsson’s music, with a number of significant performances, and the release of a number of portrait CDs featuring his choral music, orchestral music, chamber works and keyboard music. In 2008 the Iceland Symphony Orchestra announced Hallgrímsson as their composer in residence – a three-year association that will encompass performances, new commissions, and a premiere recording of his Symphony No 1. © Chester Music
A commission at this time from the Northlands Festival in Scotland demonstrated Hallgrímsson’s growing interest in music
Simon Smith was born in Northumberland in 1983. At St Mary’s Music School in Edinburgh he studied piano with Richard Beauchamp and composition with Tom David Wilson and James MacMillan. He read Music at Clare College, Cambridge, graduating in 2005, where he studied composition with Giles Swayne.
The majority of Simon’s efforts as a pianist have been devoted to contemporary music. In 2000 he gave a recital of the complete piano music of James MacMillan, and subsequently recorded it (along with the first recording of the Piano Sonata by Stuart MacRae) for Delphian Records. Reviews of the disc described Simon as ‘an astounding player, with a huge expressive range’ (International Record Review) and ‘clearly a talent to watch’ (Gramophone). Following a performance in 2005 of Ligeti’s complete Etudes, he was acclaimed as ‘a phenomenon – nothing daunts him, technically or musically’ (The Scotsman). Considering it his privilege as a performer to give people the opportunity to hear music they may not otherwise encounter, he is devoted to performing works by lesser-known composers, as well as less well-known pieces by more mainstream figures, including Rachmaninov’s Piano Sonata No 1 and Dvorák’s Piano Concerto. He has a particular interest in works by Eastern European and Russian composers. He has been an advocate of the work of Valentin Silvestrov, and in 2009 he will record the complete piano works of Alfred Schnittke for Delphian.
Following the premiere of his first orchestral piece Paragon in 2001, Simon was recognised as ‘clearly a composer determined to go places’ (The Scotsman); his subsequent large-scale work Crucifixus, premiered in 2002, was described as ‘beautifully paced, finely structured, Passion music for today … a direct and emotional work’ (The Herald). Subsequent orchestral pieces have included Still, the winning entry of the 2005 Cambridge University Music Society Composition Competition, and The Time That Remains, premiered in Bristol in 2007.
Simon now lives in Edinburgh, and works professionally as a music engraver, having completed large-scale projects for Boosey & Hawkes, Schott & Co and the StockhausenVerlag, among others. He is a member of the Hebrides Ensemble, a contemporary music group performing around Scotland. Among his other passions are Polish language and culture, collecting recordings, and cats.
New music on Delphian
Hafliði Hallgrímsson: Metamorphoses
Fidelio Trio
Matthew Jones viola (DCD34059)
A chamber-music portrait of Hafliði Hallgrímsson, one of the leading figures in the recent flowering of Icelandic music. Enigmatic yet eloquent, inscrutable and self-contained, these exquisitely crafted, jewel-like works reflect the personality of the composer himself as well as his multifaceted literary and artistic interests and influences.
‘The music shimmers with ideas, its complexity at all times engages’
– The Scotsman
‘powerfully poignant as well as beautiful’
– Sunday Times, February 2008
James MacMillan / Stuart MacRae: Piano Works
Simon Smith piano (DCD34009)
The debut of pianist Simon Smith in a programme of works by two leading Scottish composers. The disc includes the complete piano oeuvre to date of James MacMillan, and also features the world premiere recording of Stuart MacRae’s Piano Sonata. In a rendering that the composer has called ‘extraordinary’, this performance spills forth in a fiery display of technical virtuosity that is not easily forgotten.
‘an outstanding player with a huge expressive range: both composers are fortunate indeed to have such an advocate’
– International Record Review, May 2003
