My last post on the 1915 ‘Festival
of British Music’ features a short review of the final (third) concert [15 May
2015] by the composer, critic and bon viveur Philip Heseltine, better known as
Peter Warlock. Heseltine only held the
post of Daily Mail music critic for
four months and contributed around 30 notices of concert and recitals. No
commentary on this review is necessary, save to point out the Heseltine clearly
had a more positive view of Cyril Scott’s Piano Concerto the ‘Capriccio’ in Musical Opinion.
‘The Festival of British Music
organised by Mr. Thomas Beecham and Mr. Mlynarski was brought to a close at
[the] Queen’s Hall on Saturday afternoon with a programme in which interest
centred almost entirely in two numbers. The first of these was Cyril Scott’s
new Pianoforte Concerto, which received its first performance.
It is a work constructed, like
much of the later Scriabin, upon a definite and peculiar harmonic scheme which
yields effects of decorative rather than emotional value. Though the second
movement is charged with an intensity of poetic feeling which raises it far
above the rest of the work. The strange haunting beauty of this section would
be more telling in isolation from the other two movements, especially since the
relation between piano and orchestra is here more satisfactory than elsewhere.
Taken as a whole, the work may be described as a pianist’s concerto, in that
the piano is definitely the dominant instrument throughout.
The other work was an orchestral
fantasy, ‘In the Faery Hills’ by Arnold Bax. It is one of the most original and
poetic orchestral compositions penned by a native composer, and, moreover, one
which completely fulfilled the object of the festival, namely, to give the
stranger a good impression of British music.’ P.H. Daily Mail (17 May 1915)
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