Micahel Tippett - Piano Sonatas Nos.1-3

Michael TIPPETT (1905-1998)

Piano Sonatas Nos.1-3

Nicholas Unwin

Recording venue: Faculty of Music Concert Hall, Cambridge; 8-9 August 1995.

I've spent many hours with Michael Tippett's four Piano Sonatas and they constitute a great and highly original body of works. Tippett was a late blossomer to composition and his first Sonata, composed in 1937 (and revised in 1942) was his second major outing, after the first String Quartet from 1935 (the latter thoroughly revised before publication in 1946). Although commentators often draw a long list of references and influences when they talk about that work - Scarlatti, Beethoven, Bartok, Stravinsky, Janacek, Hindemith, Poulenc - I find it remarkably FREE of influences and already entirely "Tippettian" (if not quite the Tippett he later became). Tippett described how he had tried to escape the "heavy" and "too serious" Germanic models, and he does. That the first movement, a theme and variations, is written in a (mainly) 5/4 time signature doesn't make it Bartokian at all, it has none of that Bartok rustic and vigorous pounding, and although it does have its moments of brash fortissimos, it is primarily lyrical and whimsical, and the slightly tipsy 5/4 signature and the wonderfully whimsical imagination in the variations give it a melodic shape that is entirely unique and, indeed, entirely NOT indebted to the Germanic and expressionist models. The slow movement is a somewhat austere but fascinating exercise in two-part polyphony based on a Scottish folk-song. Sure you can invoke the Beethovenian model (the 9th symphony comes to mind) in the exuberant Scherzo, a dashing Presto in (mainly) 6/8 rhythm (and Tippett would write other such movements in his symphonies, like Walton in his own First), but it is entirely transmuted in the composer's language. The boisterous and vigorous Finale shows influences of Jazz/Ragtime, but also of something like hop-scotch dance, again transmuted in the composer's personal language. There's a gaiety, an "upbeat-ness" and insouciance that will seldom be found in Tippett's later works.

The Second Sonata, written in 1962 in the wake of Tippett's opera King Priam, is even more original in its conception and construction, made of a succession of thematic blocks, each with its own tempo and character (always attention-catching), returning in slightly modified form but never combined. I'll quote Tippett here, in the remarkably informative liner notes he contributed for the recording of Paul Crossley on CRD ( Sir Michael Tippett: The Four ): "Everything in the sonata proceeds by statement. The effect is one of accumulation; through constant addition of new material; by variation and repetition. There is virtually no development and particularly no bridge passages. The formal unity comes from the balance of similarities and contrasts".

The Third from 1973, commissioned and premiered by Paul Crossley, is an impressive work and a tougher nut to crack, with its furiously and even suffocatingly pounding outer movements (but with moments of dreaminess in the first, a sonata form with contrasting elements), and its sprawling slow movement, an extended theme and four variations with the theme made of 17 hushed broken chords, including a "mystery chord" which deserves some specific explanation, and even revelation. In the liner notes to the recording of the premiere performer Paul Crossley on CRD (see link above), Tippett announces 17 chords; yet, I was puzzled to count only 16 on the score. I would have been inclined to blame myself and my lack of analytical skills (after all, some of those chords are highly decorated and never stated in their complete, vertical form, so it was very likely that I was unable to spot where one ended and the other began), had not Jonathan Dobson, the annotator of the recording of Graham Caskie on Metier ( British 20th Century Piano Music, Vol 1 ), counted like me and mentioned "16". Merion Bowen, an authorized Tippett specialist and annotator of this Chandos CD, talks of 17, but the other CD annotators prefer to remain non-committal and abstain from numbering them. Another authorized Tippett specialist, Ian Kemp (also the annotator of Steven Osborne's Hyperion recording,  Tippett: Piano Concerto / Fantasia on a Theme of Handel / Piano Sonatas ), in his study  Tippett: The Composer and His Music , talks of the "theme, a set of sixteen (or seventeen) chords never heard in their basic form", with no further explanation, which strikes me as particularly absurd: c'mon Ian, will the reader ask, can't you decide, is it sixteen or seventeen? And by the same token, would you say that "the Sonata has three (or four) movements"?

So I wrote to Paul Crossley to inquire about this riddle. He had worked with Tippett on the Sonata, if anybody would know, it would be him. He allowed me to quote his answer:

"Yes, this has always puzzled everybody, not least me! There are 17 chords, and if you think of them as being 11 + 1 + 5, the `enigmatic' one is the "1". As you will see from the score, it is never stated as a chord at all, but is presented in all sorts of elaborations.

In fact, when Michael was composing this movement, he always had by him on the piano the original succession of chords written out with a blank where this `enigma chord' should be. When I asked him about it, he said: "Ah, love, you work that out for yourself! You asked for a piece with some chords in it, so I've given you a little puzzle." I have never managed to deduce what the actual chord is. I'm sure somebody will `break the code' one day, but it won't be me. It's a bit like the `extra hidden tune' that Elgar said was part of his Enigma Variations. I've always personally thought it was the Song of the Volga Boatmen, but that's just one of many guesses.

If you ever find somebody who thinks they know what the Tippett chord is, I'd be very glad to know about it. But, do be assured, it is 17 chords."

Many thanks to Paul Crossley for letting me share this "Da Vinci Code" secret with the wide music world. Anyway, Tippett's unique magic and stunning originality is at play again, here in the form of the mainly two-part, non chordal writing in the outer movements, with a preference for sending both hands to the piano's extreme range, in the incredible inventiveness, Debussy-like delicacy and mesmerizing atmospheres of the theme and variations, and in the profusion of trills and grace notes, making it feel as if the ornament, the decoration even, was the veritable essence of the work, madrigal-like. I'm not sure that it is a work I would have warmed to as much as the first two if I hadn't come across the score, but with score and careful listening attention it is as great and fascinating a work as anything written by its composer.

The Sonatas of Tippett have been well-served on disc in the stereo and digital era, by John Ogdon (the first two,  Tippett: Piano Concerto & Piano Sonatas 1 & 2 - John Ogdon ), Paul Crossley, Murray Perahia (the first, on  Murray Perahia: 25th Anniversary Edition ), Steven Neugarten (the second,  Tippett Sackman Saxton Connolly vol 2 ), and, more recently, Steven Osborne on Hyperion, see link above (I am less satisfied with Peter Donohoe on Naxos,  Tippett: Piano Sonatas Nos. 1-3 , and with the trudging Graham Caskie in the Third), and Unwin serves them well, with a fine combination of power and subtle atmosphere, and no particular quirk of phrasing or articulation or tempo like those one can note in the recordings of Ogdon or Crossley. In some minuscule details I may prefer other versions (in the second Sonata for instance, the drum-like roll of thematic block 5 first heard at 0:48 isn't quite dry and biting enough), but these are really minuscule details that don't diminish in the least the excellence of this recording. Unwin's first movement of the Third Sonata is the most urgent among all the competition but, although it deprives the dreamy moments of some dreaminess, it is perfectly in situation in this overall furiously pounding movement. His approach of the slow movement is also urgent (compare his 11:28 there to Crossley's 12:19 or Osborne's 14:15, to say nothing of Caskie's 15:10) and relatively "objective", he doesn't try to "milk" the mysterious atmospheres, and I find it just as well, it lends a feel almost of abstraction to the music that I find perfectly appropriate.

The only drawback of Unwin, as well as of Donohoe on Naxos, is that a CD won't fit all four sonatas, and they offer only the first three. Paul Crossley on CRD has the four, but then each CD is relatively short, 45 and 49 minutes. So, if price isn't an impediment, the recent version by Steven Osborne on Hyperion is the most complete and the version of choice: it comes on two CDs, but with the complement of Tippett's Piano Concerto and Fantasia on a Theme of Handel for piano and orchestra - and the interpretation is uniformly great. But Unwin DID record the 4th Sonata, albeit on another label, Metier,  Tippett Saxton Matthews Lambert, Vol. 4 , and it is also an option, if not as coherent as with Osborne, to complete this Chandos CD with Unwin's Metier recital, with the bonus of two remarkable British contemporary piano works, Robert Saxton's 1981 Piano Sonata and Colin Matthews' extraordinary Studies in Velocity, plus Constant Lambert's short and affecting Elegy from 1938.

Discophage