Many music lovers and critics past the half century mark consider Donald Tovey’s six volumes of Essays in Musical Analysis, plus many other writings including some of the most important articles in the Encyclopedia Britannica of 1911, among the most civilized and illuminating articulations of the mainstream musical events that began with Handel and ended with Brahms.
Wikipedia gives a good idea of Tovey’s strengths and style:
In his essays, Tovey developed a theory of tonal structure and its relation to classical forms that he applied in his descriptions of pieces in his famous program notes for the Reid Orchestra [at the University of Edinburgh]. His aesthetic regards works of music as organic wholes, and he stresses the importance of understanding how musical principles manifest in different ways within the context of a given piece. He was fond of using metaphors to illustrate his ideas. A quotation from the Essays (on Brahms’ Handel Variations, Tovey 1922):
‘The relation between Beethoven’s freest variations and his theme is of the same order of microscopical accuracy and profundity as the relation of a bat’s wing to a human hand.’
Tovey’s belief that classical music has an aesthetics that can be deduced from the internal evidence of the music itself has influenced subsequent writers on music.
The two premiered it to critical praise in Edinburgh in 1934 (Tovey conducting the Reid Orchestra at the University of Edinburgh), but the piece had only fitful success, and sank into oblivion by the end of the decade. Despite the sponsorship of the world’s greatest and most famous cellist, no commercial recording was made.
A possible revival was signaled by Symposium Records’ publication (unfortunately deleted) in 1992, of Casals’s London broadcast performance of 1937 with the BBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Adrian Boult. It is Casals at his incandescent, spiritual best, an impression heightened perhaps by the dim, noisy recording, and the 64 minutes he takes to play the work seem almost too short.
Making up for what Tovey was fond of calling a “lacuna,” and a damned inexcusable lacuna at that, Alice Neary’s magnificent performance proves the worth of the music. She is thrillingly full-blooded in her sound and noble in her utterance, an inspiring lesson to all cellists who wish to understand the extraordinary emotional power of which the cello is capable, even when speaking in such an arch conservative voice. In harnessing the musical power of the modern orchestra and a fine young virtuoso, the Swedish label Toccata has done an immeasurable service to English music.
Peter Shore’s liner notes provide a good introduction to Tovey, including details of the mysterious romantic triangle involving himself, Casals and Guilhermina Suggia. The sound, recorded in The Ulster Hall, Belfast, is outstanding, with tremendous space, size and impact.
– Laurence Vittes
