Catalogue Connection: 21372

In the nineteenth century it was Franz Liszt who really pioneered the idea of piano transcriptions of major works by other composers. This was not only with the aim of providing material for his own recitals but also with the more laudatory intention of bringing to public attention music that might otherwise have languished unheard.

In the twentieth century this mantle has been prominently assumed by Ronald Stevenson, who not only championed much music by unfashionable composers who were neglected by the musical establishment – Alan Bush and Bernard Stevens, for example, although there have been many others – but also added his own contributions to the music to render it more pianistic in style.

On this three-disc compilation Murray MacLachlan can only provide us with a sampling of Stevenson’s achievements in this regard; and although the music is not as naturally adventurous as Stevenson’s own compositions, everything here still has his stamp upon it.

There is indeed some surprising material here, not least the treatment of Ivor Novello’s We’ll gather lilacs which forms the second movement of Volume II of L’art nouveau du chant , which almost sounds like an arrangement for some Palm Court or other but it is a very high quality arrangement. Other music here is much more adventurous, such as the Scottish Ballad No 1 which treats the theme of Lord Randall with a degree of freedom that brings it close to Stevenson’s own music, with a sprinkling of ‘wrong notes’ that sound positively Graingeresque. The Chopin arrangements which form much of the content of the first of these three CDs also have a decidedly Stevensonian spice to them which makes them much more than simply virtuoso display pieces; the arrangement of the Andantino prelude [track 16] is particularly winsome and irreverent. His combination of Chopin with Rimsky-Korsakov’s bumble-bee [track 21] is glorious fun.

The second disc offers more substantial fare, beginning with the ‘concerto for solo piano’ Le festin d’Alkan – echoing Alkan’s own title Le festin d’Ésope as well as his contribution to the solo piano concerto repertoire. Like Alkan’s own music, this is a real tour de force demanding the most virtuoso playing. In three movements Stevenson produces a whole series of amazing variations and fantasias on various themes by Alkan. He employs a crazy variety of extreme virtuosic writing which echoes Alkan himself. Alkan’s cheeky sense of humour is also captured. The last movement produces a raging torrent of scales and chords that challenges MacLachlan to the utmost.

The two Sonatas based on unaccompanied violin works by Ysaÿe inevitably bring to mind Busoni’s similar transcriptions of Bach sonata and partita movements for solo violin. Much more than simple transcriptions, they fill out the music with pianistic figuration which enhances the content of the originals. The employment by Ysaÿe of the Dies irae in the Second Sonata (track 8) brings overtones of Rachmaninov, but Ysaÿe and Stevenson treat the plainchant melody very differently from the obsessive Rachmaninov, even when the music comes close to The isle of the dead just before the end of the first movement or to the Rhapsody on a theme of Paganini during the second.

The Norse Elegy was written in memory of the wife of Percy Grainger’s surgeon, and pays tribute to Grainger in the employment of a motif from the Grieg Piano Concerto which Grainger had championed in its early years. It is a beautifully poised piece with all the freshness of a Scottish folksong, ending with some key-shifting harmonies that startle and enthral at the same time. The Canonic Caprice draws on material from Manuel Rosenthal’s Carnaval de Vienne (which in turn drew from Johann Strauss, with Die Fledermaus much in evidence) and is much more light-hearted, not to say effervescent, deconstructing the theme with all the vigour of Ravel’s La Valse .

The third disc opens with two basically straightforward Mozart transcriptions which leave the originals harmonically undisturbed. The Melody on a ground of Glazunov again hardly steps outside the parameters of the original until some Stevensonian touches in the final bars. The Ricordanza di San Romerio , described as a ‘pilgrimage for piano’, pays tribute to Liszt’s Années de pélérinage but again remains faithful to its model.

The arrangements of Purcell which follow are described by the composer as ‘free transcriptions’ but there is nothing in the harmonic treatment of these pieces which Purcell himself would have failed to recognize. That is until we get to the Little Jazz Variations – which may be more bluesy than jazzy, but are certainly twentieth century although far removed from Jacques Loussier.

The Two music portraits are original pieces written for children, miniature waltzes portraying Charlot and Garbo. Murray MacLachlan in his booklet notes describes them as “among the smallest shavings from Stevenson’s workbench” but they are delightful and welcome nonetheless. The final three tracks give us three further ‘free transcriptions’ on Renaissance music, this time of pieces by John Blow. Again there is nothing here which the original composer would not have recognised.

Murray McLachlan has long been a champion of Stevenson’s music – his recording of the two Piano Concertos has recently been reissued, and is a magnificent achievement. His playing throughout these discs is as masterly as one would expect, and he is superbly recorded in a properly resonant and slightly distanced acoustic which nevertheless allows everything to be clearly heard. In a review one has only room to notice a few of the many felicitous touches in his playing, but his delicate filigree in the Chopin arrangements cannot be allowed to pass without remark, nor his whirlwind treatment of the left-hand ‘contrapuntal study’ on the Minute waltz (CD 1, track 23). The pianist also contributes extensive booklet notes which explore every facet of the music over a wide-ranging essay of some fourteen pages, which add to the value of the issue.

It might be thought that three CDs of piano arrangements and transcriptions might be all too much to be digested at one sitting, but in point of fact there is such variety and imagination in the various treatments of the material that boredom or fatigue never becomes a factor. Indeed one might have wished for more. One omission that I do regret is Stevenson’s beautiful arrangement of the Song of the minstrel from Alan Bush’s magnificent opera Wat Tyler , but that is already available in a performance by the composer himself. Incidentally is it not about time that we had a recording of Wat Tyler , or indeed of any of Alan Bush’s operas? There are certainly performances of three of these in the BBC archives ( Men of Blackmoor and Joe Hill as well as the earlier work), and although Alan Bush told me that there were a considerable number of errors in the vocal performances in Wat Tyler these should certainly not stand in the way of a commercial release. Another omission here is the Minuet and Funeral March from Havergal Brian’s Turandot , also arranged by Stevenson and recorded by him for the BBC. The BBC have at least two complete recordings of Brian operas – The Tigers and Agamemnon – in their vaults. Indeed they have an enormous archive of live and studio performances of rare British music of all sorts; if only they could be persuaded to release their tapes of some of them, it would be a rare treat. Private tapes of some of these performances can be found on the internet, but we really need properly re-mastered commercial transfers.

Enough of tangential observations. Let us be grateful for what Murray McLachlan has provided us with here – a superlative collection of some superlative arrangements and realisations by one of the great masters of the keyboard. A big thank you to everyone concerned with this marvellous release.

Blow me, but this release was a long time in coming: a representative selection of pieces by one of the United Kingdom’s most prolific and generous composers – generous not only in the big-hearted emotional impulses that inform his music but also in the degree of his time that he has devoted to his colleagues, since by my reckoning something like 25 per cent of Ronald Stevenson’s worklist is accounted for by transcriptions (mostly for piano) of other men’s music, a fact reflected in the programming here. Stevenson was 85 last March, and to quote Donald Tovey on Havergal Brian (two of Stevenson’s own enthusiasms), “even for the recognition of his smaller works, he is being made to wait longer than is good for any composer; and far longer than is good for any country whose musical reputation is worth praying for”. Luckily unlike Brian, whose Gothic Symphony still had almost three decades to wait for any performance at the time Tovey was writing, the essence of Ronald Stevenson is as readily to be found in his smaller works as in his larger canvasses; and as one of the 20 th century’s most gifted pianists he didn’t have to hang on the attention of others before at least some of his music could be heard. True, his Vocalise Variations on Two Themes from ‘The Trojans’ for mezzo and orchestra (1969) will soon have existed for half-a-century without a single performance, and his choral-orchestral ‘Epic’, Praise of Ben Dorain, begun in 1962, seemed destined to remain unfinished until plans for its premiere, in January 2008, finally gave Stevenson the stimulus he required to finish the score. By contrast, his 80-minute Passacaglia on DSCH (1960-62) is a palpable hit, its length notwithstanding, with recordings by the composer, John Ogden (a friend from student days in Manchester). Raymond Clarke and Murray McLachlan all in the lists at some point or other, another imminent from James Wilshire, and Mark Gasser presenting the work as his calling-card in locations as far apart as the Wigmore and Carnegie Halls and Sydney Opera House. Still, given the improbable volume of his output (the list of works I compiled for the symposium of essays on Stevenson edited by the late Colin Scott-Sutherland covers almost 80 pages) and the immediacy of its language (Stevenson stuck with tonality through the heyday of serialism: where he uses dodecaphony, it is generally lyrical in tone), the obscurity that still envelopes his art is a cause for enormous regret.

Some of the fault lies with Stevenson himself, of course: he preferred to sit at home in West Linton, just below Edinburgh, and compose with his family around him rather than join the lonely crowd of concert-pianists swirling around the planet like so much solar debris. And savvier composers would have fed their works out to publishers rather more assiduously; but it wasn’t until a group of his family, friends and supporters got together in 1993 to found the Ronald Stevenson Society, which then set about typesetting and publishing his scores that much of this material became available. But no matter how impressive your mousetrap, of course, the world will not necessarily beat a path to your door, and Stevenson remains a grievously neglected figure. If his works were complicated Ferneyhovian constructions or of Feldmanite inscrutability you might understand it. But he’s a born communicator. The first thing most musicians – folk , pop, rock, jazz, whatever do when they come onstage is talk to their audience; but most classical performers don’t; they come on, bow, smile wanly, play, bow again and bugger off, and that’s the extent of the interaction. In my experience (in the later years of his four-and-a-half-decade concert career, ended by ill health in his mid-sixties) Stevenson was never that kind of ivory- tower isolationist ; the first thing he would do was swivel around on his stool to chat to his listeners and bring them on board. He was also an avid broadcaster. That openness is audible in his music. Many of his 230 songs could be popular favourites, if that’s a condition to which art song can still aspire, and this anthology of piano music contains piece after piece that would put beams on the faces of concert audiences around the world, amateur and professional alike. A number of earlier recording projects I know of foundered, for various reasons, which makes Murray McLachlan’s splendid survey of over a half-century of composition all the more important; and I guarantee that as you work your way through these recordings, you will shake your head in dumbfounded disbelief that music of such remarkable quality should have gone unheard for so long.

Stevenson often quotes Busoni to the extent that there is no essential difference between composition and transcription, that they are simply different parts of the same continuous process. Just as Busoni’s music smears the distinction between creation and re-creation, so does Stevenson’s, and all three discs contain examples guaranteed to frustrate the reflex pigeon-holer. McLachlan’s first CD opens with one such, a transcription of Bach’s Komm, susser Tod , fashioned on Busoni’s birthday, 1 April, in 1991. At the risk of appearing to exaggerate (given that it is only four minutes in length), I think that this is not only one of the great transcriptions; it’s one of the triumphs of the humanist imagination, perhaps because it is the cumulative product of a number of outstanding minds, Bach’s of course, and Busoni’s by example, but then also Stokowski’s, whose orchestrations Stevenson adores, and, of course, Stevenson’s own. The theme is stated calmly, harmonized with restraint—but with occasional notes foreign to the harmony flickering in the background; a second statement, more assertive, is accompanied by rolling decoration, reaching to a rich and sonorous conclusion, with two tiny falling figures, still outside the harmony to suggest that the piece has infinitely further realms to explore. McLachlan—whose expansive commentary with the set generates a 24-page booklet—refers to this transcription as ‘a relatively modest curtain raiser’; I disagree: it’s one of the jewels of the piano literature.

As McLachlan suggests, the Prelude and the Easter Chorale (an Easter offering), dating respectively from 1978 and the late 1940’s and united in 1978, recaptures in its solemn celebration something of the mood of Busoni’s Fourth Sonatina, In diem Nativitatis Christi, but the ensuing nine tracks are given over to the first two volumes (as published by the Ronald Stevenson Society) of Stevenson’s L’Art nouveau du Chant appliqué au piano, his response to Sigismond Thalberg’s near-homonymous collection of 24 transcriptions, op.70, of 1853. There are at least 25 of these transcriptions; the nine lovingly recast miniatures presented here are based on music by Coleridge-Taylor, Maude Valerie White, Meyerbeer, Rachmaninov, Bridge, Novello and Romberg, each bringing some subtle pianistic insight to the treatment in pursuit of honest sentiment—listening to all nine in a row almost risks coaxing the ear into inattentive enjoyment.

After such company the craggy dissonance of Stevenson’s Scottish Ballad No.1, Lord Randal (1973) , in effect a theme and five variations, fall on the ear as a solitary shock, the variations sometimes lessening the intensity of the opening, but not for long: Stevenson does not forget that the border ballad on which it is based involves a young man slowly confessing to his mother that he has killed his father.

To round off his first disc McLachlan corrals together ‘the complete set of Stevenson’s Chopin transcriptions and paraphrases’. He opens with the most original of them, the eight –minute Fugue on a Fragment of Chopin, composed by the 21-year-old Stevenson in 1949 to mark the Chopin centenary—evidence that Stevenson was already a master. It’s astonishing that this barn-storming work has escaped the attention of mainstream pianists, since it would be so easy to programme: end the first half of a concert with the F minor Ballade (its opening is the fragment of Stevenson’s title) and open the second with the narrative splendour of the Stevenson. The other Chopin-based pieces consist of six Pensees sur des Preludes de Chopin (1959), the Variations on a Chopin Waltz (which I had down as 1988 but McLachlan dates to 1950), the Etudette d’apres Korsakov et Chopin (1987, premiered by McLachlan the year after) and Three Contrapuntal Studies on Chopin Waltzes (begun c.1955 and completed in 2003). The example of Leopold Godowsky obviously looms large here, although even when Stevenson follows it directly and combines two Chopin pieces, he brings a rough energy missing from Godowsky’s Faberge originals: they were conceived in the music- room , and Stevenson’s in the Scots outdoors—Godowsky’s pulse is sometimes lost in his filigree but Stevenson’s robust rhythms are never in doubt. Several of the Pensees take a different approach, infecting one Chopin piece with an idea from another. The Variations-Study does what it says on the can, putting the secondary theme of the posthumous C sharp minor Waltz through five coruscating variations. And the Etudette, as witty as it is resourceful, begins with Rimsky Korsakov’s ‘Bumblebee’ in the left hand (it’s only a metaphor, no living creatures were hurt …) and then adds the Etude, op.10, No.2, in the right.

The second disc opens with Le festin d’Alkan, qualified as a ‘Concerto for solo piano, without orchestra: Petit concert en forme d’etudes’ (1988-97), at almost half an hour in duration the longest single item in this collection. Again, it gleefully blurs the distinction between composition , variation and transcription, the first movement (‘Free composition’) being an angular, jaggedly rhythmic and darkly energetic study, the second (‘Free transcription’) working references to Scarlatti, Paganini and Dallapiccola into a discussion of Alkan’s Barcarolle, the last of the Troisième recueil de chants, op.65, and the third (‘Free multiple variations’) an extraordinary patchwork of references to other composers—mostly Alkan, but also Schubert and countless others who flash past in kaleidoscopic, fleeting glimpses (I’m sure I caught an allusion to Eckhardt-Gramatte, for instance)—interspersed with three cadenzas, the first for left hand, the second for right hand and the third for both hands together (the gesture itself being a nod to Alkan’s Trois Grandes Etudes, op.76), all of it a ferocious technical challenge for the performer. This is the first time I’ve heard it since Marc-Andre Hamelin premiered it at a ‘Pianoworks’ festival in the Blackheath Concert Halls in September 1999, and I confess I couldn’t get my head around it, the third movement especially, at that first complete hearing, even though the composer had played me some of the music i n ovo at home; here, though, Murray McLachlan’s recording at last allows the listener to acquire a degree of familiarity. I can now distinguish the division of the lines into strata of ‘solo’ and ‘tutti’ writing, and slowly what seemed an over-ambitious quilt of a piece is acquiring the degree of structural coherence I hadn’t been able to hear—although I imagine that the ‘Free multiple variations’ will always remain a bizarre, darkly fantastically quality.

The other major works on the second disc are Stevenson’s transcriptions of the first two sonatas of the six that Ysaÿe wrote in a single setting in July 1923; appositely, Stevenson made his transcriptions in a similar burst of inspiration, from November 1981 to January of the next year. Ysaÿes’s originals are keystones of the violin repertoire; Stevenson’s adaptations deserve to be encouraged just as frequently in the concert hall. He makes the music more his own than Busoni did in his realization of the Bach Chaconne; the harmonic sophistication implied in Ysaÿe’s violin textures means the Stevenson’s adaptations sound almost as the piano sonatas that Busoni never wrote. They have no equivalent in the piano literature that I can think of and open up a novel world of texture and allusion that would astound the unwary.

McLachlan’s second CD ends with the Norse Elegy (1976-79), an eight- minute chiaroscuro in which ghostly evocations of Grieg and Norwegian folk-music float by in indistinct tonality, though the mists clear for a simpler central section, and with the Canonic Caprice(after Strauss’ The Bat) (1966-67), but premiered again by McLachlan— only in 2002), a terrific , gloriously over-the-top display-piece, the virtuoso invention of Stevenson’s mind requiring similar agility from his performer’s fingers. As with the Etudette and a number of the other contrapuntal display pieces here, it is difficult to suppress a whoop of delight at the acrobatics Stevenson requires of his material—you can easily imagine the glint of schoolboy mischief in his eye as he turns it over in his mind and tries it out at the keyboard.

The third disc opens with Stevenson’s solo-piano realization (1952) of Busoni’s two-piano transcription of Mozart’s F minor Fantasy , K608, and his own poetic transcription of the Romanze that forms the slow movement of the Piano Concerto No.20 in D minor, k466. A Melody on a Ground of Glazunov (1970), its lyricism unsettled by its recurrent fourths, then acts as a prelude to the stark and atmospheric Ricordanza di San Romero (1987), a close cousin to the pieces in Liszt’s Weihnachtsbaum.

As with Stevenson’s Chopin reworkings on the first disc, McLachlan bundles together his Purcell pieces here on the third , opening the group with Three Grounds (transcribed between 1955 and 1958 and revised in 1995). For much of its four minutes No.1 exhibits a Bachian command of two-part harmony ( the imaginative tempo indication is Andante quasi fado) ; the treble line of No.2 obviously vocal in origin, movingly unfolds over a walking-ostinato bass; and I wonder if the darker No.3 has its origins in a vocal duet. The seven-and-a-half minute Toccata, a ‘free transcription’ from 1955, has obvious points of contact with the Bach-Busoni Toccata, Adagio and Fugue but soon fills its own sails and unfolds as profoundly satisfying piano-writing, yet another Stevenson score that ought to be part of the standard repertoire. As with the Variations-Study the Little Jazz Variations on Purcell’s ‘New Scotch Tune’ ( 1964, rev.1975) does exactly what it says on the outside, being both jazzy and audibly Scottish, damned cleverly so, to the extent where the piano riffs around the melody recall the decoration you hear pipers applying to pibroch. The Hornpipe (1995) sounds almost like Debussy recalling Purcell; and the brief but exquisitely beautiful The Queen’s Dolour (A Farewell) (1959), which Purcell left as little more than an outline, packs an emotional punch way beyond its duration and its slender means—it’s one of the few Stevenson pieces within reach of my own fingers and its ability to generate tears can withstand even renditions as clumsy as mine. Two tiny original miniatures, Two Music Portraits (‘ Valse Charlot’ and’ Valse Garbot’, from 1965), coy and understated, preface McLachlan’s final offering, the ‘free transcriptions’ that form the 13-minute Three Elizabethan Pieces after John Bull (1950), a Pavan, Gailliard and jig (‘The King’s Hunt’) which all varied, constitute another triumph of the transcriber’s art. Once more, you won’t know why it’s not a concert favourite.

Murray McLachlan deserves enormous praise for these recordings—almost four hours of music which at last prise open the door to let us glimpse some of the treasure trove that sits, gathering good scots dust, in Ronald Stevenson’s cupboards. Some of these pieces erect some formidable barriers in front of the performer, but McLachlan negotiates their difficulties with chamois surefootedness. He’s recorded on a Steinway D (in the Royal Northern college of Music in Manchester, Stevenson’s own alma mater) and, if I have a criticism, or two, it’s that the piano tone under dynamic pressure can take on a touch of hardness; on occasion, too, McLachlan perhaps brings more enthusiasm to bear on the more tender of these plants than they can ideally support. I wonder, too about the commercial logic of bringing out three CDs of unfamiliar material as a set when they could have been drip-fed slowly into the market; Divine Art has at least released it as three-for-the price of two. But these small reservations can be biffed swiftly aside: one’s predominant emotion is gratitude to the musician, recording company and composer—indeed, composers—who made it possible. Its importance can hardly be overstated.

It is a constant surprise to me that Ronald Stevenson has such a poor presence as composer and performer in the recorded catalogue. Of course, his most renowned work, the Passacaglia on DSCH, has been recorded more than once. But he has written more than 500 other works for piano (as well as legion songs, instrumental and chamber pieces and a healthy smattering of orchestral scores), only a tiny portion of which have made it on to disc. Divine Art’s three-disc retrospective comprising 53 separate tracks at last begins to redress the balance

And what a collection of treasures it provides. The overwhelming focus is on Stevenson’s reworkings (including variations), recompositions or simple transcriptions of other composers’ music, but the dividing lines demarcating where transcription becomes reworking and reworking becomes recomposition matter little to this most all-encompassing of artists. So for example, on CD 3, his comparatively straight transferences to the piano of Mozart’s K608 Fantasia (1952) and the Romanza from the D minor Concerto, K 466 (2002) lie cheek by jowl with the delightful Melody on a ground Glazunov (1970). Similarly, CD 1 opens with a Bach Prelude and Chorale paired with, among others, the Fugue on a fragment of Chopin (1949 – arguably his first real masterpiece) and Pensées sur des Préludes de Chopin (1959).

As Murray McLachlan notes in the booklet, the work that best encapsulates Stevenson’s approach to writing for piano is the largest presented here, taking in all of his different approaches: the magisterial unaccompanied concerto Le festin d’Alkan (1997). Its three movements are titled Free composition , with no external quotations, Free transcription (a very free reworking of Alkan’s Op 65 Barcarolle with references to Scarlatti and Paganini for contrast) and Free multiple variations , where Le festin d’Esope is transmogrified as the basis for a freewheeling variation-fantasy taking in other matter, not least Death and the Maiden .

McLachlan proves the ideal guide through this unendingly fascinating array of works, supplying the fourth string in Stevenson’s creative make-up: interpretation. McLachlan’s technique is equal to the most challenging of the composer’s virtuosic demands, his musical sensibilities attuned to shaping the torrents of notes into real works of art and his lightness of touch able to draw out the subtle tones and colours that are the lifeblood of the music. If I have dwelt more on music than its interpretation, this is due to its regrettable unfamiliarity, something this superb release will remedy.

The recording is very clear, no mean achievement given the music’s wide dynamic and textural range, the acoustic (the Haden Freeman Concert Hall at the Royal Northern College of Music) comfortable and faithfully reproduced. Here and there, the Steinway Model D shows signs of strain – try the disturbing opening span of Le festin d’Alkan – but this never mars the overall experience. Very strongly recommended.

For me the outright best release of the past year [2013], bar none, was Murray McLachlan’s three-CD sampler (for there is much more music still to be recorded) on Divine Art of the piano music of Ronald Stevenson (b. 1928). Imagine Bach, Berg, Busoni, Grainger, Grieg, Paderewski, Rachmaninoff, and a few others (not forgetting Eubie Blake) all rolled into one and given a distinctive Scots flavor, and you have something of the generosity of spirit and intellectual resourcefulness of this oeuvre. That a composer of this stature should have to wait so long for record­ings of his music (and he’s still waiting for the vast bulk of his huge output to get anywhere near the microphones) is shameful; this set will let you hear why.

Of course there’s no way a Stevenson sampler wouldn’t be a richly textured sprawl. If you’re unfamiliar with Stevenson’s best known opus, Passacaglia on DSCH , you’re well advised to investigate it now. In these three discs (71:12 + 70:28 + 74:55) recorded across various sessions in 2009-10, McLachlan explores works ranging from virtuosic to vignettes a student could master. Like preceding composer-pianist virtuosos Busoni and Godowski, Stevenson freely reformulates music which has come before. McLachlan makes the nearly impossible Chopin elaborations sound easy.

There are varied arrangements of Bach and Mozart, mightily elaborated paraphrases of John Bull, Purcell (including jazz variations), Chopin and Glazunov, latter-day popular song arrangements (Rachmaninoff, Coleridge-Taylor, Ivor Novello, Sigmund Romberg, et al.), a canonic treatment of the big themes from Strauss’ Die Fledermaus in turn reflecting Moritz Rosenthal’s Carnaval de Vienne , a two-hand arrangement of Busoni’s two-piano transcription of Mozart’s Fantasy for mechanical organ, K. 608 , and so on.

The second disc provides the largest offering, a concerto for solo piano without orchestra, Le festin d’Alkan (1997), which looks at Alkan in three ways: fantasies inspired by Alkan, transcriptions and elaborations of Alkan, and the music of others Alkan played. Two Ysaÿe solo violin sonatas ( Nos. 1 and 2 ) have been transcribed for piano reflecting Stevenson’s absorption of Ysaÿe’s own Bach models. The sonatas, deep reimaginings in the Busoni vein, are far from their string originals. I find the Three Grounds , free transcriptions of Purcell, to be the most transfixing. Obviously, Purcell could never have written for the piano, yet Stevenson’s expansive melody placement and doubling works well.

I gave Murray McLachlan a rough review a few years ago for his lack of phrasing and dynamic subtlety (John Williamson piano music — Diversions 24143, M/J 2010), but this program is much better than anything I’ve heard from him. There’s a lot of slow- to mid-tempo music (the resulting lack of variety is a weakness in the set) that requires cantabile playing, and he doesn’t disappoint me.

Ronald Stevenson wrote about 25 pieces collectively called L’Art Nouveau du Chant Applique au Piano , and his Society has published two volumes of them so far. The songs are by Coleridge-Taylor, Meyerbeer, Rachmaninoff, Ivor Novello, and others. Stevenson was inspired by Thalberg’s cycle of the same title. They are more than mere transcriptions, of course, and are enjoyable and sometimes stunning.

There are several other transcriptions: Bach (‘Komm, Susser Tod’), Mozart (Fantasy for Mechanical Organ, K 608; Romance from Piano Concerto 20), and Purcell (three grounds, a toccata, and ‘Little Jazz Variations on the “New Scotch Tune”‘. The last comes nowhere close to rewarding the curiosity pro­voked by the title.) They are enjoyable, but don’t listen to them all in a row unless you’re already melancholy; there should be a ‘Ritual Fire Dance’ in the middle of them for a change of pace. The Mozart Fantasy is a straightforward transcription of what sounds like a conservative Baroque fantasy and fugue in the first half; the second part is more like the Wolfgang we know and love. There are some very difficult figurations for the pianist, and he handles them with what sounds like enviable ease.

Stevenson transcribed Ysaye’s six violin sonatas in the space of three months, and the first two are played here. They are impressionist heavyweights that expand and amplify the material. 1:I is a grand and sonorous experiment that rather makes me want to hear it as Ysaye wrote it. 2:IV does the same: it belies its ancestry and isn’t quite convincing as a piano piece. The movements in between are better; 1:II, a fugue; sounds very natural on the piano, a festival of augmented chords. 1:III is a fascinating baroque-romantic hybrid. Sonata 2 is almost an extended set of Theme and Manipulations on the Dies Irae, grotesque and sometimes downright looney.

‘Canonic Caprice on The Bat’ is a humorous, schmaltzy Strauss romp that Horowitz would’ve turned into encore gold. The Thoughts on the Preludes of Chopin (one of which is a strange combination of Chopin with ‘The Flight of the Bumble-Bee’) and the Three Contrapuntal Studies on Chopin Waltzes are similar expansions and elaborations.

Le Festin d’Alkan , a concerto for solo piano, is a bit like Sorabji, but less dense; passages of polytonal chords veer off into moments of unexpected quiet. II has a stuttering theme, embellished to sound like a cross between a Rachmaninoff etude and a Scriabin prelude; I know it’s a contradiction in terms, but “mid-day nocturne” is the description that comes to mind. Ill is schizophrenic, rhapsodic, and sometimes frustrated sounding, a pastiche of composers from Chopin to Bizet to Rimsky-Korsakoff to Stevenson himself. McLachlan grumbles and murmurs winningly, but some of the louder parts sound clangy. None of Stevenson’s works presented here are as powerful as the Passacaglia on DSCH , though.

This release will be required for followers of Stevenson, of course, and listeners interested in Sorabji, Alkan, Busoni, et al., should consider it as well. The sound is a little on the thin side, but not bad; notes in English.

Murray McLachlan could have chosen an easier task indeed to demonstrate his skills, or for his career, instead of engaging with a rather unknown composer. But isn’t it especially exciting to explore the works of an individual whose qualities one knows better than anybody else, who one knows personally or is friends with? The closer one is to a composer, the better (hopefully) one understands that person’s musical thinking, even if one occasionally takes a position which might keep a certain distance from the composer’s intention or introduce a personal element. In the end it is not about reporting the about the king’s court, but about appropriately conveying a not well-enough-known or even misunderstood artist.

In 2013 Ronald Stevenson celebrated his 85 th birthday. Born in Lancashire but since the 50s living in Scotland, Stevenson belongs to those important pianist-composers, of which Great Britain has seen a series (important predecessors or contemporaries are Benjamin Britten or John McCabe). Stevenson has not only made himself a name as a pianist (well documented by the recording of music by Busoni or his own now legendary Passacaglia based on Shostakovitch’s initials [DSCH], among others) he is also a prolific writer of about 500 compositions for piano (of which the aforementioned Passacaglia certainly is the most well-known). Stevenson’s admiration for the pianist-composers of the past is reflected in his own work, which meanders almost seamlessly between original compositions and adaptation of music by others. In this aspect Liszt certainly was an important role model; he was able to gradually switch between original composition and transcription of music by others but maintain his own profile this way. In this homage to Stevenson, McLachlan initially appears to emphasize the connection to the music of other composers all too much, but if one follows the music, one soon notices the originality of the music, in the truest sense of the word. One period of music, in which Stevenson distinguishes himself, is the era from Purcell to Mozart. And first there are fine tributes to Bach, evolving from the baroque to the 20 th century (opulent variations on a chorale prelude ‘Komm, süßer Tod’ BWV 478, as well as a hyper-chromatic Fantasia titled ‘Prelude and Chorale’).

Henry Purcell’s music is also transformed by Stevenson into music of the 20 th century with ‘Three Grounds’ (three Passacaglias) (1958 etc., rev. 1995), and a Toccata (1955) (adapted expansively, harmonically barely sounding like Purcell) – in both cases Stevenson joins the best transcriptors of the first half of the 20 th century with the musical invention in his work. ‘Little Jazz Variations on Purcell’s ‚New Scotch Tune‘’ (1964, rev. 1975 & 1995) reflects the influence of jazz on the British art-music in a surprisingly late phase, ‘Hornpipe’ (1995) based on Purcell’s D-Major Suite uses diatonic-polytonal components to deepen and clarify the original composition. ‘The Queen’s Dolour (A farewell) ‘ (1959) even leaves the pianistic texture]partially behind – Stevenson re-arranged this piece for guitar later. The moderate tempi of Stevenson’s transcriptions of Mozart’s famous Fantasia, KV 608 for mechanical organ (1952) result in a depth which the original work was somewhat missing. This is no longer Mozart’s spirit, but truly a genuine re-creation. The concentration of the complete texture of the slow movement in Mozart’s piano concerto in D minor, KV 466 onto a pure piano score (2002) succeeds on such a smooth unbroken level, that the original sound-tapestry becomes a minor matter, even for the most dedicated Mozart lover – this is not a piano reduction, nor a piano arrangement, this is a congenial re-composition.

It became customary during the 19 th century to arrange songs and aria for solo piano. A famous exponent of this tradition was Sigismund Thalberg, and Stevenson pays tribute to him with two publications ‘L‘Art nouveau du chant appliqué au piano’. The originals selected by Stevenson are surprising for Germans as in this country hardly anyone knows the songs by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, Maud Valerie White, Sergei Rachmaninoff or Frank Bridge, the Aria from Meyerbeer’s ‘Huguenots’ or popular songs by Ivor Novello or Sigmund Romberg, which are the starting point of Stevenson’s own compositions; they indeed sound distantly familiar, but are quite unique. In so doing, Stevenson never violates the original selections through atonal, realizably forced new dimensions, but moulds genuine piano pieces from those vocal compositions, with repeatedly highly interesting textures and exciting new coloration, which is added to the original composition quite in the spirit of the original period.

Four quite different compositions in this recording involve the spirit or the music of Frédéric Chopin – from a close adaptation to a highly complex free fantasy using Rimsky-Korsakow’s famous ‘Hummelflug’ [Flight of the Bumble Bee], worthy of an important composer of the 20 th century. With ‘Le Festin d’Alkan’ Stevenson pays homage to a composer who is more well known today than 20 years ago, but who is still surrounded by myths and whose music (not least due to its complexity) continues to await sustained exploration. Stevenson’s composition explores – in form of free transcription, free multiple variations and free composition (the three pillars of his creations in general) – the spirit of Alkan’s music in its own manner, without falling into pure imitations. Quite delicate in turn is the ‘Canonic Caprice on”The Bat”, a technically highly challenging bi-tonal study of the ‘Fledermaus’-waltz. Of very special nature is Stevenson’s engagement with Eugène Ysaÿe: His adaptations of six violin sonatas are virtually new compositions, in which he condenses the original lines, remodels the existing material for piano and develops his own textures.

Next to these adoptions of older music at various levels, Stevenson also appears in quite different ways as an original composer, such as in his Scottish Ballad Nr. 1 (1973) – indeed based on existing material (the traditional ‘Lord Randal’), but harmonically and compositionally in its own clothing. Of quite different nature is the ‘Norse Elegy’ (1976-9) written for a Norwegian girlfriend – elegant sound coloration layered, the given name of the dedicatee woven into the theme. Similarly unique is Stevenson’s ‘Melody on a ground bass melody of Glazunov’ (1970), a quite typical British genre, which from a distance pays reverence to Purcell, but utilizes extended tonality and leaves a deep poetic impression. This tendency is also present in ‘Ricordanza di San Romerio (A pilgrimage) ‘ (1987) with one or two sparse voice textures, which particularly emphasize the meditative character of the music. Stevenson referred to two short ‘Music Portraits’ (1965) as the equivalent of 1920s cigarette cards of famous film stars: short miniatures, which, though technically not too difficult, present clear characterizations, quite similar to his ‘Three Elizabethan Pieces after John Bull’ (1950) also presented here. In these works, the distinction between original composition and adaptation becomes blurred.

Murray McLachlan, the Scottish pianist who teaches in Manchester (where Stevenson studied in his time), leaves virtually nothing to wish for in this complex material. His virtuous capabilities are without question (20 years ago he presented Stevenson piano concerts on CD), as well as, most importantly, his understanding of Stevenson’s idiom. In a few cases one could have imagined some more extremes, more exuberance, but this is a matter of taste and maybe slightly removed from Stevenson’s intentions as compared to this slightly ‘understated’ interpretation. Very commendable is the extensive booklet (in English only), in which McLachlan introduces the material in an extremely helpful manner. The recording technique allows Stevenson’s music to breathe and accentuates the interpretations in a best possible way.

Ronald Stevenson will celebrate his 85th birthday in March. Championing Stevenson’s music has become a cause of a peculiarly British kind, as if the perceived neglect of his enormous output is the result of the same conspiracy by the musical establishment that has prevented proper recognition for figures such as Havergal Brian, John Foulds, Malcolm Arnold and George Lloyd.

Yet in Stevenson’s case, one of the main reasons for this neglect is surely the sheer quantity of his music. No one would argue with the importance of the Blackburn-born Scottish composer as an academic and performer; his work on Grainger and Busoni has been especially valuable. But getting a handle on his works is daunting: as well as orchestral scores, concertos, songs and chamber music, Stevenson has composed almost 500 pieces for solo piano, many of which are fiendishly difficult to play.

Even three well-filled discs can hardly scratch the surface of such a vast amount of piano music. Murray McLachlan, who has already recorded Stevenson’s greatest single work, the 80-minute Passacaglia on DSCH for Divine Art, mostly selects from Stevenson’s myriad keyboard arrangements, transcriptions and paraphrases. The pieces range from the blamelessly straightforward – versions of Frank Bridge’s song Go Not, Happy Day, and Ivor Novello’s We’ll Gather Lilacs – to some stormy reworkings of Chopin, including a menacing fugue based upon a fragment of the F minor Ballade, and two of Ysaÿe’s solo-violin Sonatas turned into totally convincing keyboard works.

The most substantial piece here is Le Festin d’Alkan, a “concerto for piano without orchestra” composed as a tribute to the mid-19th-century pianist-composer, which uses themes from Alkan’s music alongside freely invented sections.

Inevitably, perhaps, the quality of the music is variable – some of the pieces sound very much like written down improvisations – but it’s never, ever dull, and its sheer imagination and energy are irrepressible. So too are McLachlan’s performances; occasionally one would like a little more tonal variety, but the dedication of his playing is without doubt immensely impressive.

I first heard the music of Ronald Stevenson (b.1928) from recordings issued on the Altarus label a couple of decades ago. Ronald Stevenson was born in Blackburn, Lancashire of Scottish and Welsh ancestry. He studied at the Royal Manchester College of Music and later at the Conservatorio di Santa Cecilia in Rome. From 1962 to 1965 he taught composition and piano in the University of Cape Town. He was a visiting Professor at the Shanghai Conservatory in 1985 and also performed and gave seminars at the Julliard School, New York. Stevenson is a Fellow of the Royal Manchester College of Music.

Ronald Stevenson is a prolific composer having written orchestral works, concertos, choral music, chamber music, song cycles and a large number of works for piano. Many of his works for piano take the form of transcriptions, arrangements or variations on themes of other composers. Indeed Stevenson’s longest work is his Passacaglia on DSCH, the personal musical motto of Shostakovich. Stevenson has never made a distinction between transcription and original composition, perhaps following on from the practice of composers such as Bach.

A new release from Divine Art Recordings gives an excellent view of Stevenson’s art, showing the vast scope of his piano transcriptions, variations and arrangements. Murray McLachlan has recorded a large number of these works on this 3 CD set recorded between October 2009 and April 2010 at the Royal Northern College of Music.

The first CD opens with a transcription of Bach’s Komm, süsser Tod BWV 478 that builds in complexity, in a transcription fully worthy of Busoni, on whose birthday it was written. Stevenson’s Prelude and Chorale (an Easter offering) that follows is a cool and restrained Busoni inspired andante.

The five pieces that make up volume one of L’Art nouveau du chant appliqué au piano are transcriptions of songs. Coleridge-Taylor’s Elëanore , provides a light attractive theme blending surprisingly well with Maud V White’s So we’ll go no more a-roving which gains immensely from Stephenson’s gentle phrasing and colour, shown to great effect by Murray McLachlan. Meyerbeer’s Plus blanche que la plus blanche hermine opens simply, played by the left hand only for several bars, before the transcription opens out with a number of playful touches. Rachmaninov would have appreciated Stevenson’s transcription of his lovely song In the silent night , a beautiful creation in its own right. Stevenson transforms Frank Bridge’s Go not, happy day into a real show piece to end this set.

In L’Art nouveau du chant appliqué au piano Volume 2 Ivor Novello’s Fly home little heart is so arranged as to sound so much more, with its arpeggios and rich sonorities. Ronald Stevenson manages to present We’ll gather lilacs in such a wonderfully decorated guise as to give it a completely new feeling, with the main tune only appearing halfway through. Coleridge-Taylor’s Demande et response is a delicate, waltz like, piece as is Sigmund Romberg’s song Will you remember , which makes for a quiet conclusion to volume two.

Stevenson’s Scottish Ballade No.1 (Lord Randal) presents the tune in a series of somewhat dissonant variations and Fugue on a fragment of Chopin is based on Chopin’s F sharp minor Ballade, with the Chopin theme weaving through the fugal texture. As it rises to a climatic conclusion, there is some terrific playing from Murray McLachlan.

The six pieces that form Pénsées sur des Préludes de Chopin combine various preludes with remarkable results. These are no Godowski like virtuosic pieces but works of some emotional depth, lightened in the andantino of No.3 and, in No.4, presented in a distorted way by playing each hand in major and minor keys. No.5 allegro is the one really virtuosic piece here in a terrific arrangement that combines two preludes played in E flat minor and G minor that even pulls in the Marche Funèbre from Chopin’s B flat minor sonata.

Variations-Study on a Chopin Waltz is an early work that is based on Chopin’s C sharp minor Waltz Op Posth. and showing Stevenson’s early talent for finding variations. If you’ve ever heard a tune that reminds you of another piece just listen to how Stevenson combines Rimsky Korsakov’s Flight of the Bumble Bee and Chopin’s A minor Etude Op.10 No.2 in Etudette d’après Korsakov et Chopin. What a tour-de-force from Stevenson, magnificently realised by Murray McLachlan.

With the Three contrapuntal studies on Chopin Waltzes Godowski does come to mind in these terrific studies, with No.1 for right hand only, No.2 for left hand only and No.3 an incredible ‘double waltz’ combining both together. There is phenomenal playing here, with phrasing that, in this difficult piece, is amazing. There is no doubt of Murray McLachlan’s superb technique.

The second disc in this set commences with Le festin d’Alkan: Concerto for solo piano ‘Petit concert en forme d’études pour piano seul à Peter Hick. The first movement is a Free composition , a phenomenal piece that requires great technical ability. It is full of dissonances, forward momentum and frighteningly difficult passages for the pianist. The second movement is titled Free transcription and draws on Alkan’s Barcarolle Op.65 No.6 and is no less challenging. The central trio section brings in quotes from Scarlatti and Paganini before the Barcarolle returns in a different guise, at first quiet dark sounding. Finally there are Free multiple variations , a fearsomely complex movement that concludes with a Schubertian quotation from Death and the Maiden. This is a quite stunning performance from McLachlan, technically accomplished, controlled, full of bravura yet sensitive to the music’s details.

Sonata No.1 in G minor is an arrangement of Ysaÿe’s first unaccompanied violin sonata with a sonorous yet dissonant variation in the opening preludio , and a lovely fugato , where Stevenson’s debt to Bach through Ysaÿe, Busoni and Godowski is evident, yet so original. The allegretto poco scherzoso is a lighter piece, a perfect contrast to the fugue, whilst the lively finale con brio allegro , with an almost dance rhythm concludes the first sonata. And did I hear a quote from Rachmaninov’s famous C sharp minor prelude glinting through?

The first movement of Sonata No.2, obsession , opens with a quotation of the Dies Irae which continues to be merged into the texture, as is Bach’s E major Partita which Ysaÿe quoted in his sonata. Malinconia is a quiet little movement where the Dies Irae again intrudes as it does in Dances des ombres and the unsettled Les furies . At times it is difficult to know which is Ysaÿe, Stephenson, Bach or the Dies Irae such are they entwined. Murray McLachlan fully does justice to this work in playing that is impeccably accomplished.

Norse elegy was written in memory of Percy Grainger’s surgeon’s wife, Ella Nygaard, using a musical monogram on the name Ella (E-A-A-A) and is a really telling elegy, marked con passion repressa, quoting the opening of Grieg’s Piano Concerto and eloquently played by McLachlan. Finally there is Canonic Caprice on ‘The Bat’. This may only be 4½ minutes long but it packs in so much around the well-known tune by Moritz Rosenthal. This is a technically demanding piece wonderfully played to round off CD2.

The third disc opens with the Fantasy for mechanical organ, an arrangement by Stevenson for two hands of Busoni’s two piano arrangement of Mozart’s original work. At first it sounds more like Bach, with a wonderful fugue, before proceeding into the thoughtful andante con variazioni . The Romanze from Piano Concerto in D minor K.466 (Mozart) is a straightforward arrangement for solo piano that cleverly hints at the orchestral part with some added ornamentation whilst Melody on a ground by Glazunov, a brief poco lento, draws on Glazunov’s Poème Improvisation. Ricordanza di San Romerio is another short but affecting piece evoking plainchant apparently inspired by the monastery of St Romerio in Switzerland.

Purcell arrives in the form of Three Grounds, a transcription of Purcell themes including the Ode to St Cecelia . This is poised, elegant music, with an underlying contrapuntal line, elegantly played by McLachlan. Purcell appears again in the Toccata where he seems to meet Bach in a simply wonderful ‘free transcription’ brilliantly played. Little Jazz Variations on Purcell’s New Scotch Tune are, indeed, jazzy variations that have a distinctive American feel in their bluesy melodic style which, as it progresses, could almost be Gershwin.

Hornpipe is based on Purcell’s 6 th Suite for Harpsichord and, at times, has a nostalgic charm. We are told that The Queen’s Dolour (A Farewell) was later arranged for guitar. This is evoked with a quiet little melody, sensitively played by McLachlan. Two Music Portraits are two miniatures for children Valse Charlot and Valse Garbo intended as musical ‘cigarette cards’ of film stars. Three Elizabethan pieces after John Bull date from 1950 when Stevenson was only 22 years of age. There is a beautiful pavane , a stately galliard that midway builds in strength and a lively and quite fiendish jig (The Kings Hunt) played with a real sense of abandon by McLachlan.

I have written far more than I normally would in a review but, such is the interest in this set, I could not have done the music justice by omitting any of the works here.

Murray McLachlan is a tremendous advocate for these pieces and provides detailed notes. The recordings are clear and detailed. This new release should appeal to all lovers of fine piano music and, indeed, music lovers in general, where they will find much to enjoy.

I was telling a friend about the arrival of Ronald Stevenson’s piano music CDs on my doorstep. What surprised him most was that for once in my life I was lost for words.

My usual methodology for a review would be to work through the track-listings in either batting or chronological order, making comments on each. However, this is beyond me in this instance. Firstly, I was overwhelmed by the sheer width and depth of the repertoire. Secondly, every piece is brand new to me: I felt that it would take longer to absorb this music than a decent turn-around time for a review would normally demand. Thirdly, I felt that if I were to comment or analyse each track I would end up writing an essay the size of a large dissertation. This brought me back to point one. I am so reliant on the liner-notes for historical and contextual information that the reader may as well read them as my review.

However, something demands to be said. What I propose to do is to give a thumbnail sketch of the composer and his music (a hopeless task!), briefly consider the ‘genres’ of piano music presented, and finally pick out two or three groups of works that impressed me most on first or second hearing.

Ronald Stevenson is one of the most important living composers. Alas, he is probably best known for having composed what is regarded as ‘the biggest single-movement work in the piano literature’ the Passacaglia on DSCH , which is some 80 minutes long. The Symphonic Nocturne for Piano Alone by Sorabji is actually longer. This is unfair. Stevenson has written a huge range of compositions in virtually every genre with the exception of symphony (excepting the massive Ben Dorain ) and opera; there is an early Berceuse Symphonique . There are four impressive concertos – two for piano, one for fiddle and one for cello. Stevenson has contributed handsomely to vocal music with many settings of Scottish and English poets including Hugh MacDiarmid, William Soutar, Robert Louis Stevenson and William Blake. Nor has he ignored poets from other cultures – there are setting of the Japanese poet Basho, the Vietnamese Ho-Chi-Minh and the American Edgar Allan Poe. Other music includes a number of choral settings, an impressive list of choral works and educational music. One of the largest categories in his catalogue is for piano: there are in excess of 500 pieces/works/movements for that instrument.

Ronald Stevenson is also a great pianist. He is in the trajectory of the grand romantic pianists of the past such as Busoni, Leopold Godowsky, Percy Grainger and Paderewski. Later exponents of this style of playing included John Ogdon and Earl Wild. However it is Busoni and Godowsky that I feel reflects much of the music presented in these three CDs.

I do not wish to develop a debate about the differences between transcription, arrangement and paraphrase, however it needs to be understood that these nouns are applicable to the vast majority of pieces in the collection. Three loose definitions may not go amiss. Firstly an arrangement is quite simply an adaptation of a musical work for another instrument or ensemble than it was originally intended. Secondly a transcription, leads on from an arrangement, but usually introduces ‘more or less imaginative changes’ which may or may not be taken as conforming to the composer’s own procedure, if he had written for the medium. Finally, a Paraphrase is usually seen as being a solo work of ‘great virtuosity’ in which well known melodies were considerably elaborated. All three practices are presented on this CD. However there can often be a wee bit of blurring around the edges.

A good summary of Stevenson’s place in the musical sphere is given in the liner notes: ‘If we reject, as too superficial, the standard distinctions between transcription and free composition, one comes close to understanding Stevenson’s outstanding corpus of music. Of course, individual pieces vary enormously both in terms of approach and in terms of style. It is as though Stevenson’s music as a whole becomes a kind of meeting place for kindred and diverse spirits.’ For this reason, I believe that it is not possible to describe what Ronald Stevenson’s music ‘sounds like’.

I want to look at two groups of works –the Chopin and the Purcell pieces. However before that I believe that the opening track acts as a kind of ‘prelude’ to the entire CD set. This transcription of Bach’s Komm, süsser Tod (Come sweet death) BWV 478 was made in 1991 on the ‘birthday’ of Busoni. The sleeve-notes suggest that this piece is a ‘modest curtain raiser’ – well it may be comparatively modest in terms of the ‘massiveness’ of Stevenson’s music, however for me this rework of the original is both highly romantic and deeply moving. The sentiment of the original has been retained in its entirety, but re-presented in a musical language alien to, but complementary to, Bach’s intention. It is dedicated to Leopold Stokowski, who gave much encouragement to Stevenson.

A good place to begin a detailed exploration of these CDs would be with the seven ‘Purcell’ numbers. The ‘Little Jazz Variations on Purcell’s ‘New Scotch Tune” is a work that has been revised and added to over the years. It is a lovely, moody piece that is more ‘bluesy’ than ‘jazzy’. The preceding Purcell ‘Toccata’ was composed in 1955. In the composer’s opinion it is ‘a very fine transcription which is respectful and newly individual; traditional and exploratory … musicological … and inventive – Yes!’ It works well for piano. The ‘Three Grounds (after Purcell)’ date from 1995. Once again these are beautifully contrived pieces that take the original material written for strings and literally recreate them for the piano. These are attractive retrospective tunes that typify Stevenson’s ability to view earlier composers through his own compositional lens. The ‘Hornpipe’ and ‘The Queen’s Dolour (A Farewell)’ are equally effective: however the former seems further from Purcell’s intention with its hard-edged harmonies than the latter, which is heart-achingly lovely.

The first CD contains the ‘complete’ Stevenson/Chopin transcriptions and paraphrases. The liner-notes point out that Leopold Godowsky’s ‘53 Studies Based on Chopin Etudes’ had a huge impact on Stevenson ‘as both a composer and pianist’. The Pénseés sur des Préludes de Chopin are dark and introverted: each number is prefaced by a quotation from the French philosopher Pascal. Stevenson picks and chooses bits and pieces of Chopin’s music and combines and recombines them at will. It is a deep work that seems to transcend the original. I enjoyed, if not quite related to, this adaptation. However, some listeners would rather that Stevenson had not ‘tinkered’ with what most regard as original masterpieces.

The mood is much lighter with the ‘Variations-Study on a Chopin Waltz’. It is a lovely re-working of the original posthumous C sharp minor Waltz making it much more involved and technically complex than the original. The ‘Etudette d’après Korsakov et Chopin’ is fun with allusions to bumble-bees and etudes: complex but thoroughly enjoyable. The Chopin section continues with a Waltz ‘spectacular’ – ‘Three Contrapuntal Studies on Chopin Waltzes’. Chopin on vacation in Vienna would be my take. This definitely reinforces Bruno Walter’s view that Strauss waltzes are ‘Champagne from Heaven’! Finally there is a ‘Fugue on a Fragment of Chopin’ – in this case based on the theme from the F minor ‘Ballade’. To quote the liner-notes, ‘this is given full textbook fugal treatment, complete with Busonian craftsmanship and erudition via eloquent pianistic layouts and exhaustive permutations of double note figurations.’

Other fine works on this CD set include the delicious ‘L’art du chant appliqué au piano – Volume 1 & 2′ which are transcriptions, re-workings, paraphrases, arrangements (call them what you will) of a number of well-kent tunes such as Frank Bridge’s ‘Go not, Happy day’, Ivor Novello’s ‘We’ll gather lilacs’, and Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s ‘Demande et Réponse’ (from Petite Suite de Concert Op. 7). Other composers represented in these two volumes include Meyerbeer, Maud Valérie White, Sigmund Romberg and Sergei Rachmaninov. They are invariably a joy and a pleasure to listen to. Then there is the massive Le Festin d’Alkan : Concerto for Solo Piano with its three movements: Free Composition , Free Transcription and Free Multiple Variations . So much could be said about this work that, in the composer’s words “encapsulate my idea that composition, transcription and variation are all essentially the same thing”.

I could have majored on the two Ysaÿe Sonata transcriptions, the ‘Norse Elegy’ or the ‘Canonic Caprice on ‘The Bat”. Then there are the Mozart arrangements …

I was extremely impressed by Murray McLachlan’s playing on these three superb discs. This complex, usually technically difficult – if not nearly impossible, at times – music demands a huge technique and considerable confidence to play and interpret successfully. In recent years, I have reviewed McLachlan’s stunning cycle of Erik Chisholm’s piano music, so it came as no surprise that he brought the same commitment, dynamism and sensitivity to the pages of this music. This is a major project representing a cross-section of Ronald Stevenson’s music for piano. Yet it serves as a perfect ‘introduction’. I am not sure whether ‘Divine Art’ mean to issue further releases of the composer’s music, however just glancing at the list of piano music on the Stevenson Society web pages suggests that there is enormous potential for the future.

The liner-notes by Murray McLachlan are excellent, comprehensive and interesting. They do require to be read before addressing this music. This is not because the works need explanation before enjoyment, but simply to put them into context.

This is an important release. I hope that it will act as a spur to other performers and record companies to examine more of this composer’s scores. However, the present 3-CD set will long remain as a monument to the achievement of Ronald Stevenson.

Though he is almost universally admired for his huge Passacaglia on DSCH, said to be the longest continuous movement in the history of the piano, the output of Ronald Stevenson – who turned 85 in March – is still far less widely performed than it deserves. In addition to four concertos and other orchestral works, choral, chamber and instrumental music and an encyclopaedic song output that sets poets as diverse as William Blake and Ho Chi Minh, Stevenson has produced a cornucopia of compositions for the piano – an instrument he plays as divinely as any of the great virtuosi of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, in whose company (perhaps especially in the company of those other great composer- pianists Liszt, Busoni and Paderewski) he undoubtedly belongs. So this handsomely packaged and illustrated, thoughtfully and provocatively programmed three-disc set from Stevenson’s disciple and long-time champion Murray McLachlan is especially timely.

Although there are many original compositions here, more of the items are transcriptions, examples of an art that has absorbed Stevenson throughout his career. Stop there: I would be giving entirely the wrong impression if I led you to believe there was any such neat divide. Rather, McLachlan’s canny choice of works poses a fundamental question: where does transcription cross over into original composition? The evidence of these discs suggests there is, in fact, no such cross-over point: rather there’s a seamless continuum from straight note-for­note arrangement to original composition. (We should always remember Busoni’s dictum that the original form of any composition is already a transcription of the idea in the composer’s brain – a conception that does not contradict in any way Schoenberg’s belief in the Idea as such, that each composition has its own unique and irreducible essence.)

Consider, at the nearer end of that continuum, Stevenson’s beautiful, reverential and entirely effective reimagining (2002) of the ‘Romanza’ from Mozart’s D minor Concerto, K466 as a solo piano piece, an almost literal adaptation of the text but with just a few registral enhancements and decorations, as if a few facets of the jewel have received an extra burnishing. Then – towards the continuum’s further end – listen to his dumbfounding realizations of the first two of Ysaÿe’s Op. 27 Sonatas for solo violin as fully fledged piano sonatas (Stevenson has, in fact, thus transcribed all six), transmitting and extending their magnificent materials into the furthest reaches of the keyboard, not only in register but through the continual intensifications of harmony and counterpoint. As a sheer transcriptional act, not merely making a piece available in a new medium but simultaneously making it anew as a piece, these Ysaÿe-Stevenson transcriptions rival and indeed probably surpass the Bach-Busoni D minor Chaconne that looms so prominently, though assuredly it does not loom alone, in their ancestry.

Then, projecting that line so to speak into infinity, listen to the major work on these three discs: the three-movement Le Festin d’Alkan written between 1988 and 1997, which Stevenson designed to ‘encapsulate my idea that composition, transcription and variation are all essentially the same thing’. For all that this massive and sometimes incandescent work, written for and originally premiered by Marc-Andre Hamelin, speaks from time to time with the voices of other composers – not just Alkan’s, but Scarlatti’s, Schubert’s and at one brief point the combined voices of Tartini and Dallapiccola – it is not, except to a necessary extent in the slow movement, an arrangement of pieces by Alkan; rather, Alkan’s music is the object, the nub, the donnée of its freewheeling discourse. It is a ‘Concerto for solo piano without orchestra’, adding to a tradition that springs from Bach’s ‘Italian’ Concerto and wends its way through Schumann and Alkan and Sorabji – and it is also a ‘Petit concert en forme d’etudes’.

The first movement, which Stevenson terms `Free Composition’, contains no quotations and is a fiercely uncompromising, rhythmically hard-driven piece, divided into ‘tutti’ and `solo’ passages in the manner of Alkan’s own Concerto for solo piano. The slow movement (`Free transcription’) is an almost hallucinatory, prismatically coloured, chromatically, imitatively and figurationally intensified reworking of the famous Alkan Barcarolle (Alkan wrote six Barcarolles, but I mean the one that everyone knows, Op. 65 No. 6). The auditory effect is rather like seeing a monochrome film suddenly infused with colour and its depth of field infinitely deepened by 3D.

It’s in the finale (`Free multiple variations’) that the Festin (communal feast) aspect comes into its own. In Alkan’s Le Festin d’Aesop the variations seem to represent animals – although, unlike say Saint-Saëns’s Carnaval des animaux, we are left to guess their identities; here Stevenson’s variations evoke composers, with Alkan as presiding host, who are borne upon wave after wave of crackling, dissonant invention and vertiginous feats of virtuosity (three cadenzas!), concluding with a double sonic image of infinite pathos – Alkan’s Song of the Mad Woman on the Sea Shore segues into Schubert’s ‘Death and the Maiden’ – before the explosive final bars.

Elsewhere on these discs, among the most fascinating pieces are the nine song transcriptions extracted from Stevenson’s collection L’Art nouveau du chant appliqué au piano, mainly worked on in the early 1980s and offered as a homage to and twentieth-century extension of Sigismond Thalberg’s L’Art du chant appliqué au piano of 1853. Quite apart from the fact that Stevenson was probably the only person on the planet who, c.1980, would have spared a thought for Thalberg, far less rendering him homage, what might have seemed at the time as the epic author of Passacaglia on DSCH retreating into the salon now proves his prescience – for his chosen songsmiths, Ivor Novello, Sigmund Romberg, Coleridge-Taylor and Maud Valerie White among them, have proved altogether more acceptable in the less uptight (though not necessarily wiser) musical atmosphere of the twenty-first century.

One group of works charts Stevenson’s involvement with Chopin. The 1949 Fugue on a Fragment of Chopin, the earliest work on these discs, is a youthful masterpiece, composed for the centenary of Chopin’s death and based on the main theme of his F minor Ballade Each of the six Pensies sur des Preludes de Chopin from ten years later combines the materials of two or more Chopin Preludes as the basis for a brief, atmospheric – and usually sombre – meditation. The Three Contrapuntal Studies on Chopin Waltzes takes the two A flat Waltzes (Op. 34 No. 1 and Op. 42), arranges the former for right hand only, the latter for the left, and finally combines them in a two-handed ‘Double Waltz’ (one thinks of Alkan, and of course Godowsky). The playful Etudette d’après Korsakov et Chopin (1987) starts off as a left-hand transcription of ‘The flight of the bumblebee’ but then combines it with a right-hand version of the A minor Etude from Chopin’s Op. 10, pointing up unsuspected links between the two pieces as they seem to mimic and answer one another from their different sectors of the keyboard. Here Stevenson as third composer is commentator on the other two.

Indeed Stevenson often seems to be enjoying a dialogue with this or that figure from the past from a position of complete equality, as if they are there at his elbow. This doesn’t make his music in any sense ‘old- fashioned’ – rather he and his distinguished interlocutors become one another’s contemporaries in an eternal present made only more immediate by their shared awareness of history. (I’m reminded of Varèse’s remark about the ‘old masters’ being his ‘intimate friends – all are respected colleagues. None of them are dead saints – in fact none of them are dead …’.)

Stevenson also emerges as a notable champion of English Baroque and pre-Baroque music with a very early set of three magnificent transcriptions of harpsichord pieces by John Bull (1950) and a cluster of works by Purcell, more or less freely transcribed over a 40-year period: these include the piercingly melancholic The Queen’s Dolour (1959), the noble set of Three Grounds (1958-95), bravura treatments of the Toccata (1955) and the Hornpipe (1995) that Purcell adapted from his incidental music to The Married Beau. Purcell is the focus again, but in an entirely different way, in the Little Jazz Variations on Purcell’s ‘New Scotch Tune’ (1964, revised 1975).

In the space of this article I can’t detail everything on the discs – they are such a cornucopia. Mostly these are premiere recordings (made in October 2009 and January, February and April 2010), though a few pieces have been available elsewhere. Scottish Ballad No. 1, ‘Lord Randal’ is a first recording, although McLachlan recorded its two companion Scottish Ballads for Olympia back in 1990. Donna Amato’s performance of the haunting Norse Elegy (in memory

of Ella Nygard, wife of Percy Grainger’s surgeon in White Plains), in which Stevenson channels Grieg, but entirely on his own terms, is on Altarus, and the same label has Josef Banowetz’s account of the Fugue on a Fragment of Chopin (on AIR-CD-9089 and AIR-CD-9021 respectively). Jonathan Plowright included the transcription of Bach’s Komm, süsser Tod (with the coda arranged from Stokowski’s orchestral version) in his anthology of British Bach transcriptions for Hyperion (CDA67769). But I think that’s all.

McLachlan plays most of this programme with a pianism worthy of Stevenson’s own – not merely equal to all the music’s considerable technical demands but nearly always sensitive in its phrasing and pedalling, aware of the need for a truly sostenuto line, vividly voicing the individual notes in a chord, and with real beauty and poetry of tone even in extreme high and low registers. His performance of Le Festin d’Alkan is like a compendium of his virtues, as it would be of any pianist who successfully attempted it. There is a rare exception – his account of Mozart’s K608 Fantasy for mechanical organ as arranged for piano by Stevenson (Busoni, you recall, transcribed it for two pianos) is strangely blunt and clunky, as if the mechanism had rusted. However, taken as a whole, the set, to which I find myself returning repeatedly, is a triumph.

This latest issue follows up Murray McLachlan’s recording of Ronald Stevenson’s most celebrated work, his monumental Passacaglia on DSCH , which has been claimed to be the longest single work for solo piano. These three well-filled CDs concentrate instead on a generous selection of the other solo piano music of this Scottish-based composer-pianist, most of it directly inspired by his favourite predecessors, JS Bach, Mozart and Chopin, all of them formidable executants.

The first CD opens with pieces inspired by Bach. The first CD opens with pieces inspired by Bach. The contrapuntal writing is angular but clear and purposeful, as it is too in the two volumes of what Stevenson calls L’art nouveau du chant appliqué au piano . Later on in the disc comes the intriguing Fugue on a Fragment of Chopin which like 10 other Chopin-inspired pieces, sounds nothing like Chopin but very much like Stevenson.

The second disc offers longer pieces, starting with Le festin d’Alkan which, echoing that eccentric master, he describes as a concerto for piano without orchestra. The first movement gets wilder and wilder, very much a fun piece, while the second is light, with repeated notes, beautifully articulated by McLachlan. The third movement opens with the hint of a march leading to fistfuls of wild chords. After that come two ingenious transcriptions of two of the six solo violin sonatas of Ysaÿe. Stevenson, in a burst of energy, transcribed all six, and one would like to hear more of them. Lastly come the aptly melancholy Norse Elegy and the Canonic Caprice on the ‘Carnival of Venice’, light and attractive, if phenomenally difficult for the player.

The third CD concentrates on pieces inspired by Mozart, Purcell and Elizabethan composers. It is good to have Stevenson’s realisation of Mozart’s Fantasy for mechanical organ, K608, wonderfully clear in its counterpoint. The transcription of the slow movement from Mozart’s D minor Piano Concerto, K466, seems less pointful, even though contrasts between solos and orchestral tuttis are made clear. Melody on a Ground of Glazunov leads to a sequence of pieces inspired by Purcell involving ground basses, including the fun piece Little Jazz Variations on Purcell’s ‘New Scotch Tune’ . Then there is a Hornpipe, again with jazzy syncopations that reminded me of John Ireland’s Ragamuffin . Then come The Queen’s Dolour , inspired by John Dowland, and Three Elizabethan Pieces after John Bull , ending with a spectacular showpiece to round off the whole collection.

McLachlan proves an impressive advocate, coping well with all the virtuoso demands, though the piano tone tends to be rather shallow and clangy. Not that that ever gets in the way of enjoyment of this important, groundbreaking issue celebrating the work of a composer too long neglected.