Berkeley, Lennox; Introduction and Allegro (1971)

Good work for examinations and recitals by an important British composer. Duration c.6′. AMEB (Australian Syllabus) 2004. Programme notes as follows: Lennox Berkeley was born in 1903 and died in 1989. After reading modern languages at Oxford he had no intention of becoming a composer until he met Ravel in 1926, who encouraged him to study in Paris with Nadia Boulanger. He stayed in Paris until 1932, developing his own musical language. In 1936, after the death of his mother, he went to Barcelona for the International Society for Contemporary Music festival where he met Benjamin Britten. The two lived together at Snape in Suffolk for a while until the outbreak of war, before Berkeley moved back to London to work for the BBC. Here he met his future wife Freda Bernstein. He taught at the Royal Academy of Music in London from 1946 until 1968, where his pupils included Richard Rodney Bennett, Nicholas Maw and John Tavener, among others. He was knighted in 1974. In early February 1971 I was playing in a concert at St. John’s Smith Square, London, then only relatively recently restored as a superb venue for music. The programme, which I believe was being broadcast, included Berkeley’s Serenade Op.12. It was a work I had always enjoyed playing and was standard string orchestra repertoire at the time. There was initially no platform at St. John’s and so the audience sat virtually on top of the performers. So close were they on this occasion that I had to ask for a little more room in order to play. At the end of the piece the orchestra acknowledged the applause and the gentleman who I had all but practically decapitated with my over-enthusiastic playing, stood up and took a bow. I had been almost playing in Lennox Berkeley’s lap! The opportunity was too good to miss and I wasted little time in introducing myself. Mr Berkeley said that he had been fascinated by my playing and asked me to write to him about a possible commission. This I did on 6 February, mentioning that Elisabeth Lutyens and Elizabeth Maconchy had both written for me, and that the Gulbenkian Foundation had offered to fund three commissions. My letter enquires, ‘If all else fails, then I shall finance it myself: could you let me know the sort of figure you require?’ I hoped to have the work to première at Dartington that August, which was a little optimistic. A meeting was arranged at the composer’s house near the Regent’s Canal and I went to play for him with my accompanist Clifford Lee, so he could see what I could and (more important) could not easily do! We got on well and became friends. The piece was written some weeks later and we returned to play it to him. It needed no alteration, as he had taken great pains to write us a work that would be useful not only for us, but also for other young players looking for interesting repertoire that wasn’t too technically demanding. The Arts Council of Great Britain helped with the commission fee and Introduction and Allegro was written during August and September 1971. I gave it the première, with my accompanist Clifford Lee, at the Purcell Room, London, as part of the 1971 Park Lane Group Young Artists Award concert series. We had auditioned successfully for the scheme and became the first bass and piano duo to play in the long-running and prestigious series. In the same concert we also programmed Music for double bass and piano by Elizabeth Maconchy. I wrote to Lennox Berkeley again in April the following year with a letter from a ‘satisfied customer in Italy’ who had enjoyed the piece. I also mentioned to him that I had played it 20 times already and hoped to put it in a Wigmore Hall programme on 7 February 1974, a double bass extravaganza that eventually took place on 7 March that year. On 10 February Berkeley wrote, ‘I feel very much honoured that my piece should be in your programme; I have rather an affection for it and feel I’m not likely to have many opportunities of hearing it.’ The work was first published in 1972 and reprinted with corrections in 1984. It was first broadcast from the Aldeburgh Festival in 1976 where I presented a programme that included bass quartets that went under the title of Double Bass Fourum. Lennox Berkeley provided the following brief programme note:- ‘Introduction and Allegro for double bass and piano was commissioned with the aid of a grant from the Arts Council of Great Britain and written for Rodney Slatford in the summer of 1971. The form is that of the traditional Introduction and Allegro, that is to say beginning with a slow section that leads into an Allegro without a break. The main theme of the Allegro is a rhythmical figure out of which grow several subsidiary motifs. In the middle of this there is a more melodic and slightly slower theme. Towards the end is an illusion to the Introduction lasting for only four bars, after which a short coda concludes the piece. Throughout I have tried to use the true characteristics of the double bass without relying on technical tricks requiring the highest virtuosity.’ Rodney Slatford September 2003