REVIEW: Mark Bebbington at Hellens, Much Marcle

By Peter Williams

Who was that poet-chap who went on about Autumn and mellow fruitfulness?

Perhaps, like your scribe, he had gone along the drive to Hellens and seen the verges strewn with windfall cider apples; trees turning from green to russet; the stubble on the harvested fields golden in the low sun slanting from under grey-blue clouds; and perhaps he thought of that other poet who spoke of times when the earth and every common sight did seem apparelled in celestial light.

Outside the Great Barn, a goodly company was basking in the Indian Summer air, wine glasses in hand, and the organisers were having to set out extra seats as latecomers came in search of tickets, having heard that Something Exceptionally Good was in prospect, music- and performance-wise. They were not going to be disappointed. At 45, Mark Bebbington is at the height of his technical and musical powers. Rightly confident in both, he matched that self-assurance sartorially, with a rich burgundy jacket, above Guardsman Red socks and as shiny black patent leather shoes as ever graced a heritage-oak barn floor, and his discreet use of the una corda was equally smart. He is mature enough to see deep into the music behind the dots on the page, but still young enough to have a youthful rush of blood to the head when chance or challenge offers itself.

He began with two sonatas by Scarlatti: perhaps it would have been nice if someone had told us that he was playing them in reverse order to that in the printed programme. Expecting ‘bristling energy’ the listener was confronted with wistful sorrow and had to make a rapid gear change. But it was a sensible reversal. The quiet and poetic start to the recital, rather than a brilliant call to arms, indicated where this thoughtfully constructed programme was going to take us. Mark has clearly contemplated the problem of playing Scarlatti’s harpsichord music on a piano - and of playing Schubert or Chopin on the ubiquitous modern Steinway grand. Schubert’s Viennese piano, or Chopin’s Pleyel, sounded very different, and not just in terms of sheer power. Your scribe once asked Bernard Roberts, who had just played a late Schubert sonata with all the quadruple ffffs available in a Steinway D, what Schubert would have made of such a titanic sound. Came the instant answer - “He’d have loved it.” Mark is clearly of the same faith. Respect the period and style, but take account of all that has happened since, in composing and instrument making.

If sorrow and sensitivity were at the heart of Scarlatti in B Minor, Schubert’s “Little” A Major Sonata, written when he was 22, has no hint of the anguish and anger of the sonatas written just six years later, when he knew he was fatally ill. But what is ‘little’ - or wrong - with being happy, simply and completely? There are moments in this work when the melody, with a lift of the heart, takes off into the empyrean, bearing us from pleasure into sheer joy, apparelling everything in celestial light. The first half of the programme ended with a rarely performed work by John Ireland - rare enough for the John Ireland Charitable Trust to help fund this concert given by a pianist who is a leading proponent of Ireland’s music (his next engagement after Hellens will be with the RPO, in Cadogan Hall, playing Ireland’s Piano Concerto). At the Royal College of Music Ireland was a pupil of C.V.Stanford, whose pupil-list sounds like a roll-call of 20th century British composers, including Vaughan Williams, Frank Bridge, John Ireland, Arthur Bliss, Herbert Howells, and Ivor Gurney (who Stanford intriguingly said could have been ‘the biggest of them all’, but was ‘unteachable’).

“Sarnia: An Island Sequence” is a three-movement tribute to Guernsey in the Channel Islands, with which Ireland fell in love. He had been invited to design an organ for a church in Guernsey and he accepted the task on condition that he could then be organist and choirmaster. He moved to the Island just before the outbreak of war in 1939, escaped on one of the last boats to get away when the Germans invaded in June 1940 and wrote this music over the next year. It is your scribe’s heretical view that the organ is NOT a safe instrument to be allowed near anyone who wants to play or compose for the piano. Sooner or later it compromises their ear and their touch, so that they often want to give the piano the colours and sonorities of the organ, with its range of stops and its need never to breathe. It is perhaps ironic that Ireland’s greatest output was for the piano, which, at least in his larger scale works, sounds as if it is trying to be on an organ or an orchestra. One thinks that, in Sarnia, his piano was really wanting to be Debussy’s orchestra in Nocturnes; or Bax’s in The Garden of Fand. Perhaps he loved the Islands too much: there is mood and emotion aplenty: but with it a reluctance to let go, to know when enough is enough. Good to have heard the piece: but not to feel an irresistible urge to buy the CD. At your scribe’s age, life is too short - and no doubt his loss, not Ireland’s. After the interval, another sponsored work, this time by the Gemma Classical Music Trust, and a world première of Sonatine by Derek Smith. There any similarity to Ireland ends. Derek was an early member of the National Youth Orchestra. Before making a career in science, he studied conducting with Norman del Mar and composition with Malcolm Arnold. And it shows in his composing and arranging, to which he could devote himself after retirement. On him Arnold left his mark, as surely as had Stanford and Parry on Ireland. And in concision, wit, clarity of musical thought and intent, Ireland could have learnt a thing or two to his own good, had he been there to hear the four movements of this 2015 Sonatine.

By coincidence - or Mark Bebbington’s cunning programme-building - this work shared its origin with Ireland’s - a French seaside landscape; but depicting not dark Neolithic history and romantic dawns and tides but a weekend trip to the coast, with some sport, the pool, a brief romance. The final Toccata, a whirlwind rush not to miss the plane home, tested the pianist's virtuosity to its limits. Your scribe mischievously asked the composer if he could play that movement himself: he frankly admitted he could not play any keyboard instrument. But the writing fitted the piano like a glove. As in all his compositions, Derek Smith has a wonderful ear, knows where he going, and gets there on time, serious intent in his luggage along with his bucket and spade, and Arnoldesque fun and mischief all in the price of the ticket.

The sea and another sonorous legend returned in Debussy’s Prelude depicting the Breton cathedral lost beneath the waves: bells, organ, choir rise out of the depths and sink back in. A masterclass for all composers thinking of the sea - or wanting to know where the soul of the piano lies. And then Feux d’artfice, with which Debussy ended his 2nd Book of Preludes - more dazzling pianism to match Derek Smith’s “Get me to the Plane on Time.”

And so finally to Chopin and, first, an early Nocturne - early only in date, but a work of already mature accomplishment, achieving great tenderness and sadness, already showing that Chopin and the piano truly belonged to each other, and here played with love and appreciative respect. The recital ended with Chopin’s 1st Ballade. This is one of the great romantic peaks that pianists feel an irresistible urge to take on. Ballades tell a story, and your scribe, from a long-ago youth, remembers the narrative that could be fitted, like Peter and the Wolf, to this one. The story-teller setting the scene, whetting our appetite: the Wandering Knight: the Damsel in Distress: the Hero galloping to her rescue: the Villain confronted and challenged: the clash of swords in hand-to-hand combat: the Villain slain; and Love Triumphant. All vividly depicted in a wonderful piece, challenging the player to be as brave and heroic as his Knight at Arms.

Mark Bebbington emerged at the end a winner, but not unmarked in the final struggle. Perhaps the tempo marking, or the smell of blood, got to him, and he momentarily just let fly at his villainous opponent, the victim of his own virtuosity. Many pianists these days can play very fast, and like to prove it. Horowitz and Richter could be their exemplars. But however fast the music is played it must still make musical sense and surely what the composer wrote he meant to be heard. The faster the playing, the greater the need for control, clarity and articulation; and anyone who had heard Solomon or Rubinstein might have reminded Mark that sheer headlong speed is not enough. He didn’t quite lose his head, as the villain of the piece lost his! And, happily, he has time enough to hone and furbish his sword, which is already a pretty formidable weapon.

So - no homemade scrumpy from the windfalls, but a scrumptious Indian Summer feast of music. Well done, everyone!