Harty: String Quartets No 1 & 2, Piano Quintet - Piers Lane, Goldner String Quartet (2012)

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Harty: String Quartets No 1 & 2, Piano Quintet - Piers Lane, Goldner String Quartet (2012)

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Acclaimed pianist Piers Lane and his fellow Australians, the Goldner String Quartet, reprise their highly successful partnership in these world-premiere recordings of the two String Quartets and Piano Quintet of Irish composer Hamilton Harty. Born in County Down, Harty (1879–1941) was a remarkable, self-taught musician who wrote in a lyrical Romantic idiom, as evidenced in these appealing works, while incorporating a modal astringency and folk-music charm that are reminiscent of Percy Grainger. In particular, the winding, pentatonic melody of the Lento of the Piano Quintet—a lusciously big-boned work worthy of Tchaikovsky—and the delightful 9/8 ‘hop jig’ of the first movement of String Quartet No 2 seem like settings of folk-melodies that have echoed for centuries around the green hills of Ireland. Intriguingly, however, they are entirely Harty’s own invention.

This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council for the Arts, its arts funding and advisory body.

Composer: Sir Hamilton Harty
Performer: Piers Lane
Orchestra/Ensemble: Goldner String Quartet

Reviews: We have become almost spoilt for choice in the case of Harty’s orchestral music, though the very skimpy article in the Oxford Companion to Music still seems to regard his arrangements of Handel’s Fireworks and Water Music as his greatest achievements. His chamber music has been pretty well a closed book heretofore. Though these are not claimed as premiere recordings, I can’t find any rivals in the current catalogue and I don’t remember ever having encountered any, despite pleas in the letter pages of Gramophone for these three works. Perhaps their failure quite to squeeze onto one CD has been the problem – very remiss of the composer not to foresee this – but Hyperion’s 2-for-1 arrangement neatly solves the problem. With the download, of course, there’s no need even to change discs. We must thank the Australian Council for the Arts – thankfully nothing to do with Barry Humphrey’s Sir Les Patterson persona – for their sponsorship of antipodeans Piers Lane and the Goldner Quartet in this music.

All three works are early pieces and I can’t claim that Hyperion have uncovered lost treasure, though the Piano Quintet is a strong work which in several respects pre-echoes the Elgar Piano Quintet. I’m not sure that it merits the description which Hyperion offer in the blurb on their web-page – ‘a lusciously big-boned work worthy of Tchaikovsky’ – but it receives a robust performance here which brings out its qualities very effectively. There’s exuberance and a hint of Irishness in the vivace second movement and a lovely winding melody in the lento third movement where, again, the pentatonic mode is suggestive of folk music, slightly wistful Celtic folk in particular, though no actual folk source exists; it’s all of Harty’s own making. Neither of the outer movements is of quite the same quality, but I shall certainly return to this attractive work, perhaps when relaxing at the end of a trying day.

Piers Lane and the Goldner Quartet have already given us the Elgar Piano Quintet and String Quartet (Hyperion CDA67857) in which John France characterised this recording as perfect). The first time that I heard their Elgar I thought them a little lacking in intensity, but a second hearing dispelled all but a lingering reservation – see my July 2011/2 Download Roundup – and I think repeated hearing will do the same for their Harty. I have no benchmarks here as I did for Elgar, but I characterise their performances, here as there, primarily in terms of warmth and tenderness of expression.

The two quartets are less interesting than the Piano Quintet but they too benefit from performances which seem to be idiomatic and which certainly bring out the appeal of the music. The outer movements of No.2 are particularly ear-catching.

The recording is very good, with a generally good balance in the Quintet – the piano perhaps a little too prominent for some tastes. I plan to sample the Studio Master version in a future edition of my bi-monthly Download Roundups, but I can’t imagine that it can add too much to the CD-quality 16-bit version.

Jeremy Dibble’s notes are a trifle erudite – I’m not sure that all his readers would understand a ‘Neapolitan B major and its dominant F sharp’ – but, as the author of a forthcoming book on Harty, one to watch out for, he’s clearly authoritative and he’s very informative.

Piers Lane and the Goldners have already given us some desirable Hyperion recordings of Bloch (CDA67638), Dvorák (CDA67805) and, not least the Elgar Piano Quintet to which I’ve referred above. I’m grateful for their latest offering.