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| Ronald Stevenson - photo courtesy of the Ronald Stevenson Society |
The British composer, pianist and writer Ronald Stevenson (1928-2015) is known for one or two peaks of his output, such as the Passacaglia in DSCH, one of the longest unbroken single-movements composed for piano. Yet he was a prolific composer and his music is still not as well known as it deserves. I was lucky enough, as a young man in my first job following university, to meet and get to known Ronald somewhat and come to realise how much his own personality imbued his whole work. There was the sense of him not so much swimming against the contemporary musical tide as, from his base in West Linton, standing determinedly independent of it and creating a sense of the composer/pianist of the past in the mould of Liszt or Paderewski.
I first met Ronald Stevenson in around 1977, he was a close friend of one of my friends in Edinburgh so it was inevitable that I was taken to one of Ronald's recitals. I don't remember that much about the specifics, the various Ronald Stevenson recitals which I attended during the five years I was in Scotland have rather blurred. What I do remember is the slightly nerve-wracking socialising afterwards, myself, my friend, Ronald and the friends with whom he was staying in Edinburgh.
Such occasions would become something of a commonplace over the years and were as much an education for me as the music. Simple but effective food (from that first I remember the cheese and the strong black coffee), and good conversation. Ronald was not only erudite but talked with wit and charm. He could be informative and entertaining, and his musical heroes were never far away, Busoni and Grainger.
This extended to his recitals, where Ronald talked even if it was intended as a 'straight' recital. He had a gift for elucidating, informing and entertaining. I remember one lecture recital where to illustrate a point he played the opening from Chopin's
Revolutionary Etude which made you wish he was playing the whole thing.
The one lecture recital I remember in more detail was one on Bach transcriptions. The art of transcription was something close to Ronald's heart, something profoundly at odds with the musical times. And Ronald's Bach transcriptions recital included some remarkable byways, such as RVW's Bach transcription from
Harriet Cohen's Bach Book. This recital finished with one of Ronald's warhorses, the Bach/Busoni
Chaconne. He played from music, needing a page turner, and the friend who did so commented after that it was tricky as Ronald re-composed some passages and at one point he was required to take off Ronald's glasses and wipe them.
Regrettably I never heard Ronald play his great
Passacaglia on DSCH. In fact, there were few opportunities to hear Ronald's music, certainly no large-scale pieces. This was the period after he had completed the violin concerto for Yehudi Menuhin, too late and too taxing in length for Menuhin to play so there was much discussion about a possible premiere (I don't believe it was premiered until the 1990s). But his music rarely if ever seemed to crop up in concerts unless Ronald himself was involved. That Ronald was somewhat out of step with the musical times was indicated by his love not only of transcription but of writing in romantic genres,
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