Tovey first played with Pablo Casals in October 1909 (the precise date seems not to have been recorded), at Northlands and shortly afterwards at Oxford – Tovey’s Elegiac Variations for cello and piano featuring on the programme on both occasions. These performances were such a success that they were immediately asked to play in London in the following year – music-making which was Tovey’s finest experience since the death of Joachim. Two concerts were therefore arranged for the 1910 London season organised by the Classical Concert Society. They received excellent notices from the critics, one going so far as to write: ‘Together Messrs Tovey and Casals make a fine pair of concert givers.  Their ensemble, spiritual no less than physical, is beautiful and the reverence of their performance undoubted and genuine’.[1]

In the summer of 1911 Tovey and Casals again made a number of appearances together and in February 1912 they played in Budapest with such success that they were invited to play at an orchestral concert when, joined by George Enescu, they performed the Beethoven Triple Concerto.

Tovey’s and Casals’ mutual admiration was marred for some years by an unfortunate misunderstanding. Tovey was distressingly naïve when confronted by the complexities of human nature. Guillhermina Suggia, who studied with Casals, began to appear in concerts as Mme. P. Casals-Suggia, although they were not legally married. She was a very attractive young woman as well as a fine musician and her partner seems unjustly to have become jealous of the innocent attention shown towards her by Tovey. Tovey could be as hot-tempered as his Spanish friend and the ensuing quarrel, however unfounded, caused a rift, which lasted until 1925 when Casal’s name appeared on the Reid concert-programmes and all traces of the old misunderstandings finally disappeared. (Suggia’s and Casals’ liaison was dissolved in 1912.)

Tovey had been contemplating the composition of a concerto for Casals during the 1920s but began to give the project serious thought only in 1931; a period of illness and the time required for recovery in 1932–33 gave him the time to begin sketching it. The first movement, he wrote to Mary Grierson, would be a ‘record-breaker’, the longest single span of music he had yet composed, ‘and much the juiciest’.[2] The score was sent piecemeal to Casals for comment over the next year or so, the cellist reporting that the solo part required only minor alteration to the bowing. Although Casals, to whom the completed work was dedicated, was awarded an honorary doctorate in music by the Edinburgh University (at Tovey’s instigation, of course) in May 1934, he was unable to receive the degree in person and the premiere of the Concerto – for which he refused any fee – took place in the Usher Hall, Edinburgh, on 22 November 1934, with Tovey conducting the Reid Orchestra. Through overwork and anxieties in connexion with the outbreak in October of the revolution in Spain, Casals was far from well at the time of his visit. He had also a slight infection in the thumb of his left hand, which became so inflamed that he was unable to play for two months. No one could possibly have guessed that he was in pain during the superb performance, and the audience was carried away by the beauty of his playing and the splendour of the work; the critic for The Times described it as a work ‘of considerable power and intimate beauty’.[3]

Actually, I was so busy with affairs in Catalonia that I was less inclined than in the past to travel abroad, but there was one trip I was especially glad to make. That was to Scot­land in the autumn of 1934. It was on that trip that I met Albert Schweitzer for the first time. We had been invited to receive honorary doctorates at the University of Edinburgh. My old friend, Sir Donald Francis Tovey, was then profes­sor of music at the university; he had also invited me to perform with the Reid Symphony Orchestra in Edinburgh in the first performance of a cello concerto he had composed and dedicated to me—he himself had founded and was conductor of that splendid orchestra. Besides being probably the greatest musicologist of our time – I have never known anyone with his knowledge of music –Tovey was a won­derful composer. He was also a superlative pianist, in some ways the best I have ever heard. The fact is I regard Tovey as one of the greatest musicians of all time.[4]

Arrangements had been made for the Concerto to be produced in London on 11 and 12 November 1935, with Casals, of course, as soloist and Tovey as conductor. It proved to be an altogether unhappy event. Too little time was allotted to the work at rehearsal, and the routine-hardened London players not only failed to understand Tovey’s ways at rehearsal; they were frankly irritated by his explanations and impatient with him. It was all extremely uncom­fortable and, although the audience was appreciative, the press was not: The Observer suggested that Tovey’s conducting was ‘unhappily an enemy to Casals and his own music’.[5]

After the unfortunate contretemps over the Concerto in 1935, Sir Adrian Boult had assured Tovey that the BBC would certainly do the work ‘as soon as we can catch Casals again’.[6] The performance eventually took place on 17 November 1937; Sir Adrian conducted. This performance was broadcast by the BBC and preserved on acetate.[7]

The Music

Elegiac Variations for cello and piano in G minor, Op. 25

Tovey had met the great violinist Joseph Joachim (a personal friend of Brahms, whose Violin Concerto was written for him) on a visit to Eton College when Tovey was only twelve; they were to remain friends until Joachim’s death in 1907. Their first public concert together – which took place in the Albert Institute at Windsor on 15 March 1894, three months before Tovey’s nineteenth birthday – opened with Brahms’ G major Sonata for piano and violin and closed with Beethoven’s ‘Kreutzer’.

The Elegiac Variations were written in memory of Tovey’s close friend Robert Hausmann, cellist of the Joachim Quartet from 1879 until 1907, whose death on 18 January 1909, at the age of 56, came as a shock to Tovey. Hausmann had been a friend of Brahms: he gave the premiere of the Second Cello Sonata, for example, and joined Joachim in the first performance of the Double Concerto. Not only did Tovey perform with the Joachim Quartet many times in public but also at the private concerts given at ‘Northlands’ and so became firm friends with all the members of the quartet. After the piano, the cello was by far his favourite instrument, and a close bond developed between him and Hausmann. An example of their music-making can be seen from the programme of a Brahms concert given at the Wigmore Hall in November 1906. It opened with the Piano Trio No. 2 in C major, Op. 87, with Tovey on piano, Joachim on violin and Hausmann on cello. The Joachim Quartet then performed the String Quartet No. 1 in C minor, Op. 51, No. 1, followed by the Piano Quartet No. 1 in G minor, Op. 25, with Tovey on piano. Tovey and Hausmann performed all Beethoven’s works for cello and piano at two concerts given at Northlands. Miss Weisse recalled the intensity of their relationship:

Hausmann’s love for the young Tovey – both as a musician and as a man – touched me deeply. After they had rehearsed together for the first time, I came in as they ended, and, Tovey having gone, I asked Hausmann about the rehearsal, he said ‘Das war gar keine Probe; er hat gespielt, und ich habe vor Thränen kaum sehen können um mitzuspielen’. (‘That was no rehearsal; he played, and I could hardly see my own music for tears’.)[8]

The Elegiac Variations were first performed in October 1909 at Northlands, on the occasion of Casals’ and Tovey’s first appearance together and were repeated in their Oxford and London concerts.

In essence the Variations – of which there are five – present a sombre and austere dialogue between the two instruments. The work is, unsurprisingly, full of general stylistic reminiscences of Brahms, such as the resourceful use of the bass register of piano, doubling in thirds in the pianist’s right hand, and chains of descending melodic thirds. More specifically, apart from the obvious Brahms quotation in the fourth variation, the overall layout of the work, with the fourth variation in the tonic major, suggests that Tovey's principal model for its form could well have been the D minor variation slow movement of Brahms’ B flat String Sextet, Op. 18.

The theme, in C minor, is presented in the cello in its lowest register as a lament; it is then echoed in the piano against a pizzicato cello rhythm which is extensively developed later to give suggestions of a funeral march.

 Theme (We apologise that images are not currently available on line)

Variation 1

Variation 2

Variation 3

The C major fourth variation, marked non troppo forte ma molto largamente, opens with a theme in the piano that clearly echoes the slow movement of Brahms’ F major Cello Sonata, Op. 99, which Hausmann had premiered with the composer in 1886. The cello, accompanying the piano, plays the second section of the counter-melody in augmentation, which the piano then further develops; in fact, the piano takes over the augmentation in E, possibly making reference to the passacaglia theme of Brahms’ Fourth Symphony. The cello meanwhile assumes responsibility for the principal melodic content of the variation: its part is marked dolce (‘sweetly’) as it climbs into the highest register of the instrument, reaching a joyful forte climax from which it descends, dying away to pianissimo.

 Variation 4

Variation 5     

Air for strings

In the summer of 2004 Martin Anderson, the founder of Toccata Classics, was looking through the catalogues of manuscripts in the Library of the Royal College of Music, in search of interesting scores for his label, when he saw a listing for an ‘Air’ by Donald Tovey. Knowing that there was no such thing in Tovey’s catalogue, he looked it out and found a single-page piano miniature, inscribed ‘B.L.R. from D.F.T. as kindly requested’. Wondering whether he might have found an unknown work, he faxed it to me to see what I thought. I soon discovered that it was a piano transcription, prepared for whomever B.L.R. might have been, of the ‘Aria’ which opens the Aria and Variations in B flat, Op. 11, for string quartet, composed in 1900. With the string original in front of me, it was a relatively easy task to add a bass part and arrange the Air for string orchestra, thus adding a delightful Tovey miniature to the repertoire.

            In form the Air is straightforward: the subject is in a ternary aba, with the a sections in B flat and b in the subdominant, E flat.

         A  (Images not currently available)

         b   (as above)

Tovey liked such Classical themes as the basis for variation: in 1913 he chose a theme by Gluck for a set of variations for flute and string quartet.[9]

Concerto in C for Violoncello and Orchestra, Op. 40

Tovey wrote the following analysis of the Cello Concerto for the second London performance, on 17 November 1937.

1. Allegro moderato

2. Andante maestoso

3. Intermezzo: Andante innocente, quasi allegretto

4. Rondo: Allegro moderato ma giocoso

In my violoncello concerto, the first movement presents the violoncello and the orchestra in this relation: that the violoncello stands out for the most part as a restraining and calming influence against a tragic and stormy background. The concerto begins with the calm main theme as announced by the violon­cello (Ex. 1).

Ex. 1

This is developed meditatively until it comes to rest upon the bottom C of the violoncello. This note seems to divide itself, as the double basses emerge from it in a slow descent above which the violas announce an ominous new theme (Ex. 2).

Ex. 2

Then the orchestra bursts out with what proves to be the ritornello of a con­certo in classical form centred round C minor (Ex. 3).

Ex. 3

The main theme of the second group emerges in a remote and unexpected key (Ex. 4),

Ex. 4

but it immediately swerves back to C minor whereupon the climax of the tutti collapses suddenly into a pianissimo close. The violoncello enters and, after a ruminating passage, works out the whole material of the tutti as the exposition of a sonata with its second group in E major (led by Ex. 4). The next tutti bursts out with Ex. 3 in C sharp minor and E, but takes a new course. The vio­loncello re-enters in melancholy mood, and embarks upon a development, which culminates in a climax with a collapse like that of the first tutti. Eventu­ally Ex.1 appears on the oboe, supported by the arpeggios with which the violoncello supported the meditative allusions of the oboe on a previous occa­sion. With various new details, the transitional material now leads to A major, where the violoncello gives its version of Ex. 5. New modulations in its con­tinuation bring the rest of the recapitulation round to the home tonic, C major. The violoncello is concluding this recapitulation by Ex. 2, but this, instead of leading to another outburst of the ritornello, now reveals by direct juxtaposi­tion its connection with the lyric melody of Ex. 5, which enters and is contin­ued in a new way, leading to a cadenza, which the violoncello develops out of an unaccompanied restatement of its first opening paragraph (Ex. 1). This cadenza deals with Exx. 2 and 3. The orchestra re-enters with the oboe in mid-sentence of its ruminative treatment of Ex. 1 at an earlier stage, and the movement ends with Ex. 3 carried down by trumpets and trombones for three octaves through the scales of C major, B flat, and A flat, until, the dominant being reached, the last bars affirm the final tonic chord in terms of fig. (a).

                     The main theme of the slow movement is a melody in two strains of which Ex. 5 is the first.

Ex. 5 

Each strain is announced by the orchestra and repeated by the violoncello. These two strains, with their repeats by the violoncello, take considerable time, so that a large movement can be built from them by a single variation separated from the theme by a short interlude, and followed by an episode which, begin­ning triumphantly in the tonic major (Ex. 6), is contradicted by more than one relapse into the despairing mood of the main theme. The movement then completes itself with a recapitulation of the main theme in the lowest octave of the violoncello.

Ex. 6

Ex. 7

A counter-statement of Ex. 7 modulates widely, but a point is soon reached about the dominant of F sharp minor; and the violoncello and the orchestra dis­pute for a moment as to whether C sharp or D should be the top note of the next phrase. The first violins very properly decide upon C sharp, as being the first note of the main theme (Ex. 7), which they deliver in full. The violoncello maintains its opinion that on this occasion D is the right note, inasmuch as the whole melody goes in canon at one bar’s distance and at the seventh below or second above. Accordingly, the movement ends with a da capo of the whole theme including the orchestral interlude with the violoncello carrying on every bar a step higher until the very last note.

                     In the finale, the relation between the violoncello and the orchestra is, as the first movement, a matter of contrasted temperaments. The contrast, however, is not absolute. Both the orchestra and violoncello have unlimited licence to be rude and jocose. They also have unlimited licence to be sentimental. The one thing that the violoncello will not tolerate is any tendency to be edifying. A derisive gesture of modulation (Ex. 8)

Ex. 8

is answered by the violoncello with a plain scale of C major, which runs down to Ex. 9, in which fig. (a) may be described as the Operative Word.[10] 

This theme has a second strain, which gets itself entangled in remote keys, from which it is extricated by the introductory, derisive gesture. The main theme returns ‘diminished’ into a little jig; and then the orchestra busies itself quietly with a diminution of the second strain. Its tendency to modulate leads it to a sentimental new theme in D flat (Ex. 10).

Ex. 10

The fact that this is a counterpoint to the main theme is one of those things so obvious to the meanest capacity that the orchestra, again led home by the deri­sive gesture by Ex. 8, instantly gives away the secret by an uproarious delivery of the combination, worked up to a climax on the Operative Word.

The movement works out as a rondo, with a slight and kittenish first episode. The return from this episode is forced upon the violoncello by an attempt of the brass instruments to introduce an edifying note. This the violoncello will not stand, and it furiously mocks their sanctimonious climax on the chord of the thirteenth, and greets the attempt to turn it into the minor with a contemptuous whistle (Ex. 11).

Ex. 11

After this, there is nothing for the orchestra to do but to groan apologetically and to accompany the violoncello with Ex. 9 in all its rudeness. A development follows in which the derisive gesture uses its modulating power to travel through widely remote keys while the main theme is subject to further diminu­tions, which reduce it to something like the centrifugal drops from the faithful retriever who irrigates his master after rescuing the walking stick from the pond. The orchestra again strikes its edifying note. The violoncello again rejects this furiously, but the contemptuous whistle on the minor chord turns out to be moonshine from a romantically minded flute. The heart of the violoncello is softened to extreme sentimentality in a new theme (Ex. 12).

This modulates and is taken up by other sentimentalists in the orchestra, until it dissolves into the more prosaic good nature of one of the transition themes in the home tonic. Thus a recapitulation of the first episode takes place. A third time the orchestra tried to be edifying, as in Ex. 11. The protest of the violon­cello is overborne. The orchestra says ‘I will thump tubs’ and, having mounted the rostrum in spite of all opposition, proceeds to thump with the utmost vigour, passing from thence [sic] to a peroration of the main theme such as an early nineteenth-century divine might consider sadly tinctured with enthusiasm. The violoncello, however, sees no harm in it but merely awaits the calm of exhaustion before turning the figure into the driest of scales and passing prosaically into a cadenza, which deals with most of the material of the develop­ment. A lackadaisical bassoon supports the final cadential trill, and the orches­tra re-enters to share in a recapitulation of the whole first theme. But now it becomes evident that the whole of what we may call the Rude Complex is in counterpoint with the whole of the Sentimental Complex. In other words, Ex. 9 combines, as we already knew, with Ex. 10; Ex. 12 combines with the second strain, and while a trumpet amuses itself with the diminished main theme the violoncello continues to sentimentalize with a new counterpoint. From all this arises a short peroration through which the diminution insinuates its way, until the Operative Word co-operates with Ex. 8 to move the closure. Then the whole orchestra shakes itself with the diminutions. The violoncello concludes with the Operative Word, followed by three conventional final chords. Their obvious intention is as follows (Ex. 13):

   Ex. 13

But their actual effect is somewhat different, and the critical listener is humbly begged not to ascribe the difference to insufficient rehearsal.

Peter R. Shore, born in Eastbourne in 1945, worked for several years as a professional theatre and dance-band musician, bandleader, arranger and orchestrator before joining Decca Records Ltd in the export sales department. He emigrated from England to Sweden in 1972, working for Decca’s Scandinavian distributor in Stockholm, in the Swedish film and video industry as a sound engineer and editor, and for Ericsson Telecom in technical training; since 2001 he has worked as a teacher of music and English but has now retired to concentrate on promoting British Music. His paternal grandmother was Donald Francis Tovey’s first cousin.