We have had to wait over 40 years for a first recording of Gerhard’s Harpsichord Concerto, without much question one of this century’s three most important concertos for the instrument (the others being those by Falla and Frank Martin). It was commissioned in 1955 by Thurston Dart, whose performance, however, failed to satisfy the composer – Dart (like two conductors under whom I myself played the work) was defeated by the rhythmic intricacies of the last movement (which the booklet-note, by an unfortunate misprint, describes as “ingenuous” instead of “ingenious”). It is a dodecaphonic work of formidable difficulty as regards ensemble, whose acerbic first movement gives way, via a dark-hued Largo, to a danse macabre finale in which are embedded scraps of Spanish folk-tunes that Gerhard could not get out of his head. Unhappily, despite valiant efforts by Geoffrey Tozer and the BBC SO, it has to be said that this recording simply will not do. The balance has been wrongly calculated: far too many strings are employed, their weight all too often either reducing the harpsichord part to a mushy, frenzied background or blotting it out almost completely: to take only one instance, its theme at bar 262 in the finale (3'30'' in, a reference to the “Cancion” of Falla’s Seven Songs) is practically inaudible. And most mysteriously (an editing accident?) the last three notes of the harpsichord’s opening tone-row in the second movement are totally missing. What a disappointment!
The CD is saved by Gerhard’s earlier Symphony in homage to his teacher. Being a tonal work based on themes from Pedrell’s opera La Celestina, it is much more immediately accessible: some of Gerhard’s ideas, however, were to reappear in his own opera The Duenna and his Fourth Symphony. The finale by itself has previously been available under the title Pedrelliana (Auvidis Valois, 10/92), but this is the premiere recording of the whole work – which has had a chequered history. In 1941 the BBC had turned it down (!): the finale however had a few performances before the symphony was eventually broadcast complete in 1972 – after which the performing material was lost! So for this recording the work had to be reconstructed from the composer’s pencil manuscript – an undertaking that proves to have been well worth while. The symphony’s vitality (particularly in the engaging last movement) and its underlying melancholy are well captured in this eloquent reading under Matthias Bamert, and here the recording leaves nothing to be desired.'