Composing an unbroken 85-minute passacaglia on a four-note theme is not necessarily a wondrous feat; nor is it necessarily folly. If the inspiration is there it could be a monumental achievement, if not, then a monumental bore. Ronald Stevenson's magnum opus is neither of those things; but it is much closer to being the former. Very much closer.
Stevenson is a Scottish composer, pianist and author, widely-known for his championship of Busoni and for his trenchant views on twentieth-century music. His Passacaglia on Shostakovich's monogram was composed in 1960–62 and presented to its dedicatee at the 1962 Edinburgh Festival. Since then it has been published by Oxford University Press, performed by the composer in four continents (but apparently not in Russia), and superbly recorded by John Ogdon for EMI (ASD2321/2, 9/67—nla). Only this year a London performance by Raymond Clarke was widely acclaimed. If my own experience is typical the Passacaglia must have made a lasting impression on those who have encountered it.
What are the compositional challenges involved? Obviously the design must give some overall sense of direction. Stevenson divides the Passacaglia into three large parts, the first gatheting sections together into sonata allegro and suite, the second being a more fantasia-like succession of variation sets and etudes, and the last returning to stricter forms with a massive triple fugue and final variations. From phrase to phrase there is a danger of squareness, which Stevenson guards against by setting the DSCH figure in a triple-time metre with octave displacements and a seven-bar pattern of recurrence. From paragraph to paragraph and chapter to chapter the oblique harmonic language and ingenious shifts of key centre keep the structure alive.
None of that would count for much if the piece was short on memorable ideas. As it happens it is brimming over with them. Looking back at the 30 or so section titles, the salient musical ideas of at least 20 spring straight to mind, and with a few moments thought so do the rest. And that's not because those ideas are simplistic, but because they come from that unquenchable and unanalysable source we can only call 'genuine inspiration'.
It is remarkable how few of those ideas sound indebted to others. Certainly the opening page is a close relative of Busoni's Fantasia contrappuntistica, and Busoni is a pervasive influence on the pianistic layout and harmonic language as well; at the other end the long build-up to the final peroration draws on Liszt's Dante Sonata. But never is there the feeling that Stevenson has admitted a secondhand or ill-considered idea.
What never? Well, hardly ever. By the end of the First Part I wondered why I had not played the Ogdon record more often. During the Second Part I realized that it was because the ''Glimpse of a War'' and ''To Emergent Africa'' sections struck me as undistinguished, even faintly embarrassing—they still do. Nor are the passages of direct playing on the strings any more convincing than they used to be (though the composer must like them, since his performance takes special care to emphasize them). It is in this phase that the work tends to flail around rather than basing its flights of imagination on solid musical substance.
With the Third Part we are back on course. The angular fugue subject over the ground-bass is very striking (though I fail to see how it incorporates the DSCH motif, as the sleeve-note claims) and its subsequent unfolding is deeply impressive. Momentary doubts resurface when Stevenson throws together the fugue subject and DSCH and BACH and the Dies irae, but compositional virtuosity triumphs and the grandeur of the closing pages has a sense of inevitability which confirms that the composer has not overreached himself.
In its own way Stevenson's perfommance is every bit as enthralling as the deleted Ogdon. Both communicate a passionate belief in the music and both have an unerring sense of its larger dimensions. Both have their sketchy moments and the composer is more than once hoisted with his own petard, but on the whole Stevenson is an admirable technician, lighter and less conspicuously virtuosic than Ogdon, but rarely less convincing. I do wish, however, that he had not availed himself of the sub-bass notes on his Bosendorfer Imperial—they tend to dissipate the texture precisely where it needs to be kept in focus and the final tonic D is to my ears, without definable pitch. The recording quality is warm and atmospheric.
Ogdon's record placed each of the three parts of the work on a single LP side. The new issue spreads itself less conveniently over four LP sides, and its 85-minute duration is resistant to the CD format as well. In a way that is an appropriate reflection of the Passacaglia's proud independence. But I must stress again that what makes the work such an impressive achievement is not what it stands for, but the prodigality and power of its musical invention.'