This album begins a series of first recordings of works for horn by Australian composers, curated by horn player Carla Blackwood, offering a vivid cross-section of the musical voices and stylistic currents that shaped the 20th century. Featuring music by Septimus Kelly, George Marshall-Hall, Margaret Sutherland, Don Banks and Peter Sculthorpe, it traces a lineage of Australian composition that has largely remained unheard.

Born in Sydney, Septimus Kelly was educated in England from the age of 12 and later studied at Oxford with Donald Tovey. A figure of striking versatility, he also achieved distinction as an athlete, winning a gold medal in rowing at the 1908 London Olympic Games. Kelly’s formative musical training continued in Germany between 1904 and 1908, where he studied composition with Ivan Knorr (who also taught Percy Grainger).

Surely the combination for his Horn Quartet – horn, violin, viola and piano – must be have been unique until George Marshall Hall’s work for an identical combination of instruments five years later. Brief in scale – only three pages, comprising 34 bars with repeats – the piece is nonetheless idiomatic in its writing for the horn, set in its characteristic key of E flat. The musical language is notably warm and radiates a Brahmsian ambience evoking pastoral landscapes and hunting calls, while also allowing space for a lyrical voice for the horn. I responded more favourably to this piece than anything else on this CD and regretted its 2’38 duration. Kelly’s career, marked by exceptional breadth of talent, was cut tragically short when he was killed in action during the Battle of the Somme in 1916. His death stands as one of many losses that profoundly reshaped the cultural landscape of the early 20th century, in Australia as elsewhere. I think he is worthy of the accolade of an Antipodean George Butterwoth who also died in 1916 in the trenches. 

George Marshall-Hall (1862-1915) played a pivotal role in shaping the early Australian musical landscape. Arriving in Melbourne in 1890 as the inaugural Ormond Professor of Music at the University of Melbourne, he soon founded the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music and established the first sustained symphony orchestra in the country. Operating from 1892 to 1912, the Marshall-Hall Orchestra presented annual seasons of five to seven concerts, He could rightly be judged Australia’s first true impresario. 

His Horn Quartet showcases the horn as one of the orchestra’s most expressive instruments from gentle melancholy to heroic strides and pastoral bliss. Marked lento penseroso, the second movement was the most engrossing for me with an expansive canvas and introspective piano solo, a fairy-like almost episode worthy of Mendelssohn, but the entire wok is highly impressive. No wonder visiting musicians and critics from Britain and Europe left with the conviction that this young newly independent country was anything but a cultural desert!

Margaret Sutherland (1897-1984) was among a coterie of women composers such as Miriam Hyde, Dulcie Holland, Peggy Glanville-Hicks (who, admittedly, spent most of creative years abroad). Her House Quartet in G minor for clarinet, viola, horn and piano was composed in 1942 and is certainly of the 20th century, but I couldn’t help wondering to what extent it was inspired by the preceding Marshall-Hall work as he was apparently a beloved mentor. The mood is certainly mellow and often lyrical and deserves greater exposure. It’s definitely 20th-century music which would appeal to people who aren’t generally sympathetic to it. I could hear touches of Hindemith at his most genial (which he rarely was).

Things take a dramatic turn in the penultimate work, Don Banks’ (1923-1980) Horn Concerto, which is here arranged to be accompanied only by a piano. This work was commissioned in 1965 for Bank’s fellow Australian, Barry Tuckwell, when he was principal horn with the London Symphony. I have to admit I found this ferociously atonal piece a challenge. Despite the encomiums of certain critics at the time of its debut about it becoming a major addition to the horn repertoire, I’m not surprised it has slipped into obscurity. Carla Blackwood’s virtuosity is simply staggering here. On a bizarre note, I read somewhere that Banks also wrote film scores for Hammer Horror movies with names like Kingdom of the Snakes in the 1950s! Despite its formidable challenges, this piece perfectly showcases Blackwell’s stunning technique and versatility. Peter Sculthorpe’s Night Song provides a haunting balm for the soul coda. The recording is superb as are the liner notes, also by Blackwood. They’re detailed to the point of being granular.

Listen on Apple Music

Title: The Australian Horn Volume 1
Works: Music by Marshall-Hall, Sutherland, Banks et al.
Performers: Carla Blackwood h, Elizabeth Sellars, Lucy Warren, Caroline Henbest, Rhodri Clarke, Peter de Laeger
Label: Toccata TOCN0052