Music for Harp

I'm listening to a favourite Decca CD of music for harp, either solo or with orchestra, featuring the great harpist Marisa Robles and the Academy of St Martin-in-the-Fields.  There are three harp concertos recorded in 1980, and the disc is filled up with three sets of solo variations which come from an earlier (1966) recording.

The harp has not been a favourite instrument as a soloist with many composers, but those who truly understand its capabilities have given us a handful of masterpieces, and the pieces on this recording all fall into that category in one way or another.

Handel's Harp Concerto has the dual designation of being for either harp or organ, and is more familiar in the latter form.  But it was actually composed for the harp, most likely for the famed Welsh harpist William Powell.  And indeed, the harp sound works (if anything) even better than the organ with the subdued, pastoral accompaniment for strings and 2 flutes or recorders.  Each of the three movements brims over with beautiful melody, and the harp contributes elaborately decorated variants of the melody on repeats.

This is followed by François-Adrien Boieldieu's Harp Concerto in 3 Tempi, composed in 1795 after the 20-year old composer visited Sebastien Erard, the renowned Parisian instrument maker whose experiments and innovations culminated in 1810 with the perfected pedal harp still used today in symphony orchestras.  Boieldieu's Concerto is very Mozartean in sound, as one would expect given the date, but develops a style all its own, a graceful galanterie entirely appropriate to the instrument.  The first two movements have their beauties to be sure, but it is the final Rondeau which brings forth a melody so unique and lovely that it tends to keep replaying in your head long after you hear it!

The third concerto is by Karl Ditters von Dittersdorf, an Austrian composer whose work is now becoming more widely appreciated after lengthy neglect.  This work in fact was a harpsichord concerto which Dittersdorf wrote in 1779 but left unfinished.  It was rearranged for the harp (and completed and reorchestrated) by Karl Hermann Pilley.  This score too is tuneful and engaging, and the writing for the soloist is made to sound entirely idiomatic as if conceived for the harp.

The remaining works for solo harp are a Theme, Variations and Rondo pastorale attributed to Mozart, a set of Variations by Handel, and Six Variations on a Swiss Song  by Beethoven.  All of these, too, offer much for the listener.  None of the variations in any of these works actually becomes at all complex as in (for instance) some of Beethoven's piano variations. 

The excellence of the playing by Robles and her orchestral supporters (led by Iona Brown) can be safely taken for granted, and the sound is very present and warm without observing the harp too closely. 

This is a desert-island record if ever there was one, especially because of the beautiful Boieldieu concerto.