Do you watch Great British Menu? For those of you in other countries, this is a long-running programme (17 years and counting) in which chefs from different regions of the UK compete to cook at a banquet. Every year, the banquet is in celebration of a different event, ranging from the Queen’s birthday, to 140 years of Wimbledon, to this year’s centenary of British broadcasting. The chefs compete in heats until they are whittled down to the final four that will cook the four-course banquet in one of the stately homes the UK does so well.
We are big fans in my house, even the nine-year-old joining in the shouting at the screen, the faces of disgust when some of the offerings go wrong in the heat of the moment, the admiration for the sheer force of creativity and skill on show every week. I’ve always enjoyed these kind of shows, often because of the close similarities I see between cooking and music, in the commitment to technique, and in the response of audience/consumers. As Sir Adrian Boult reflected, there is nothing like taste and smell to conjure up memories.
But this year, yet another similarity struck me. The format of the show is that the chefs cook one course each day – starter, fish, main, dessert. And as ever, the day of the main is the most stressful, and the stakes are highest, because “everyone wants to cook this course for the banquet”. It’s the most important (well of course it is, it’s not called the “main” for nothing).
The metaphor of a menu has been a mainstay of how we have spoken about programming for well over a century, the word often being used interchangeably with “programme”. In 1922 Robert Lorenz called the programme the “bill of fare”, while in 1946, Monatgu-Nathan luxuriated even more in the metaphor when he pointed out that just like restaurant-goers, concert attendees needed to be “mindful of what, at a given moment, will suit his digestive capacity”, and was unlikely to choose something “containing two dishes similar to those consumed at his previous meal”. In 1915, Henry Coates wrote:
“Apparently a general rule, in instrumental recitals, is to play three or four big, heavy works in succession, and then to switch off suddenly to a group of very small and trifling pieces, mainly by modern composers. Anything more inappropriate than such a “top-heavy” scheme cannot be imagined. It is like commencing a dinner with the joint or the game, and finishing with the hors d’œuvres.”
And there we have it. The sonata, the symphony, the work with structural length and gravitas, is the mainstay of the programme. It takes pride of place, not just for its weight, but also in the position seen best to display the skill and artistry of its maker. Everything else is a runner-up. It’s a tough call for composers who excel at the pithy, the heartfelt moment, the cameo – or, to continue our culinary metaphor, the mouthful of heaven that a really good canape should be. Kate Loder, mid-nineteenth-century English musician, is one of these. Her piano works are short but often intense, as this CD of selected pieces shows.
Loder was a superlative performer and teacher, and her compositions demonstrate an unerring eye for what her audiences like and need. The two books of etudes with which the album begins, and which take most of the space, range from the technical brilliance of the first in C major, to the soaring melodic lines of the final F sharp minor etude of Book 2. They do not quite encompass all keys – there are a couple of repeats – but one can see the beginnings of a Bachian key structure. I’m fascinated that Loder clearly started then abandoned this idea, as though the musical ideas she had in her head refused to unshackle themselves from specific keys.
The remainder of the disc is taken with some of her stand-alone pieces, plus the middle movement of the Three Romances, my introduction to Loder’s piano music that will thus always occupy a particularly close place in my heart. The Pensée Fugitive and Voyage Joyeux do justice to Loder’s more programmatic side, while the two Mazurkas I find particularly fine examples of the particularly female preoccupation with these dance forms.
Ian Hobson, the pianist, champions these pieces in excellent style, though at times I would perhaps like a little more breath and layering. I believe that because so many of these women composers wrote so much (successful) vocal music, this skill lends a flexibility in this kind of writing that finds its way into the instrumental side, offering an understanding to the art of the miniature that we have neglected. Who knows? perhaps this way of playing might help elevate the parts of the menu that otherwise feel but part of a journey to the goal of the main course.
Here is the last etude, in F sharp minor.