Program - Frederick Septimus Kelly - String Trio

QCGU String Faculty present:

Frederick Septimus Kelly – String Trio (1911) Michele Walsh – Violin Graeme Jennings – Viola György Déri - Violoncello 1.

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Allegro appassionato Romance Scherzo Allegro moderato ma con moto

Program notes by Christopher Latham The irony of FS Kelly’s catalogue is that his most substantial work is scored for a combination that hardly exists today – the string trio. The string quartet is generally considered the most demanding idiom to write for, because it only contains four lines, making the texture incredibly transparent. Given most chords require three or four tones to be sounded to create a sonorous texture to support the melody, the demands on the composer to make beautiful lines that also can come together make a satisfactorily rich backdrop for the leading voice, are extreme. If it is difficult to score satisfactorily for four parts, then writing for three is clearly even more technically demanding both for the composer and for the players – Kelly’s String Trio’s parts are filled with double stops. The compositional challenges are clearly demonstrated by the scarcity of masterworks in the genre.

If we disregard baroque trio sonatas, then the greatest string trio is the Mozart Divertimento in E-flat Major, K.563, with the Ernő Dohnányi Serenade in C Major, Op.10, probably the second best work. Beethoven wrote five string trios and Schubert two (D.471 in one movement and D.581, both in B-flat Major). None of their trios are stronger works than Kelly’s.

However, it might take until Kelly’s trio is arranged for string orchestra, as the Dohnányi has been, before a wider audience can appreciate just how much drama the work contains. This string orchestra arrangement will occur shortly.

In Kelly’s String Trio, we have the rarest of all beasts, an Australian romantic ‘War Horse’. It was written over an exceptionally long period, taking three years of intense work, which he began in 1909, and completed it in Sydney at the end of May 1911, where it was premiered on Friday 4 August 1911 in St James Hall (opposite St James Church in King St). It is the greatest late romantic work written for strings by an Australian composer. What is initially hard to reconcile is that it sounds like it might have been written by Brahms, the closest comparisons to the work being Brahm’s first two string quartets Op.51 No.1 and 2.

The String Trio exudes the freshness of youth and the angst also, the key of B minor giving a hint of what will come.

Traditionally the key of fate, Bach uses it in his Mass in B minor and the St John Passion, Schubert in his Unfinished Symphony, Brahms in his Clarinet Quintet, Dvorak in his Cello Concerto, Tchaikovsky in his Pathetique Symphony, Liszt in his Piano Sonata in B minor and Wagner in the Ride of the Valkyries. These are all works supercharged with deep feeling and, from our position in history, it is difficult no to hear Kelly’s String Trio as a fervent raging against the dying of his light, especially the final coda of the finale.

Kelly was born into death, his middle name, Septimus, due to being the seventh and last child, of which only four survived into adulthood. Two siblings died in infancy, his beloved oldest brother Carleton died in 1899 when ‘Sep’ was eighteen and studying in England. His father, with whom he was particularly close, died two years later in 1901, and finally his mother in 1902. By the age of twenty-two, Kelly was independently wealthy and living in Bisham, England with his sister Maisie, while his brother Bertie, briefly a student of Joseph Joachim, and to whom he dedicated this work, had returned to Sydney.

Kelly was driven to succeed in three disciplines – piano, composition and rowing – and spoke in his diary of a ‘race against time’ to notate the works that populated his ‘teeming brain’. It would be a race he was destined to lose, unable to have enough time before his death in the Somme in 1916 to notate his Symphony in E Major, the Lyric Phantasy (for large orchestra) the Aubade for flute, strings, horn, bassoon and harp, a String Quartet in E minor and about a dozen songs.

These all existed in his musical imagination, sufficiently realised that he could play them for friend. Even more irritating is

that there is likely a score of his Symphony in G minor, and about another dozen late works described in his works as having been notated but missing from his papers. We can only hope they may come to light as his profile increases The String Trio is surprisingly long, almost 40 minutes, consisting of four extremely technically challenging movement. It seems to be expressing his struggle to accept his fate of being fated to live a life interrupted, cut off in full stream. The first movement, Allegro Appassionato, jumps immediately into this turbulent world of sound and feeling while the second, a sublime Romance, has one of the great cantabile lines for the violin, reminiscent of the Andante Cantabile from Mozart’s String Quartet No.14 K.387, also in G Major. Set against pizzicato chords in the viola and cello, the violin line literally floats above them, until interrupted by and explosive Agitato outburst, in which the violin and cello answer each other furiously before returning to the opening material. The Scherzo is somewhat reminiscient of the scherzo from Dohnanyi’s Serenade, and features a truly charming trio, while the final movement, marked Allegro moderato ma con moto, begins with a chorale like melody which quickly becomes very intensetly agitated.

Kelly began the work in October of 1909 at his home in Bisham, on the Thames near Henley. He took the work on a number of occasions to Donald Francis Tovey with whom he was still studying composition, and indeed one of the three surviving manuscripts is covered with Tovey’s suggestions and comments. Kelly would acknowledge Tovey’s insistent criticisms aided him to take the work to a higher level, but ultimately the frustrations he had with Tovey’s pedantic interventions, meant it also ended Kelly and Tovey’s relationship of student and mentor. After this Kelly would only trust the great English pianist Leonard Borwick, a close friend who was also his flatmate in London, to give him feedback on his works.

By late Aprio in 1910, Kelly was still trying to finish the first movement of his B minor trio, noting in his diary it was taking ‘an incredibly long time’ to resolve. Kelly clearly struggled with the work, turning to autosuggestion to get around his mental blockages, making ‘suggestions to myself before going to sleep each night in order to bring on a musical frame of mind in the hopes that ideas will occur (easily) to me’, he even records on the 8 th May 1910, having experienced inspiration for some of the material in the work during a visit to the Sistine Chapel.

A first version of the work was completed at the Grange on 4 October 1910. The next day he boarded the Orontes, bound for Australia, and during the long sea passage, heavily revised the work. Arriving in Sydney he notes in his diary entry of Friday 10 February 1911 that he is doing a ‘good deal of work at the first movement of my B min String Trio’. He describes working on it during his visit to the Hydro Majestic Hotel in Medlow Bath in the Blue Mountains on 6 March 1911 and finally finishes it in his family home of Glenyarrah in Double Bay Sydney on 31 May 1911. It was premiered by Henri Staell (leader of his own eponymous quartet and concertmaster of the Sydney Symphony at the time), Kelly’s brother Bertie (Mr T.H. Kelly) on viola and Bryce Carter on cello.

Thereafter Kelly polished the work for four years (making it the work he spent the longest time on), before finally engaging the English Quartet (which included the composer Frank Bridge on viola) to perform it at a summer concert at his house in Bisham on 17 June 1914, less than a fortnight before the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, which led to the outbreak of the Great War. The work gained some popularity around this time, being also performed by the famous cellist Pablo Casals (who performed often with Kelly in recitals) as well as by the violist Lionel Tertis, and the violinist Jelly D’Aranyi, who was in love with Kelly. They would perform together extensively in Marh and April of 1916 while he was back in London on leave after serving at Gallipolli. Before he left for France in May, he would give her the corrected string trio parts from which this edition was made. The parts were lovingly preserved in her music collection in Florence, along with the Gallipoli Violin sonata manuscript, which he wrote for her in the trenches there.

Frederick Septimus Kelly, ‘Sep’ to his friends, was born in Sydney in 1881, the seventh child of a wealthy family who were musically inclined. A child virtuoso who could play Mozart piano sonatas by heart by the age of five, he was initially educated at Sydney Grammar School but was sent to Europe to further his musical training. He auditioned for, and was accepted by Antoine-Francois Marmontel, who was Professor of Piano at the Paris Conservatoire and supposedly Chopin’s last surviving student. However in the end Kelly went to Eton College with his brothers where his musical talents were nurtured under the tutelage of Dr Charles Harford Lloyd. He followed in his older brother Bertie’s footsteps, taking over from him as secretary of the Music Club.

Kelly went up to Balliol College at Oxford University in 1899 where he held the position of Nettleship Scholar. He developed a lifelong friendship with the first Nettleship Scholar, Donald Francis Tovey, who would go on to become one of Britain’s most famous musicologists but Kelly also developed a passion for rowing while at Balliol, rowing with the Leander Club crew which won the Grand Challenge cup at the Henley Regata in in 1903, 1904 and 1905 and the coxless fours that won the Stewards Cup in 1906. However Kelly’s greatest success was in solo sculling, winning the Diamonds at Henley in 1902, 1903 and 1905, when he set a record that stood for 30 years. He is generally considered the greatest amateur rower of the last century. It was said ‘that the grace with which his hands left the body at the

finish of the stroke was like the down-ward beat of a swallow’s wing’ and that 'his natural sense of poise and rhythm made his boat a living thing under him'.

From 1903-08 he moved to Frankfurt Germany to study at the famous Dr Hoch Konservatorium where Clara Schumann had recently taught, taking piano with Ernst Engesser and composition and counterpoint with Ivan Knorr. It was there that he truly dedicated himself to fulfilling his dual ambition to become 'a great player and a great composer'. He followed in the footsteps of English composers known as the Frankfurt Gang which included Cyril Scott, Roger Quilter, Henry Balfour Gardiner and briefly the Australian composer Percy Grainger who Kelly admired, and to whom he dedicated his Op 3, his Allegro de Concert.

One morning on the 27 October 1907, Kelly while reading the English newspapers at a café finds out he has been selected to row for England at the 1908 Olympics. He is surprised having already declined an invitation but when he saw that the Canadian Lou Scholes, who was one of the few rowers to have beaten him – in this case in 1904 at the Diamond Culls at Henley, would be representing Canada, he arranges to end his studies in Frankfurt so that he can return to London to train. From 18 June, Kelly records in meticulous detail the laborious training he and his fellow ‘old men’ of Leander went through ultimately winning Olympic gold in the eights. The Olympic final would be Kelly’s last rowing race.

On his return to England in 1908 Kelly set about establishing himself as a pianist and composer in London, working as the pianist for Pablo Casals and touring to Australia in 1911 where he made his Australian debut with the Sydney Symphony and followed it with an ambitious series of recitals. His London debut followed in 1912. He was an active performer during this period, often appearing with the violinist Jelly d’Aranyi, for whom Ravel wrote the Tzigane, and even briefly forming a piano trio with both her and Casals. Jelly was deeply in love with Kelly, while Kelly loved her playing.

Following the outbreak of war in 1914, Kelly was commissioned as an officer with the Royal Naval Division (RND) and ended up in the famous Hood Battalion as a member of the famous Latin Club along with the poet Rupert Brooke, the composer William Denis Browne, the Prime Minister’s son Ock Asquith, and the New Zealand adventurer Bernard Freyberg, later commander of the NZ forces in WW2 and the NZ’s first native born Governor General. The war would take all of them but Asquith who lost his leg and Freyberg who was wounded five times.

At the time Brooke was the most famous poet in England. Kelly only met him when he joined the RND, and on the troopship found himself inexorably drawn to Brooke’s company as well as his poetry. Kelly went to Brooke’s quarters to hear him read his poems including his most famous poem, The Soldier. It was an incomprehensible shock to Kelly, and all of the Latin Club, that Brooke would suddenly die before they had even landed, from a combination of sunstroke and an infected mosquito bite on his lip.

Preparations for his burial were made in great haste to bury him on the Greek Island of Skyros. "The events of today made a deep impression on me. Rupert Brooke died on board the French hospital ship at 4.45pm and, in view of the ship's orders to sail at 5am the following morning, arrangements were at once made to bury him on the island he loved so well...

It was about a mile from the shore to the grove over very difficult stony ground and the petty officers who bore the coffin were obliged to go very slowly. We reached the grove at 10.45pm where in the light of a clouded half-moon the burial service was read... It was a most moving experience. The small olive grove in the narrow valley and the scent of the wild sage gave a strong classical tone which was so in harmony with the poet we were burying that to some of us the Christian ceremony seemed out of keeping... The body lies looking down the valley towards the harbour and, from behind, an olive tree bends itself over the grave as though sheltering it from the sun and rain. No more fitting resting place for a poet could be found than this small grove, and it seems as though the gods had jealously snatched him away to enrich this scented island. For the whole day I was oppressed with the sense of loss, but when the officers and men had gone and when at last the five of us, his friends, had covered his grave with stones and took a last look in silence - then the sense of tragedy gave place to a sense of passionless beauty, engendered both by the poet and the place."

On Friday 21 May 1915, Kelly wrote in his diary, “…ever since the day of Rupert Brooke's death (I have) been composing an elegy for string orchestra, the ideas of which are coloured by the surroundings of his grave and circumstances of his death. Today I felt my way right through to the end of it, though of course, much of it has still to take on definite shape. The modal character of the music seems to be suggested by the Greek surroundings as well as Rupert's character, some passagework by the rustling of the olive tree which bends over his grave. It should work out to some nine minutes in performance." Kelly was wounded in the foot in the Third Battle of Krithia on June 4 and was evacuated to in Alexandria, where he wrote out his Elegy for Rupert Brooke for the first time while recuperating.

Following Kelly’s return to the peninsula on July 11th, he spent the remainder of the summer preparing their defensive positions. After the major August offensive, in which the RND weren’t involved, he began work on a violin sonata for Jelly d’Aranyi. Jelly had long been requesting a concerto, but Kelly wrote to her from Gallipoli around Christmas to say he had written a violin sonata for her instead. ”I began composing it about three and a half months ago and I have now about half of it written down…You must not expect shell and rifle fire in it! It is rather a contrast to all that being somewhat idyllic.”

By Tuesday, December 21, he adds “I spent nearly my whole day writing down the ground (last movement) of my G major Violin Sonata.” Finally on Friday, December 31, in the last few days before the final evacuation of the peninsula he writes with clear relief that “I spent the morning and afternoon working at the last movement of my G major Violin Sonata and had the satisfaction of finishing it at tea time. It has been rather a race against time as I was anxious to get it packed up and sent off with my gear.” Kelly was evacuated with the rest of the Hood Battalion on January 8 th, among the very last troops to leave, and the first clean copy manuscript is dated Feb 28 and 29, written on board His Majesty’s Transport Olympic in the Mediterranean Sea while returning to England.

Kelly survived Gallipoli being wounded twice, and was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross and reached the rank of Lieutenant-Commander. He was one of the last three officers to leave the peninsula. He went on to serve in France and was killed in action during the last phase of the battle of the Somme at Beaucourt-sur-Ancre on 13 November 1916. Fifteen minutes before they left their trenches Freyberg wrote “on the extreme right I stopped to talk to Kelly who commanded B Company We had been daily companions for the last two years and he, Asquith, Edgerton and I were the sole survivors of the Battalion who left Avonmouth for Gallipoli in February 1915. I wanted to take both his hands and wish him ‘God speed’ but it somehow seemed too theatrical”. Eventually despite heavy losses the Hood Battalion broke through the German trenches and Kelly was killed in the third line of trenches while leading an attack on a machine gun post. The next day Freyberg and the remnants of the RND would capture Beaucourt where Freyberg won his VC. Meanwhile Kelly’s men carried his body back through no mans’ land so he could be buried and not lost in the mud of the Western Front. His grave is the Martinsart's British Cemetery not far from where he fell. He was 35 years old and was Australia’s greatest cultural loss of WW1 - a composer we could ill afford to lose.

Violinist Michele Walsh is an Associate Professor in Violin, Head of Strings and Head of Performance studies at the Queensland Conservatorium Griffith University. After graduating from the University of Adelaide and winning the ABC Instrumental and Vocal Competition Michele Walsh undertook post-graduate study in London with Szymon Goldberg.

Returning to Australia, she was appointed Associate Concert Master of the Queensland Symphony Orchestra, a position she held for a decade. Michele has appeared as soloist with major orchestras in Australia and has performed in the UK, USA, Europe and South-East Asia. Michele is a founding member of the Griffith Trio which has made several successful international tours and is a frequent guest at chamber music festivals around the country. She is also in demand as guest concertmaster of Australian symphony orchestras. Michele is a member of the Artistic Advisory Commitiee for the Australian Youth Orchestra. Michele is in demand as a guest teacher and frequently serves on competition juries in Australia and South-East Asia. Many of her former students are major competition prize winners and hold positions in Australia, Europe and Asia. She has a lifelong commitment to working with young musicians and in 2012 received a national award from AUSTA for outstanding contribution to string playing and teaching in Australia.

Australian violinist, violist, conductor, improviser, educator, Graeme Jennings, is a former member of the legendary Arditti String Quartet (1994-2005). He has toured widely throughout the world, made more than 80 CDs, given over 300 premieres and received numerous accolades including the prestigious Siemens Prize (1999) and two Gramophone awards. Active as a soloist, chamber musician, ensemble leader and conductor, his repertoire ranges from Bach to Boulez and beyond. He has worked with and been complimented on his interpretations by many of the leading composers of our time. Graeme is a member of Australia’s internationally acclaimed new music ensemble ELISION and the Kurilpa String Quartet. He has performed as Guest Concertmaster of the Adelaide, Melbourne and West Australian Symphony Orchestras and Guest Associate Concertmaster with the Sydney Symphony. In 2011 he was a founding member of the Australian World Orchestra.

He has also appeared as guest artist with the Australian String Quartet, the Kreutzer Quartet, the New Zealand String Quartet and the del Sol Quartet. Having previously served on the faculties of Mills College, UC Berkeley and Stanford University, he was appointed Senior Lecturer in violin and viola at the Queensland Conservatorium Griffith University in 2009 Born in 1965 to an extended family of musicians, György Déri began playing the cello at the age of five. He studied at the Bela Bartok Conservatory before entering the Liszt Ferenc Academy of Music learning with such outstanding teachers as Ede Banda and Gyorgy Konrad.

György has won many competitions and has performed in extensively throughout Europe as a chamber, ensemble and orchestral musician as well as a soloist before becoming a teacher himself at the Liszt Ferenc Academy of Music.

György has taught across Europe and served on jurys for many European competitions.

As a soloist, György has performed with the Hungarian Radio Symphony orchestra, the Liszt Ferenc Chamber Orchestra and was concert master of the Budapest Cello Ensemble.

György Deri joined the Faculty at QCGU in 2020 as Senior Lecturer in Cello.