Percy Hilder Miles 1878-1922

[matesic]

I uploaded 4 more scores ("renditions" included) to imslp, increasing his published tally to 7. Most significant of the new ones, I think, are his 2 settings of WWI poems, In Flanders Fields and England and Flanders,  composed in the first weeks of 1919. At what could well have been their premiere performance a few weeks ago I found them very powerful. The others that I've transcribed from manuscript are his second string quintet (2vlns, vla, vc, db) and clarinet quintet. The best of his chamber work movements (e.g. IV of the string quintet, III of the clarinet quintet, I of the string sextet) seem to share a painfully nostalgic quality that inevitably puts me in mind of Elgar, although Percy's harmonic language is distinctive.

The biggest work to remain unpublished work is his cello concerto which exists only in piano reduction. It was supposed to have been premiered at the 1908 proms, but for some reason the dedicatee, Bertie Withers, played the Dvorak instead and Percy withdrew the dedication. Anyone fancy their hand at orchestration?

[britishcomposer]

I uploaded a short Romance for strings broadcast by the BBC a couple of days ago.
The story how this recording came about is told by the announcer at the beginning.

[Mark Thomas]

Thanks very much - interesting.

[matesic]

As the announcer says, it's a movement from his Erith Suite for strings whose manuscript came to light a few months ago along with many more works. Among the best, I think, are two string quartets dating from 1918 https://imslp.org/wiki/Category:Miles%2C_Percy_Hilder. His oeuvre consists mostly of chamber music; there are just 3 more-or-less finished orchestral works, the latest to surface being a violin concerto that he completed in 1909. Phil Hall from the BBCSO has been pulling all the strings he can find to get the cello concerto and an Elegiac Fantasy performed, but of course all plans are currently on hold. Exactly how the cello concerto got into the Proms prospectus for 1908 remains a bit of a mystery; piano rehearsals with the cellist Herbert Withers apparently went well but in May of that year Percy steamed off to Australia on behalf of the examiners' board of the RAM and RCM and left the orchestration unfinished. Phil has now completed the job and the solo part is with the cellist Alice Neary. I've bashed through it in a transcription for violin and I'm convinced it could be a goer.