Not only co-principal bassoonist of the B.B.C. Symphony Orchestra of London and member of the famous Melos Ensemble from its first years, busy teacher, family man and collector of rare bassoons and music for and about the bassoon -- William Waterhouse somehow finds the time to give the occasional master recital of very interesting selections from his storehouse library with the excellent assistance of his wife, Elisabeth Ritchie.
In July and October of 1977, Bill presented a fine 9-item recital at The Sir Nicholas Sekers Theatre at Rosehill (England) and London's Wigmore Hall. He also supplied much of the program notes information and arranged or realized keyboard music for some of the recital. (It might be of additional interest to know that Mr. Waterhouse is a fine viola player and pianist, and often enjoys playing chamber music on these instruments!)
I would like to quote from the introduction to the notes of this program, to list the actual works performed, and to offer the full program notes for two very unusual works performed.
These notes were written by Noel Broome, largely based on material supplied by the artist.
" Whilst the piano and violin in particular have never been without a constant supply of solo material, the solo repertoire of other instruments tends to remain comparatively small, and it has frequently been through the inspiration, or at the instigation of, players themselves that concertos for their individual instruments have come to be written at all. Mozart's fine Clarinet Concerto and the A major Quintet were written for Anton Stadler, whilst Brahms produced masterpieces for the clarinettist Mühlfeld. And had Mozart not met a certain cheese-merchant by the name of Ignaz Leutgeb, who was also an accomplished horn player, it is likely that the horn repertoire today would be the poorer by five beautiful concertos.
Examples of this mutually advantageous process between performers and composers may be found throughout music, and not only the players themselves but also audiences in general owe a debt of gratitude to those soloists who, through their own technical expertise and determined advocacy have persuaded composers of the potentialities of their respective instruments, and who have further enriched the repertoire by means of painstaking research among justly-neglected composers. The first half of (the) programme provides an interesting historical survey of the bassoon's development, beginning, in fact, with the earliest published piece to have survived for the instrument."
(Comment: The program mentions that Gordon Jacob's Partita for Solo Bassoon was dedicated to William Waterhouse, and mentions a work of Francaix also being dedicated to him --the Divertissement for Bassoon and String Quintet--. A fine solo bassoon sonata was also written for William Waterhouse by Stanley Wiener. So it is apparent to this editor that excellent and extremely active players such as Waterhouse have also helped significantly to enrich our small but gradually increasing repertoire of fine bassoon pieces. Ed.)
Born in Prague in 1894, Schulhoff held strong political views, eventually falling foul of the Nazis, who, in 1942, arrested him and tortured him to death. Scorning traditional musical idioms he turned both to jazz and atonal systems for his own musical style, and became well-known for his experiments with quarter-tone music. These three pieces are the only known music for double bassoon, the manuscripts being discovered by William Waterhouse among the composer's papers in Prague. They are all extremely short; the first, headed 'Melancholia', is marked Andante rubato-- all three pieces, in fact, are written without bar-lines. The Perpetuum mobile is a rapid, staccato study in semiquavers, showing the contra-fagott to be as agile as its smaller brother. (The first four notes, incidentally, spell the name BACH. in German notation). Finally a movement in fugal style, marked Allegretto grotesco. The following notes by the composer provides, perhaps, a better clue to his politics than his music, but it is worth reproducing here:
FOR GENERAL ENLIGHTENMENT-- A Profession of Faith.
The divine spark may as likely be found in a contrabassoon as in a sausage. This is dedicated therefore to poetical friends and aesthetes--in short, to all hyper-sensitive souls as an "Experience".
While everyone else, then, swoons to the sweet tones of violins, take note: I always do the opposite just in order to provoke you, you petty marionettes, fops, bespectacled pseudo-intellectuals, you pathological hothouse plants and decayed expressionists. I admit, without shame, to having been created out of muck and to revel in muck! But you lot are already born with immaculately-ironed creases in white tie and tails--you who merely exist! In order to keep my distance from you all I'll take a firm grip on my monocle and make you show me respect!!! (Translation: W. Waterhouse)
A violinist of considerable promise, Skalkottas abandoned serious study of the instrument soon after enrolling at the Berlin Hochschule, turning instead to composition. The greatest influence on his style was Schoenberg, with whom he studied for six years, but he developed a highly individual idiom, much of his music being for strings. Unable to make a living as a composer, however, he was forced to spend the last sixteen years of his life in the Athens State Orchestra, continuing to write prolifically in his spare time. In 1943 he completed his Sonata for bassoon, the last of five large-scale works for wind instruments; lasting nearly half an hour in its entirety, it had to wait until 1964 for its first performance (by William Waterhouse) The Presto, which like the rest of the Sonata makes fearsome demands on the performers, abounds in characteristic rhythmic figures and sardonic themes; the second main tune is marked "scherzando e delicato", whilst the third -- with its typical alternation of three-eight and two-four (i.e. seven-eight time) is an ironic version of a Greek tune. A brief Prestissimo coda--leaping intervals in bassoon, and a rapid ascending chromatic scale in the piano (elsewhere in the movement they have careered downwards) -- brings the work to a brilliant and humorous conclusion.