HAYDN WOOD: Piano Concerto in D minor

Although Haydn Wood was born in Slaithwaite, Yorkshire in 1882, he has always been associated with the Isle of Man and became its leading composer. This was because his parents decided to move there when he was two years of age. In an age of child prodigies, Haydn Wood appeared as a young violinist, and became a student at the Royal College of Music where he studied musical composition under Sir Charles Villiers Stanford. At the age of 22, he toured the world with the famous singer, Emma Albani.

We do not know quite how long Haydn Wood was working on his large-scale Piano Concerto which he completed in 1909. However, history tells us that it received it's premiere at a Patrons Fund Concert at Queen's Hall on 14 th July, 1909 with pianist Ellen Edwards as soloist, and Stanford conducting. It reappeared at Queen's Hall again in 1913 with Tina Lerner the pianist and the performance directed by Willem Mengelberg, a Dutch conductor of note who had been responsible for the formation and success of the Amsterdam Concergebouw. Orchestra in 1895. Thus from that period onwards, the Concerto seemed forgotten, for the musical career of Haydn Wood took a different course, largely influenced by his wife, the singer Dorothy Court, he wrote a succession of popular songs, among them, Page 5.

Roses of Picardy , one of the most successful hits of WWI that not only brought him fame but earned him a fortune in royalties, for it sold over a million-and-a-quarter copies. Subsequently he turned to musical comedy as a composer, and his musical play Tina from 1915, was an early gramophone hit with at least half-a-dozen recordings of selections from it available during the war. Not only that, Haydn Wood became one of the three most outstanding British composers between the two World-Wars in a category known as “Light Music”, the others being Eric Coates and Montague Philips. Although Wood tended to find himself in the shadow of Eric Coates, he did produce a considerable repertoire of orchestral music and songs.

For many years the Piano Concerto was forgotten, but in 1936 a BBC performance was announced with a Wilfred Parry as soloist, but alas, a few days before the performance, Parry injured his arm and the performance was substituted for Wood's newly completed Violin Concerto, but indeed, the Piano Concerto was finally broadcast almost a year later in 1937. In 1939, it enjoyed a brief vogue in South Africa where it was first heard in a broadcast over South African Radio three times between October and November, it was then revived by the BBC in 1951 and 1952, but has not been heard since until now, when, in 1999 a recording was made in Caird Hall Dundee, Scotland by the pianist Hamish Milne who was accompanied by the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Martyn Brabbins. The recording was released under the Hyperion label, a label that is not only of high quality, but famous for the revival of many of the Romantic Concerto's of the 19 th and 20 th centuries. ( 4:00 )