Margaret Cable and André

Program for the Sonnets - 1968

Program for the Sonnets - 2007

Pianist - Maciej Grzybowski

Mezzosoprano - Urszula Kryger

Seven Sonnets of Shakespeare (1967)
This webpage provides information about the André Tchaikowsky composition, Seven Sonnets of Shakespeare (1967). This includes text from the book, The Other Tchaikowsky - A Biographical Sketch of André Tchaikowsky. There are four known performances: three performances with André Tchaikowsky and Margaret Cable consisting of the world premiere performance on June 18, 1968 via a BBC broadcast, then a second performance on June 22, 1968 at the Royal Festival Hall, London, Purcell Room, and several months later in Amsterdam in the small Concertgebouw concert hall.

The forth performance was given at the Festiwal Muzyki Polskiej (Polish Music Festival) in Kraków, Poland on November 8, 2007, featuring Maciej Grzybowski on piano and mezzo-soprano Urszula Kryger.

Music/MP3s
While there are no professional recordings available for the Seven Sonnets of Shakespeare (1967), the original BBC broadcast with André Tchaikowsky and Margaret Cable is available, courtesy of the BBC:

Sonnet 104 / 01-sonnet104.mp3
Sonnet  75 / 02-sonnet75.mp3
Sonnet  49 / 03-sonnet49.mp3
Sonnet  61 / 04-sonnet61.mp3
Sonnet  89 / 05-sonnet89.mp3
Sonnet  90 / 06-sonnet90.mp3
Sonnet 146 / 07-sonnet146.mp3

Fortunately, a recording was made of the excellent Sonnets performance from the 3rd Krakow Festival of Polish Music - 2007 in a concert given on November 8, 2007 with mezzo-soprano Urszula Kryger and pianist (and champion of André Tchaikowsky's music), Maciej Grzybowski. The following *.mp3 recordings are courtesy of Polish Radio and the Krakow Festival of Polish Music:

Sonnet 104 / 01-sonnet104_krakow.mp3
Sonnet  75 / 02-sonnet75_krakow.mp3
Sonnet  49 / 03-sonnet49_krakow.mp3
Sonnet  61 / 04-sonnet61_krakow.mp3
Sonnet  89 / 05-sonnet89_krakow.mp3
Sonnet  90 / 06-sonnet90_krakow.mp3
Sonnet 146 / 07-sonnet146_krakow.mp3

Known Details
The following text is from the book, The Other Tchaikowsky - A Biographical Sketch of André Tchaikowsky, and describes what is known about the Seven Sonnets of Shakespeare (1967).

At the Dartington Summer School in 1965, André had met singer Margaret Cable, whose abilities impressed him greatly and he promised to write a song cycle for her. The result was the "Seven Sonnets of Shakespeare," completed in October 1967 and dedicated to Margaret Cable. Margaret Cable recalls André and the Sonnets:

"I first met André in 1965 at Dartington. We were both there in the days when William Glock was running Dartington Summer School. Mr. Glock was a very enterprising man and had lots of unusual artists doing all sorts of unusual things. I remember one occasion when André was playing Pictures at an Exhibition at Dartington, in the original piano version. Fantastic.

"We became really good friends. He hadn't been in England that long, and had nobody, really, and he valued his friends enormously and took his friendships very seriously. André also met John [Margaret's husband-to-be, tuba virtuoso John Fletcher]. John and I weren't married then -- we didn't marry until 1967. So John was around and knew André and we all got along very well. Judy Arnold knew him best back then. Judy was marvelous, in a way. She's a great organizer, but she is also very dominant, to the point of being slightly overpowering. I think André felt a little constricted by her sometimes, but she did a lot for André.

"André was terribly well-read and made me feel totally ignorant. He knew English literature, French literature, Russian literature, all in the original languages. He put seven Shakespeare sonnets to music and I did them. We also broadcast them, he and I."

The Sonnets were first heard on a BBC broadcast on June 18, 1968. The first public performance was June 22,1968, at the Purcell Room. Music critic, Robert Henderson, wrote in The Musical Times:

Chamber Music

Although composers must obviously be free to set whatever texts they like, it is doubtful whether music could ever add anything of much significance to the Shakespeare sonnets which André Tchaikovsky chose for his song-cycle "Seven Sonnets of Shakespeare," performed for the first time by Margaret Cable with the composer (PR, June 22). The concentrated imagery of the poems, the balanced rhythms and already intensely musical character of the language, for instance, made the not particularly distinctive vocal lines sound rather perfunctory, and it was the beautifully written, often strikingly inventive piano accompaniments which seemed to distill much more accurately the passion and intensity implicit in the words.

Music critic, Stephen Walsh, wrote in Music and Musicians:

Unfortunately, Tchaikowsky's own work was rather a disappointment. In a way this might have been expected, since the work was a cycle of Shakespeare sonnets, the sort of poetic ground which even the most inspired composers are apt to find pretty daunting. Tchaikowsky's settings, for contralto and piano, showed clearly enough why this is true. Shakespeare's poems are so intense, so imbued with a musical quality of their own, that there is really nothing that music can add, and in this case the vocal line was of noticeable poverty, much too dependent on devices like unaccompanied recitative, and hardly beginning to match the poems in linguistic or psychological subtlety. The accompaniment was less shackled, but it was nevertheless seldom prepossessing and seldom memorable. The total impression was one of dryness, of music hopelessly circumscribed by its subject matter. I am sure Tchaikowsky is capable of better things.

Margaret Cable gave what seemed a useful performance, not always completely accurate, but rich in tone and sensitive in inflection. She was accompanied by the composer, so clearly the performance could not be blamed for the impression left by the music.

Margaret Cable remembers another aspect of the BBC and Purcell Room performances:

"I remember in the Purcell Room André made terrible noises when he played. He would groan and make such noise. He would moan and make problems for the recording studios at the BBC and we had to do things over and over."

There was another performance of the Sonnets some months later in Amsterdam, in the small Concertgebouw concert hall. Margaret Cable describes this performance:

"After this concert in Amsterdam, we had an American friend with us, Donald Blakesley, who was the tuba player in the Concertgebouw Orchestra. Donald and his wife came to the concert and sent me a very nice bunch of red roses backstage. After the concert they took us out for a meal, and then said, since we were only in Amsterdam for one night, they will drive us around and show us everything. Inevitably, part of the tour was through the beautiful red-light district. It all looks so exquisite with all the windows and the girls and so on.

"André sat back in the car with me and got terribly quiet. He was obviously terribly upset. We were going along, when outside one of the houses was a very young girl. She looked about 12 years old, probably older, but she looked about 12. She was standing on the pavement. André insisted that the car be stopped. He threw open the door, grabbed my bunch of roses, and gave them to this little girl."

André reported the Sonnets concert in a letter to Halina Wahlmann-Janowska, written on June 29, 1968:

A week ago there was the first performance of my song cycle, Seven Sonnets of Shakespeare. There were quite a few musicians there: Andrzej Panufnik and his wife [Camilla Jessel], Daniel Barenboim and his wife [Jacqueline du Pre], Gervase dePeyer, and Fou Ts'ong's wife. Fou Ts'ong was playing somewhere that evening. It turned out the cycle is first class, undoubtedly better than anything I've written so far. As a result, Andrzej Panufnik's wife gave birth to a child two weeks prematurely, but the baby seems to be normal. The cycle went like a bomb. The audience was delighted, the reviews were terrible, so everything was as it should be, and I'm happy with one and the other.

At Dartington Summer School in 1968, André was to meet composer David Lord who had also finished a song cycle, "The Wife of Winter." David's and André's song cycles were similar in that each had a beautiful piano accompaniment. André suggested David write a piano concerto, which André would play. He agreed, and André boldly added the work to his repertoire list. They met again at a party in London at the home of Judy Arnold (at which Alfred Brendel appeared wearing only a bath towel) and discussed the project further. André and David were friends for several years, playing piano duets, discussing composition, but David started writing more and more slowly, and the friendship faded away. The concerto was never written.

André dismissed the Sonnets after a few years. They were never published and at this writing, received only the BBC, Purcell Room, and Amsterdam performances, plus the 2007 performance in Krakow.

To me fair friend you never can be old,
For as you were when first your eye I eyed,
Such seems your beauty still: three winters cold,
Have from the forests shook three summers' pride,
Three beauteous springs to yellow autumn turned,
In process of the seasons have I seen,
Three April perfumes in three hot Junes burned,
Since first I saw you fresh which yet are green.
Ah yet doth beauty like a dial hand,
Steal from his figure, and no pace perceived,
So your sweet hue, which methinks still doth stand
Hath motion, and mine eye may be deceived.
For fear of which, hear this thou age unbred,
Ere you were born was beauty's summer dead.

Sonnet 75

So are you to my thoughts as food to life,
Or as sweet-seasoned showers are to the ground;
And for the peace of you I hold such strife
As 'twixt a miser and his wealth is found.
Now proud as an enjoyer, and anon
Doubting the filching age will steal his treasure,
Now counting best to be with you alone,
Then bettered that the world may see my pleasure,
Sometime all full with feasting on your sight,
And by and by clean starved for a look,
Possessing or pursuing no delight
Save what is had, or must from you be took.
Thus do I pine and surfeit day by day,
Or gluttoning on all, or all away.

Sonnet 49

Against that time (if ever that time come)
When I shall see thee frown on my defects,
When as thy love hath cast his utmost sum,
Called to that audit by advised respects,
Against that time when thou shalt strangely pass,
And scarcely greet me with that sun thine eye,
When love converted from the thing it was
Shall reasons find of settled gravity;
Against that time do I ensconce me here
Within the knowledge of mine own desert,
And this my hand, against my self uprear,
To guard the lawful reasons on thy part,
To leave poor me, thou hast the strength of laws,
Since why to love, I can allege no cause.

Sonnet 61

Is it thy will, thy image should keep open
My heavy eyelids to the weary night?
Dost thou desire my slumbers should be broken,
While shadows like to thee do mock my sight?
Is it thy spirit that thou send'st from thee
So far from home into my deeds to pry,
To find out shames and idle hours in me,
The scope and tenure of thy jealousy?
O no, thy love though much, is not so great,
It is my love that keeps mine eye awake,
Mine own true love that doth my rest defeat,
To play the watchman ever for thy sake.
For thee watch I, whilst thou dost wake elsewhere,
From me far off, with others all too near.

Sonnet 89

Say that thou didst forsake me for some fault,
And I will comment upon that offence,
Speak of my lameness, and I straight will halt:
Against thy reasons making no defence.
Thou canst not (love) disgrace me half so ill,
To set a form upon desired change,
As I'll my self disgrace, knowing thy will,
I will acquaintance strangle and look strange:
Be absent from thy walks and in my tongue,
Thy sweet beloved name no more shall dwell,
Lest I (too much profane) should do it wronk:
And haply of our old acquaintance tell.
For thee, against my self I'll vow debate,
For I must ne'er love him whom thou dost hate.

Sonnet 90

Then hate me when thou wilt, if ever, now,
Now while the world is bent my deeds to cross,
join with the spite of fortune, make me bow,
And do not drop in for an after-loss:
Ah do not, when my heart hath 'scaped this sorrow,
Come in the rearward of a conquered woe,
Give not a windy night a rainy morrow,
To linger out a purposed overthrow.
If thou wilt leave me, do not leave me last,
When other petty griefs have done their spite,
But in the onset come, so shall I taste
At first the very worst of fortune's might.
And other strains of woe, which now seem woe,
Compared with loss of thee, will not seem so.

Sonnet 146

Poor soul the centre of my sinful earth,
My sinful earth these rebel powers array,
Why dost thou pine within and suffer dearth
Painting thy outward walls so costly gay?
Why so large cost having so short a lease,
Dost thou upon thy fading mansion spend?
Shall worms inheritors of this excess
Eat up thy charge? is this thy body's end?
Then soul live thou upon thy servant's loss,
And let that pine to aggravate thy store;
Buy terms divine in selling hours of dross;
Within be fed, without be rich no more,
So shall thou feed on death, that feeds on men,
And death once dead, there's no more dying then.