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JOHN POWELL (1882, Richmond, Virginia --1963, Charlottesville), was a major pianist and a respected composer of, along with many smaller works, a symphony, a violin concerto, a piano concerto, an orchestral suite, two string quartets, two violin and piano sonatas, two collections of folk-song settings for voice and piano, four piano sonatas, three piano suites, and one widely-known work, Rhapsodie Negre (1918) for piano and orchestra.
Powell's father was headmaster at a private school for girls; his mother, a staff member there. His sister, Elizabeth Powell Brockenbrough, became his first piano teacher. He later studied with a Liszt pupil, Frederic Charles Hahr, and then, in Vienna, with Theodor Leschetizky, having meanwhile graduated from the University of Virginia in two years as a Phi Beta Kappa.
During the years preceding World War I he centered his career in London, where he numbered many distinguished persons among his friends, including the Lord and Lady Plymouth, the Hon. Arthur Balfour, the Virginia-born Lady Nancy Astor, and the novelist Joseph Conrad.
After the war broke out, Powell returned to the United States to continue his concertizing and composing. Inspired by Conrad's Heart of Darkness, he completed Rhapsodie Negre, which was an instant success, and with which he toured Europe as soloist with the New York Symphony under Walter Damrosch.
In 1936, he and his wife retired to an estate near Charlottesville, where he finished the folksong-based Symphony in A (1945). His numerous friends in Richmond purchased for him his former home, so that he could return there and give lecture-recitals and master classes for the musical community.
SONATA TEUTONICA, OP. 24 (1913) took four years to compose, but its history goes back to the turn of the century: in one of his lecture-recitals, Powell traced its beginnings to his German literature courses at the University of Virginia. The sonata represents not only a solution to formidable structural problems, but also an epic salute to the Romantic ideal. It was premiered by Benno Moiseiwitsch in London in 1914, where it was termed "a powerful piece . . . extremely well constructed, intensely vigorous and - in its last movement - concise, straightforward and virile" (Sunday Times). Powell played it in New York in 1917 and several times thereafter, but it was performed by only one other pianist - Aline Van Barentzen (Richmond, 1967) - before Roy Hamlin Johnson's 1975 revision afforded the possibility of reducing its length from more than an hour to around 43 minutes.
Reviews of Johnson's 1977 CRI recording supported the value of an abridgement aimed at establishing a place for the Sonata Teutonica in the modern piano repertoire. The work was praised as "...extremely well written ...quite beautiful" (The New York Times, Ericson), "...a winner ...grand in conception and beautifully worked out" (The New Yorker, Sargeant), "...reminiscent of Liszt in his more effective moments ...[with] a grandeur and almost orchestral scope and sound" (High Fidelity Magazine, Lowens), "...logically and coherently organized, with many moments for dramatic digital display" (The Baltimore Sun, Croche), "...a real beauty ...a massive work squarely in the romantic vein and the grand tradition." (The New Records, Shupp). The revision was published by Oxford University Press in 1983.
Powell himself wrote the program notes for the first performance (but used the pseudonym "Richard Brockwell," derived from "Brockenbrough" and "Powell"). He explained that the word "Teutonica" was intended to embrace not so much a race as a type of mind and character (Leonardo, Spinoza, Kant, Hegel, Goethe, Beethoven) that was motivated by a "sense of Oneness." This sense is summed up in the motto on the sonata1s title page: "The Ocean is in the Drop as the Drop is in the Ocean."
The sonata's three movements, he continues, respectively handle the subject from the standpoint of the ideal (the "emotional effect of the sense of Oneness"), the temperamental (the "universal Teutonic temperament"), and the actual ("the triumphant result in the world of outer activity of this principle acting upon this nature"). He points out that the thematic material of all the movements "is often fundamentally identical [which] gives great possibilities for unity of the whole."
The first movement is in sonata form, in which the "Theme of Oneness" resembles the beginning of the folksong, Shenandoah, and the final portion of the second theme comes from the German folksong, O alte Burschenherrlichkeit (also the principal theme of the next movement). A "victory" motive, which interrupts the progress of the development section, forms the basis for the principal subject of the last movement.
The second movement is really three movements (variations, scherzo, and andante); but since all three segments are actually variations on the same theme, "there is no lack of unity, great as the diversity of the treatment maybe."
The finale is a rondo which introduces a March Theme and a Chorale Theme - based on the motto, frisch, froh, fromm, frei (fresh, joyous, pious, free) of the Turnverein to which Powell belonged during his student days in Vienna. It also recapitulates the first Oneness Theme, and the German folksong, and, with suitable transformations of these reaches a mighty and majestic close.
"Brockwell" adds that the range and subtlety of this work might have given it symphonic scope; however, when faultlessly played in a small hall, he expects its pianistic sound will "rival the color and power of even a large orchestra."
Powell began SONATE PSYCHOLOGIQUE, OP. 15 in Richmond in 1904, the year his mother died; he completed it in Vienna a year and a half later, after resuming his studies with Leschetizky. In 1908, it was dedicated "To Warrington Dawson" (a boyhood acquaintance and the founder of The United Press of America in Paris), who had been of great help in publicizing the budding concert pianist1s all-important debut recitals in Berlin, Vienna, Paris, and London. Along with its dedication the piece received its French title, which was originally given in German, as was its motto "On the text of St. Paul: 'The Wages of Sin is Death.'"
Letters to his mother that Powell wrote from Vienna include discussions about St. Paul, and descriptions of Richard Strauss conducting "Death and Transfiguration" and of Rachmaninoff performing his "beautiful new [Second] Concerto." In addition to these evident influences, we have Powell in 1948 terming Psychologique "Lisztian."
The programmatic movement headings are consistent with Powell1s personal preoccupation with his subject: I. Kampf [Struggle]; II. Nocturne, Hingebung [Resignation] III. Scherzo diabolique, "In den Klauen" ["In the Clutches"]; IV. Thanatopsis [Contemplation of death], tempo di Marcia Funebre. Particularly striking here are the first movement's Straussian second theme, the echoes of Rachmaninoff in the middle section of the second movement, the pianistic figurations of the Scherzo, and the song-like Trio and brilliant Coda of the Funeral March.
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