Harry Plunket Greene - Recitals - Partnership With Leonard Borwick

Partnership With Leonard Borwick

During the 1890s (from 1893) Plunket Greene became one of the foremost British performers and interpreters of the German lied, especially of Schubert, Schumann and Brahms. This he did in association with the English pianist Leonard Borwick (the brother of a schoolfriend), a Frankfort pupil of Mme Clara Schumann's noted for his powerful rhythmic delivery, and who (like his fellow-pupil Fanny Davies) was closely involved in the London work of Joachim. Plunket Greene and Borwick formed a musical friendship which lasted until Borwick's death.

Plunket Greene was touring in America in Spring 1893 and wrote to Borwick suggesting they should deliver a song and pianoforte recital in London, unlike the more usual form of miscellaneous concert with a mixed company. The first recital was in St James's Hall in December 1893, followed by a tour throughout the country, and this pattern was repeated for ten years. Borwick played his own programme as well as accompanying, but after a couple of seasons Samuel Liddle came in as accompanist. Pioneering this model of the recital, they gave a lead to that movement in London. Their rules were to maintain musicianship, avoid the glare of publicity, and never to take care of hands or voice.

On January 11, 1895 at St James's Hall, Borwick and Greene gave the first complete public performance of Schumann's Dichterliebe to be heard in London. Their musical partnership was still active in 1913, but the demands of their separate tours became so great by the early 1900s that they agreed not to continue their former recital programme unless it could be done whole-heartedly. Plunket Greene toured especially in the United States, where he considered the audiences especially attentive and appreciative, and in Germany. He also liked northern English audiences better than southern ones, and liked singing to audiences of public schoolboys.