Sheetmusicplus Receipt
On the other hand maybe it is appropriate that this shipment took so long. This centerpiece of this shipment included 5 volumes of the collected piano works of John Ireland, a British composer more familiar to me by name than by his music. In college I read through Ireland’s Sonata in F Minor, and years later I checked out a copy of that work from the New York Public Library. The Sonata is a pretty good piece. I also had a copy of “The Island Spell,” a lighter program piece.
The delay in receiving this shipment seems appropriate, though, because it took me about 20 years to place the order.
Robert Helps was a friend of mine from back home. Bob was a great pianist, a generous human being, and a pivotal talent in piano music of the middle to late 20th century. In college I worked at the school radio station. Using some money from the classical record budget I booked Robert Helps to play a recital at the school, but unfortunately he got bitten by a tick, resulting in a nasty infection that caused one of his hands to swell to the size of a pumpkin (as he described it). The recital was cancelled, and since I graduated soon after we could never re-schedule.
Bob once helped me out by sight-reading the piano reduction of the orchestra part for Tchaikowsky’s Piano Concerto #1. I auditioned for some competition with that piece and when I failed to advance to the next round Bob was vigorously sympathetic to my plight, saying I’d been screwed by the organizers and thrust into an impossible situation. To be honest, though, I can’t remember details of the controversy, nor can I remember anything in particular about the competition. I always thought piano competitions were pretty stupid, though, so it doesn’t surprise me that I put the incident out of my mind.
About 20 years ago, at his home in Tampa, Bob Helps implored me to check out the piano music of John Ireland. His eyes gleamed when he spoke of Ireland’s scores, although with the passage of time I can no longer remember exactly which scores interested him most. If his excitement was tempered by anything it was by the fact that he seemed to regret missing out on John Ireland’s music for so long. This was in 1990. I was just out of college, and the only Ireland piece I knew at the time was the Sonata in F Minor. I had explored a fair amount of British music, this research being ancillary to my primary interest in the music of Kaikhosru Sorabji, a British iconoclast whose piss-and-bile essays and ivory tower criticisms seemed entertaining to me at the time. John Ireland’s name occasionally rose up from Sorabji’s writing, for he and Sorabji mingled in the same social and musical circles, but aside from the F Minor Sonata that was about all I knew of John Ireland.
I think Bob might have singled out Ireland’s Piano Concerto for particular praise. I did not order nor do I own a copy of the Piano Concerto, but I know it to be a quality piece, stronger and gutsier than a lot of Ireland’s solo piano pieces. Bob Helps could not believe Ireland’s music was not better known or appreciated and, by extension (because I trusted his instincts), neither could I.
Bob always found energies to explore unknown and new-to-him composers. He introduced me to a set of completely unknown piano pieces by Henri Duparc, a composer known for his songs and not much else. In return I thinkI introduced Bob to some of the Russian futurists, composers like Arthur Lourie and Nikolai Roslavets whose works trickled in to American conservatories and concert halls during the late 1980s. I have slight misgivings about claiming I introduced Robert Helps to these composers, since I find it hard to imagine any composer with whom Helps was unfamiliar.
I first heard Bob in concert while I was in high school. It must have been 1983 when I saw him play the 24 Chopin Etudes in concert. This was the first time I ever heard Chopin’s “Double Thirds” etude, Op. 25 No. 6. The visceral sound made by Robert Helps tearing up and down the keyboard, searing the Etude like he was torching the hall with a flame thrower, left me utterly dumbfounded. To me, at 14 years old, those combinations of double thirds seemed nothing short of impossible. Bob Helps ripped that notion out of my mind.
Years later I would read accounts of Vladimir Horowitz’s concerts, in which audience members felt like they were in the presence of a demon, or a force that could overwhelm them. As much as I wish I could have had the experience of seeing Horowitz in concert I can at least say that I, too, know that feeling. I was in the presence of something so awesome to me that it crossed into the realm of terrifying. I clutched the armrests of the seat in which I sat, as if the concert hall was taking off like an airplane, and I held my breath for what seemed like the duration of that Etude.
I always intended to follow Bob’s advice and explore the piano music of John Ireland. So what if it took me 20 years to do it?
The other items on this Sheet Music Plus order include York Bowen’s Sonata, Op. 72; the piano sonatas of John Field; and some Nocturnes by Francis Poulenc. That’s all good stuff, too, though I’ve had little time to adventure through those scores.
This purchase, by the way, is one which probably would have been better made at a retail store, versus self-serve online ordering. I paid $40.95 each for 5 volumes of John Ireland piano music. This even includes Volume 5 priced the same as the other volumes ($40.95) when that slim volume contains a single work and about one-third as many pages as the others. Had I done better hunting I might have found that the exact same series of scores was available through the same web site for significantly less money. Volumes 1-4 go for $12 less per copy, and Volume 5 goes for $19 less, meaning I threw away $67 on the purchase of these scores. This link illustrates my point:
www.sheetmusicplus.com/search?q=john+ireland+collected+piano+works
The more expensive copies are priced at a premium because they generally ship more quickly than the cheaper copies. The cheaper copies usually ship from Sheet Music Plus “Within 3 to 4 weeks”, while the higher-priced copies usually go out “Within 2 to 3 weeks.” This puts a $12 premium on getting these volumes one or two weeks earlier. Under this pricing model it almost seems like items available for immediate shipment should be given away for free.
By paying $67 extra I should have gotten these copies earlier than if I bought the cheaper copies, but as I mentioned earlier, this delivery only reached me after a record-breaking 2 months in transit, a USPS delay which I don’t blame on Sheet Music Plus but which nevertheless erased any benefit I might have imagined myself to have gained from the higher prices.
Ah, well, it’s only money.
Does this mean I will go to a retail store next time, one where I can trust the sales reps to understand these pricing schemes and possibly find me the best deal?
I think it does.
