A RECORDING of a work by innovative Scottish pianist composer Ronald Stevenson has been awarded a Swedish Grammy 10 years after his death.
The accolade has been welcomed by his family, who include actor, writer and director Gerda Stevenson, clarsach player Savourna Stevenson and Gordon Stevenson, a luthier.
The recording of the Passacaglia On DSCH was hailed as the Classical Record of the Year at Grammis 2025 last week on the eve of the 10th anniversary of Stevenson’s death. Gerda said it was a “pleasingly fitting” tribute to her father’s talent.
At 85 minutes, the Passacaglia On DSCH is thought to be the longest one-movement piano piece ever composed and has been recorded by some of the world’s top pianists.
“The recording of my father’s work by the brilliant Swedish pianist Peter Jablonski is very special indeed – a worthy winner, I have no doubt, of this Swedish Grammy Award,” Gerda told the Sunday National.
She added: “Jablonski’s performance demonstrates a deep understanding of my father’s compositions and pianism. It is a welcome addition to the growing number of recordings of my father’s work by brilliant musicians internationally, who include the German/Russian pianist Igor Levit, who recently recorded my father’s renowned Passacaglia On DSCH on the Sony label.”
The piece has also been recorded by the legendary John Ogdon, James Willshire and Murray McLachlan. Stevenson also recorded it twice.
The most recent performance of the Passacaglia on DSCH was given last year by Korean pianist, Sinae Lee, the first woman to tackle the mighty solo piano work.
Gerda pointed out that her father’s work had long been of interest internationally and his pieces included a violin concerto commissioned by Yehudi Menuhin.
“The soloist was the brilliant Chinese violinist Hu Kun, conducted by Menuhin himself, with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra at Royal Concert Hall Glasgow,” said Gerda.
Stevenson’s obituary described him as “an arch-internationalist” who embraced “world music” in his own compositions long before the term became fashionable but was still very conscious of being a Scottish composer.
“He was one of the great composer-pianists, a musician in the manner of Liszt, Rachmaninov and, his own personal idol, Paderewski,” said music publisher Martin Anderson in the obituary.
“He was one of the few pianists whose playing was so individual that you could tell who was performing with your eyes closed, and yet he turned his back on the glittering career he could have enjoyed so as to have the time to compose.”
In his lifetime, from his base in West Linton, Stevenson produced a number of large-scale orchestral works, chamber music, hundreds of piano pieces and songs and a huge body of transcriptions.
He became best known for the Passacaglia On DSCH but Anderson said he did not set out to get into the record books.
Born into a working-class family, Stevenson’s talent was evident from an early age and, after winning a place at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester, he graduated with distinction and spent six months in Rome in 1955, studying orchestration with Guido Guerrini at the Conservatorio di Santa Cecilia.
Earlier, as a Marxist and pacifist, he refused national service and was imprisoned, then sent to work as an agricultural labourer from 1951-52.
He settled in West Linton in 1955 with his wife Marjorie, a nurse, where the couple brought up their three children, Gerda, Savourna and Gordon and where he befriended Scots poet Hugh MacDiarmid.
He also spent two years in the early 1960s as a senior lecturer in music at the University of Cape Town but detested the apartheid regime.
Back in the UK, his playing often featured in BBC broadcasts, on the Third Programme and its successor, Radio 3.
“Some virtuoso pianists shout at you, but Stevenson could whisper,” said Anderson.
Click HERE to see a short clip of Igor Levit describing Stevenson’s genius and the complexity of the Passacaglia.
