The third generation included Gordon Jacob (b. 1895), Edmund Rubbra (b. 1901), William Walton (b. 1902), Lennox Berkeley (b. 1903), Alan Rawsthome (1905-1971), Benjamin Britten (b. 1913), and at this stage a whole group of Welsh composers helped to sweep the movement on to its present flood. To this group Mervyn Roberts belongs, some of his contemporaries being David Wynne (b. 1900), Grace Williams (b. 1906), Daniel Jones (b. 1912) and Denis ApIvor (b. 1916).

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The Honourable Mervyn Roberts was born in 1906 at Abergele, the youngest son of the first Lord Clwyd and brother of the present Lord Clwyd. Like Parry and Vaughan Williams, he received a generous measure of education: at Gresham School, Holt; at Trinity College, Cambridge (where he did not read Music but took an honours degree in English and History); and at the Royal College of Music, where he studied theory, composition and orchestration with R. O. Morris and Gordon Jacob and piano with Arthur Alexander, gaining several diplomas in music. R. O. Morris, whom he regarded as "... one of the greatest teachers produced by this country", generated his desire to devote himself chiefly to composition.

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On completing his studies at the R.C.M., he lived mostly in Wales, composing and doing musical journalism, except for a period in the Civil Service during the last war. The schools at which he taught later were Clarendon School, Abergele (1953-1956) and Christ's Hospital, Horsham (1963-67).

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The piano has held an important position in his life and, as a composer, he has a predilection for it. His feeling for the instrument was fostered early by his first piano teacher, Elsie Owen, daughter of Luther Owen of Llanelly, a musician well known in South Wales. Although chiefly a violinist, she was also a pianist and, in the composer's own words, "... her teaching was a potent factor" in his musical development. All along the line he was fortunate in having excellent piano teachers; between Elsie Owen and Arthur Alexander there was Walter Greatorex at Gresham School. His marriage, later, with the accomplished pianist Eileen Easom proved an incentive for writing two-piano works, which he and his wife performed publicly together. It was his Piano Sonata, composed in 1934, revised in 1949 and first performed by Helen Perkin, which won him the Edwin Evans Prize in 1950. The three judges were themselves experts in piano-writing – Bax, Ireland and Rawsthorne.

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When the Piano Sonata was published by Novello in 1951 it was, I believe, the only one in print by a living Welsh composer. Now there are a considerable number, but none more elegantly pianistic.

 

This full-scale Sonata, Four Preludes, the Sonatina, Summer's Day and Wind of Autumn, all published within a few years of one another, manifest a true and intimate understanding of the instrument and a love of its cantabile rather than its percussive nature; all are rewarding to play.

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From the composer's chronological position with regard to the renaissance movement of British music as a whole, it was by no means predetermined what his musical style would be, since the composers of his generation showed a considerable divergence of style. Many were influenced by the continental giants of the turn of the century – Bartók, Stravinsky and Schönberg. But not so Roberts. Although the influences of certain French and Russian composers are discernible, notably those of Ravel and Rakhmaninov, it is clear from his idiom that he has firm roots in British soil. Some of the previous generation of British composers, who themselves had assimilated European romantic trends, cast their spell upon him. Indeed, he recently wrote: "It is to the works of Delius, Ireland, Bax and Bridge that I most often turn for solace and refreshment".

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An avowed traditionalist, but never an imitator, he writes with the conviction and eloquence of one completely at ease with his idiom and free to give form to his vision. A lively musical imagination is brought to bear on every detail of a work.

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His piano music falls into two main categories: solos for concert performance and two-piano works. There are also a few pieces specially written for educational purposes, such as the five easy pieces, entitled The Day Before Yesterday, published by Joseph Williams in 1964.

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In the first category, the Sonata is the work of largest dimensions. The lontano quasi Corni opening of its first movement sets the romantic mood of the first subject, a finely arched melody with richly contrapuntal accompaniment. Inherent in the tranquillo second subject is the dynamism which drives through the passionate development; and the recapitulation is modified in a masterly way. As Busoni did in his Sonatina seconda, Roberts explores the lower registers of the piano with sonorous effect in many parts of this movement (vide Ex. 1). A hint of its second subject appears again, both in the lyrical middle movement and in the alla marcia second subject of the brilliant last movement. Pianists of calibre, able to produce a lustrous cantabile and to control the tonal balance of the work's complex textures, would find it a challenge to their skill.