16 October 2023

By Göran R Buckhorn

Alex Wilson second solo piano CD in the Frederick Septimus Kelly Project is now available for pre-order. 

In 2020, Alex Wilson, who studied music at York University and graduated from the Royal College of Music with an MA (distinction), released a solo CD with music by Frederick Septimus Kelly, who many HTBS readers will remember was a brilliant oarsman in the 1900s.

F. S. Kelly stroked Eton’s eight to victory in the Ladies’ Challenge Plate at Henley Royal Regatta in 1899; rowed for Oxford against Cambridge in the 1903 Boat Race (the Dark Blue lost); won the Diamond Sculls at Henley in 1902, 1903 and 1905, the latter year he set a course record that would stand for more than 30 years; won the Wingfields in 1903; took the Grand in 1903, 1904 and 1905; won the Stewards’ in 1906; and rowed in the Leander eight that won the gold medal at the Olympic rowing regatta in Henley in 1908.

Kelly was also a composer. In an article in February 2019, I wrote:

Kelly made his professional debut as a pianist in his birth city, Sydney, Australia, with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra at the Sydney Town Hall on 17 June 1911. He played the Beethoven Piano Concerto No. 4 in G, op.59. He made some other professional performances thereafter, but at the outbreak of the war in 1914, he enlisted in the 63rd Royal Naval Division. When sailing to the Dardanelles with the Hood Battalion, Kelly befriended fellow pianist and composer William Denis Browne and the poet Rupert Brooke, whose most famous lines are from his poem “The Soldier”:

If I should die think only this of me:
That there’s some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England…

The young poet never reached the Dardanelles. En route, he contracted septicaemia after a mosquito bite and died on 23 April 1915. He was buried on the Greek island of Skyros, present were his friends Kelly and Browne. Both Kelly and Browne were wounded at the ill-fated campaign at Gallipoli. While recuperating, Kelly wrote the Elegy for string orchestra in memory of Brooke. Although not fully well, Browne rejoined his unit and was fatally wounded at the Third Battle at Krithia on 4 June 1915. His body was never found. Kelly returned to Gallipoli in July and was among the last soldiers to be evacuated off the Gallipoli Peninsula. He was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross for “conspicuous gallantry” at Gallipoli.

At the end of the Battle of the Somme, Kelly was killed on 13 November 1916, age 35, while leading an attack against enemy lines at Beaucourt-sur-Ancre. He now rests in a grave at Martinsart British Cemetery, Somme.

Now news is coming from England that Alex Wilson’s second CD with F. S. Kelly music is available for pre-order. Wilson will officially launch the CD with concerts in Exeter on 4 November at 1 pm and in Guildford on 7 November at 7.30 pm.

In an email to HTBS, Wilson writes: “This release is a collaboration with the wonderful composer Sadie Harrison, telling Kelly’s fascinating life story in his own words, featuring his piano music and new commissions based on quotes from his diaries and letters.”

The CD is available for pre-order at this link. Alternatively, get your copy at one of Wilson’s launch concerts, in Southernhay Church, Exeter on 4 November (click here for info), or PATS Studio One, University of Surrey on 7 November (click here for info).  

The CD will be released on the Prima Facie label, click here or here to listen to samples.