The movement to bring music of today back into the core of the normal experience of amateur music making, which used to be the norm in earlier times, is gaining force at the close of the Millennium. Thalia Myers' award winning brainchild Spectrum arose from her concern at the dearth of good contemporary piano music which was technically accessible for her students, and deserving of inclusion in recitals. Its runaway success has now begotten a follow-up volume of 30 easier pieces by all the twenty composers who had accepted the earlier commission, plus ten more including Richard Rodney Bennett and John Tavener and many other famous British composers.

Spectrum 2 (ABRSM Publishing £5.95) was unveiled before a large invited audience including most of the contributing composers at Wigmore Hall in May. Thalia Myers' demanding brief was that composers should pare their music down to one or two pages, yet without sacrificing or compromising the essentials of their individual styles. Spectrum 2 explores succinctly many pianistic and notational problems across the gamut of contemporary idioms. Performance of the whole book made for a delightful three-quarter hour's listening, and now all the 50 Spectrum + Spectrum 2 pieces are available on NMC's CD, D057.

Thalia Myers plays with sensitive phrasing, and her attention to detail give some of these little pieces a stature one might not suspect. The recorded sound and presentation are exemplary and this is an important enterprise to have reached fulfilment at this time, when there are signs that amateur musicians might once again be coming into their own.

 Reviewer

Peter Grahame Woolf