AVAILABILITY
www.divine-art.com
This is another of
The Divine Art’s intriguing delves into
the repertoire. All are first recordings
and repay interest. Leighton’s Prelude,
Hymn and Toccata was written in 1987
and embeds, pretty well unrecognisably,
Abide With Me in the central movement.
The opening movement employs double-dotting
heavily and the effect of this, the
vaguely DSCH effect it promotes and
the ensuing bell grounds are all highly
evocative. In the disguised hymnal of
the second movement it is the intense
oscillation, quiet and intense, that
gives it a distinctive drive. The close,
meanwhile, is elliptical and still.
The palate is cleansed in the last movement
– syncopated and with some jazzy lines
tracing through it. Though Leighton’s
work is one of strong intensity the
bulk of pieces here are actually by
Anthony Hedges. His Three Explorations
(2002), which gives the disc its title,
are representative of his best work
in its sense of romanticism deliberately
constrained by means of formal concision.
The slow second movement for example
is an extremely fine piece of composition
in its seemingly improvised compression
and the finale (Flowing) is full of
triumphant drive.
His 1974 Sonata is
in three movements and though, as Hedges
makes clear in his notes, it’s not cast
in traditional sonata form his structural
acuity and sense of emotive pull are
such that we always feel that we know
where we are. The free flowing second
movement hints at March themes and baroque
features amidst the veil of Scriabin’s
influence and the finale is one that
immediately lightens the texture whilst
simultaneously – and triumphantly –
reconciling earlier themes in powerful
proximity. A stirring and notable work,
this. His Five Aphorisms are brief and
incisive pieces; the second is flecked
with treble sonorities and the fourth,
a Lento, contrasts static chords with
perkier motifs and is entertainingly
mobile.
The Japanese Suite
of Holst is here in the arrangement
by Berlin-born Vally Lasker, who joined
the staff of St Paul’s Girls’ School
in 1907 and stayed for fifty-five years.
She was also an exceptional help to
Holst, who was Director of Music there
from 1905 until his death, not least
as occasional amanuensis. The separate
piano parts of the suite are in Lasker’s
hand though it’s conjectural whether
these parts were copied from Holst’s
own two-piano score (as with the Planets)
but, in any case, no such score has
survived. The Dance of the Marionette
is genuinely aerial and balletic and
the Dance under the Cherry Tree has,
by contrast, the formal allusiveness
of a haiku. But it’s the Prelude (Song
of the Fishermen) that touches the deepest
nerve – a really beautiful folk song,
full of the most plangent delicacy.
Appropriately we also have Stevenson’s
Two Chinese Folk-Songs of which the
Song of the Crab-fisher is ebullience
itself, full of life.
The excellence of the
recording serves only to enhance this
production, which has the advantage
of authoritative notes (especially from
Hedges and Stevenson). There are significant
things here – not always easily prised
open, it’s true, but all the more valuable
for that very reason.
Jonathan Woolf
Anthony Goldstone * and Caroline Clemmow (piano
duet, unless otherwise marked) 
