MusicWeb International One of the most grown-up review sites around 2024
60,000 reviews
... and still writing ...

Search MusicWeb Here Acte Prealable Polish CDs
 

Presto Music CD retailer
 
Founder: Len Mullenger                                    Editor in Chief:John Quinn             


CD REVIEW

Some items
to consider

new MWI
Current reviews

old MWI
pre-2023 reviews

paid for
advertisements

Acte Prealable Polish recordings

Forgotten Recordings
Forgotten Recordings
All Forgotten Records Reviews

TROUBADISC
Troubadisc Weinberg- TROCD01450

All Troubadisc reviews


FOGHORN Classics

Alexandra-Quartet
Brahms String Quartets

All Foghorn Reviews


All HDTT reviews


Songs to Harp from
the Old and New World


all Nimbus reviews



all tudor reviews


Follow us on Twitter


Editorial Board
MusicWeb International
Founding Editor
   
Rob Barnett
Editor in Chief
John Quinn
Contributing Editor
Ralph Moore
Webmaster
   David Barker
Postmaster
Jonathan Woolf
MusicWeb Founder
   Len Mullenger


Buy through MusicWeb for £11.00 postage paid World-wide. Try it on Sale or Return
You may prefer to pay by Sterling cheque or Euro notes to avoid PayPal. Contact for details

Musicweb Purchase button

 

David WYNNE (1900-1983)
Piano Sonata No. 2 (1957) [14:26]
String Quartet No. 3 (1966) [19:33]
Ian PARROTT (b.1916)

String Quartet No. 4 (1963) [15:35]
David HARRIES (1933-2003)

Piano Quintet Op. 20 (1964) [12:55]
Eric Harrison (piano); Alfredo Wang (violin); James Barton (violin); Frederick Riddle (viola); George Isaac (cello)
rec. March 1971, Decca Studio No. 3, West Hampstead, London. ADD
recorded under auspices of Welsh Arts Council
LYRITA SRCD.284 [58:19]

Experience Classicsonline

 


The four works here are old favourites from a cobwebbed corner of the Lyrita catalogue. All appeared on LP SRCS52. The unifying theme - if you really must have one - is that all three are Welsh composers by birth and or blood. The chamber works included are from the 1960s.

Wynne held various teaching posts in Wales. His music made an impact when his String Quartet No. 1 came out in 1945. He was championed by Michael Tippett. His influences include Schoenberg and Bartók. The worklist is substantial and includes four symphonies (1952, 1955, 1963, 1983), the fourth being incomplete. There are also five string quartets and various sonatas including five piano sonatas.

Wynne's Second Piano Sonata is in three movements. It is dedicated to and was premiered by Eiluned Davies - who recorded the piano music of Bernard van Dieren for the British Music Society - only ever issued on cassette. The composer's description of the music is right on the money – "basically modal with atonal overtones". Parts of it are quite velvety but the finale has a jazzy Bartókian muscular ebullience. Wynne's Third Quartet is in one atonal movement. It is tough going - more obdurate than the sonata.

The music of Ian Parrott will reveal itself in years to come as that of an imaginative master. His compact Fourth Quartet is in five little movements. They are here distinctly tracked which makes study that much easier. The most instantly memorable movement is the impulsive torrent of the Allegro con fuoco. The other movements are hauntingly done in an idiom tiptoeing along the DMZ between tonality and atonality. It is the most approachable of the works here. The light-handed seriousness of the final catchy and skipping epilogue sounds a little like Rózsa and a little like Tippett. The work ends with resonance and resin.

Parrott who studied privately with Benjamin Dale has written five symphonies (1946, 1960, 1966, 1978, 1979) and concertos for violin (1945), piano (1945), cor anglais (1956) and cello (1961) not to mention ones for trombone and wind band (1967) and a concertino for two guitars and chamber orchestra (1973). Amid a tightly thronged catalogue there are also five string quartets: 1946, 1956, 1957, 1963, 1994. He also has books to his credit on Elgar, Warlock and Cyril Scott.

The parents of Portsmouth-born David Harries were Welsh. He made his home in Wales. There are two string quartets, a symphony, a piano concerto, a clarinet quintet and two piano sonatas. This succinct three movement Piano Quintet is said to share its world with the Violin Concerto written in the same year. The music is fundamentally tonal but with a 12 note spin. The music moves between syncopated angularity and velveteen disconsolate musing - try the central Lento.

Paul Conway does the honours with a lucid and detailed liner-note. As usual the only hard information in this review is shamelessly drawn from Mr Conway's writings.

A challenging but not unappetising collection of Welsh music from the 1960s.

Rob Barnett

Also Available

SRCD.302 Frank Bridge String Quartets Nos. 3 and 4
SRCD.2271 John Ireland Chamber Music

 

 

 


Advertising on
Musicweb


Donate and keep us afloat

 

New Releases

Naxos Classical
All Naxos reviews

Chandos recordings
All Chandos reviews

Hyperion recordings
All Hyperion reviews

Foghorn recordings
All Foghorn reviews

Troubadisc recordings
All Troubadisc reviews



all Bridge reviews


all cpo reviews

Divine Art recordings
Click to see New Releases
Get 10% off using code musicweb10
All Divine Art reviews


All Eloquence reviews

Lyrita recordings
All Lyrita Reviews

 

Wyastone New Releases
Obtain 10% discount

Subscribe to our free weekly review listing

 

 


EXPLORE MUSICWEB INTERNATIONAL

Making a Donation to MusicWeb

Writing CD reviews for MWI

About MWI
Who we are, where we have come from and how we do it.

Site Map

How to find a review

How to find articles on MusicWeb
Listed in date order

Review Indexes
   By Label
      Select a label and all reviews are listed in Catalogue order
   By Masterwork
            Links from composer names (eg Sibelius) are to resource pages with links to the review indexes for the individual works as well as other resources.

Themed Review pages

Jazz reviews

 

Discographies
   Composer
      Composer surveys
   National
      Unique to MusicWeb -
a comprehensive listing of all LP and CD recordings of given works
.
Prepared by Michael Herman

The Collector’s Guide to Gramophone Company Record Labels 1898 - 1925
Howard Friedman

Book Reviews

Complete Books
We have a number of out of print complete books on-line

Interviews
With Composers, Conductors, Singers, Instumentalists and others
Includes those on the Seen and Heard site

Nostalgia

Nostalgia CD reviews

Records Of The Year
Each reviewer is given the opportunity to select the best of the releases

Monthly Best Buys
Recordings of the Month and Bargains of the Month

Comment
Arthur Butterworth Writes

An occasional column

Phil Scowcroft's Garlands
British Light Music articles

Classical blogs
A listing of Classical Music Blogs external to MusicWeb International

Reviewers Logs
What they have been listening to for pleasure

Announcements

 

Community
Bulletin Board

Give your opinions or seek answers

Reviewers
Past and present

Helpers invited!

Resources
How Did I Miss That?

Currently suspended but there are a lot there with sound clips


Composer Resources

British Composers

British Light Music Composers

Other composers

Film Music (Archive)
Film Music on the Web (Closed in December 2006)

Programme Notes
For concert organizers

External sites
British Music Society
The BBC Proms
Orchestra Sites
Recording Companies & Retailers
Online Music
Agents & Marketing
Publishers
Other links
Newsgroups
Web News sites etc

PotPourri
A pot-pourri of articles

MW Listening Room
MW Office

Advice to Windows Vista users  
Questionnaire    
Site History  
What they say about us
What we say about us!
Where to get help on the Internet
CD orders By Special Request
Graphics archive
Currency Converter
Dictionary
Magazines
Newsfeed  
Web Ring
Translation Service

Rules for potential reviewers :-)
Do Not Go Here!
April Fools




Return to Review Index

Untitled Document


Reviews from previous months
Join the mailing list and receive a hyperlinked weekly update on the discs reviewed. details
We welcome feedback on our reviews. Please use the Bulletin Board
Please paste in the first line of your comments the URL of the review to which you refer.