MusicWeb International One of the most grown-up review sites around 2023
Approaching 60,000 reviews
and more.. and still writing ...

Search MusicWeb Here Acte Prealable Polish CDs
 

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


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

REVIEW


Advertising on
Musicweb


Donate and keep us afloat

 

New Releases

Naxos Classical
All Naxos 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

 

 

 

alternatively
CD: MDT AmazonUK AmazonUS
BIS Downloads available from eclassical.com

Songs of Yesterday
York BOWEN (1884 – 1961)
Sonatina for recorder and piano, Op. 121 (1947) [11:50]
Edmund RUBBRA (1901 – 1986)
Sonatina for treble recorder and harpsichord, Op. 128 (1965) [11:37]
Cyril SCOTT (1879 – 1970)
Aubade for treble recorder and piano (1952)
Herbert MURRILL (1909 – 1952)
Sonata for treble recorder and harpsichord (1950) [7:27]
Walter LEIGH (1905 – 1942)
Sonatina for treble recorder and piano (1939) [10:06]
Edmund RUBBRA
Passacaglia sopra ‘Plusieurs regrets’, Op. 113 (1962) [4:54]
Lennox BERKELEY (1903 – 1989)
Sonatina for treble recorder and piano, Op. 13 (1939) [10:56]
Dan Laurin (recorder), Anna Paradiso (harpsichord and piano)
rec. July 2009, Nybrokajen 11 (the former Academy of Music), Stockholm, Sweden
BIS–CD-1785 [67:27]

Experience Classicsonline



To those of us who started listening to music in the late 1950s and early 1960s the name Carl Dolmetsch (1911 – 1997) is still a name that evokes memories. His father Arnold was one of the central figures in the early music movement and Carl became the first recorder player of some importance during the 20th century. Baroque music was important to him – that’s where there was a repertoire for his instrument – but he also felt that he needed contemporary music for his instrument. When he gave his first recital in Wigmore Hall in February 1939 – together with Joseph Saxby, who was his musical partner for sixty years – there was not yet any contemporary music available and so he performed a composition of his own. Music journalist Manuel Jacobs, who was already an enthusiast for the recorder then set to work to try to persuade some young composers to write for the recorder. One of the fruits of this effort was Lennox Berkeley’s Sonatina, which he included in his next recital at Wigmore in November the same year. This work and a good handful of other works commissioned by Dolmetsch are included in this programme, played by the Swedish virtuoso Dan Laurin, by many considered to be the foremost player of the instrument in his generation.

The music here is generally agreeable and accessible. It may be regarded as sacrilege to reveal that my wife and I on several occasions have played the disc as wall-paper music during our Friday and Saturday dinners, which in itself is proof of its versatility. You savour the first drop of the dry martini together with the melodious and entertaining first movement of Bowen’s Sonatina. You slump back for a handful of peanuts during the relaxed and dreamy Andante tranquillo and you are alerted to stand up and walk into the dining-room by the sprightly virtuosic Allegro giocoso. A really charming composition and you are already in high spirits when you sit down at the table.

The slightly dry neo-classicist Sonatina by Rubbra goes well with the white wine and the raw spiced salmon, an ancient Scandinavian first course. The use of harpsichord as accompanying instrument clearly relates the music to olden days, most obviously in the final variations on a song by 16th century composer Vazquez.

Cyril Scott’s Lotus Land – in Fritz Kreisler’s famous recording – has long been a favourite piece while clearing the table and bringing in the main course - the kitchen staff is free on Friday and Saturday evenings – so what is more natural than using the impressionist and slightly oriental Aubade for the same purpose.

Herbert Murrill’s Sonata is not the long and serious work one would expect as a contrast to the more light-hearted sonatinas previously heard. No, this is the shortest composition on this disc – bar Rubbra’s Passacaglia – and, truth to tell, it is so charming and uplifting that we just have to wait for some minutes and listen. The steak is too hot anyway! A delicate first movement, a light and airy and swift-moving second movement, nervously fluttering, a calm and beautiful third movement with a feeling of folk-song, though the liner-notes refer to plainchant. There we are. The concluding gigue-like Allegro non troppo, only 1:13, is a signal to start eating.

And there, I’m afraid, interest wavers a bit when we reach Walter Leigh’s Sonatina, maybe due to the juicy sirloin and the aroma of the claret, but we do appreciate, anyway, the contemplative Larghetto, which seems to be the musical centre of this piece. Leigh, I remember to tell my wife, wrote this music in 1939 but it was not performed in the November recital. It was published in 1944 but then Leigh was already dead, having been killed in action in North Africa in 1942. We do, however, appreciate Rubbra’s Passacaglia from 1962. It’s rhythmically and harmonically the boldest of these compositions and a splendid intellectual repose. Then it’s time for a second helping, accompanied by Berkeley’s Sonatina, that pioneering work from 1939. A disciple of Nadia Boulanger, Berkeley was rather French in style. The piece boasts a central Adagio that glides nobly and gently and is followed by an elegant Allegro moderato, rather in the Poulenc mould.

End of disc and end of dinner. No, not quite. There is dessert to follow but it is normally accompanied by the sounds of silence.

Songs of Yesterday is a valuable document and a tribute to one of the great instrumentalists of the 20th century. The compositions may not be barnstormers – well, Rubbra’s Passacaglia has those extra ingredients that make you sit up, but the rest is highly attractive and the playing is superb. Fans of recorder music will want the disc, no doubt, but those who still regard the recorder as a beginners’ instrument before changing over to ‘real’ instruments should definitely hear this and presumably many will revise their opinion.

Göran Forsling

 

 

 

 

 

 


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






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.