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 from £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

William BAINES (1899-1922)
Silverpoints (1920-21) [6:39]
Paradise Gardens (1918-19) [8:29]
Coloured Leaves (1919-20) [8:38]
Twilight Pieces (1921) [7:36]
Tides (1920-21) [5:33]
Seven Preludes (1919) [13:23]
E. J. MOERAN (1894-1950)
Stalham River (1921) [5:16]
The White Mountain (1929) [2:14]
Toccata (1921) [4:40]
Prelude (1935) [2:53]
Berceuse (1935) [2:28]
Bank Holiday (1925) [2:12]
Two Legends (1923) [9:16]
Eric Parkin (piano)
rec. May 1971, Decca Studio 3, West Hampstead, London (Baines); April 1970, St John’s, Smith Square, London (Moeran). ADD
first issued on LP as Lyrita Recorded Edition SRCS 60 (Baines) and a mixed recital of Moeran for cello and piano and solo piano SRCS 42
LYRITA SRCD266 [79.26]



These recordings were made some 35 years ago. At the time of first issue they were revolutionary. The Baines was completely new on the scene. The Moeran had been included with other of the composer’s piano solos on a 1960s vintage mono Lyrita. Those at Wyastone Lee behind the Lyrita rebirth have completely rethought the couplings in their CD reissue schedule. Taking Eric Parkin and some slight stylistic commonalities between the two composers generously brings together most of those two 1970s LPs. This leaves the Moeran cello duos on the shelf for now. The sound is analogue and warm. The digital transfer has not reduced the temperature.
 
The short-lived Yorkshire-born Baines was not entirely an impressionistic miniaturist as his Symphony recorded by a youth orchestra in the Lake District goes to show. Here however it is his piano morceaux that we meet. His Paradise Gardens is adroitly paced by Parkin to draw out the magic and the swirling drama. The recording is a shade colder than the appositely warm smoking jacket haze of the four Silverpoints, the suggestively fey Twilight Pieces or the fifth (Poppies gleaming in the Moonlight) of the Seven Preludes. Valse from Coloured Leaves is more quirkily humorous than we might expect. His grandeur is proclaimed by the final ‘leaf’ Purple Heights – closer perhaps the Medtner than the accustomed Scott-Debussy axis. Tides is an exercise in plangent marine suggestion. The delectably impressionistic Seven Preludes lie somewhere Chopin and Scriabin. The sardonic fury of the Fourth looks towards Prokofiev but the last prelude is sonorous with unmistakable echoes of Rachmaninov at his most toweringly tragic. It is way past time that we had a fully professional recording of the Symphony, the allegedly very Scriabinesque Poem for piano and orchestra and the two tone poems: the Poe-based Isle of the Fey and Thoughtdrift.
 
The Pierrot haze and moonlight is instantly dispelled by the Moeran pieces. Stalham River has some kinship with John Ireland but where Ireland can be emotionally costive Moeran is open to the sky. I have always had a soft spot for The White Mountain with its touching vulnerability. Toccata recalls the stony brilliance of the dramatic pages from Moeran’s Third Rhapsody. Bank Holiday has the exuberance of a Peter Warlock song. Moeran was closely associated with Warlock during the Eynsford years. A Folk-Story forms a diptych with Rune. Each has a Celtic accent with the former even more closely related to the Third Rhapsody. Rune is the closest of the Moeran pieces to the ‘lazy’ swirls and cross-currents of Baines, Bax’s darker solo and duet piano pieces and the sometimes dour ballades of Medtner.
 
The coupling on this disc is apt and generous. If you want a broader swathe of Moeran then go for the ASV disc with Una Hunt or J Martin Stafford’s Ismeron CD in which Parkin reprises his Lyrita studio recordings in digital sound. The latter runs to 79 minutes of Moeran piano solos. Parkin also re-recorded the Baines collection with additional pieces bringing the playing time to circa 73 minutes for Priory and Alan Cuckston mixed various Baines works with Goossens on Swinsty.
 
Good liner notes. Peter J Pirie who was an unjustly overlooked voice in British music literature. Roger Carpenter wrote the biography of Baines which can still be had from the British Music Society but which many years ago was published by Lewis Foreman’s Triad Press.
 
An apt and generous slice of 20th century British piano music magically reflective of two composers one strongly folk-influenced; the other an Art Nouveau impressionist.
 
Rob Barnett

see also a review of this recording and an article on William Baines by John France

Lyrita Catalogue



 


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

 

 

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.