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The Thurston Connection – English Music for Clarinet and Piano
Arnold BAX (1883-1953)
Clarinet Sonata (1935) [14:04]
Roger FISKE (1910-1987)
Clarinet Sonata (1941) [19:55]
Iain HAMILTON (1922-2000)
Three Nocturnes, Op.6 (1951) [11:24]
Hugh WOOD (b.1932)
Paraphrase on Bird of Paradise, Op.26 (1985) [12:56]
Richard Rodney BENNETT (b.1936)
Duo Concertante (1986) [10:16]
Nicholas Cox (clarinet); Ian Buckle (piano)
rec. August-September 2011, The Friary, Liverpool
BRITISH MUSIC SOCIETY BMS 440CD [68:40]
 
The thread that runs through three of the clarinet pieces in this disc is Frederick ‘Jack’ Thurston. Thurston was, with his colleague and compatriot, Reginald Kell (a very different kind of player tonally and expressively), one of the most admired of British clarinettists. He drew commissions from many composers and gave numerous premiere performances. His influence was all-encompassing. Recordings, and some rare surviving broadcast performances, all attest to his superb qualities as a musician.
 
Thurston gave the premiere of Bax’s Clarinet Sonata in 1935. He was the dedicatee and first performer of Roger Fiske’s sonata in 1941, and Iain Hamilton’s Three Nocturnes a decade later. These are the three works around which the Thurston theme satellites. This recording of Bax’s Sonata is noteworthy because clarinettist Nicholas Cox, Principal Clarinet of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, has gone back to the manuscript to restore Bax’s original phrasing. He also makes a plea for a long-overdue comparative edition of the sonata, which one hopes may be forthcoming. Jack Brymer once said that, as far as Bax was concerned, ‘the more romantic the approach the better’ when it comes to performances of the sonata. Brymer also cautioned that the second of the two movements was tricky, requiring an instrument in the ‘peak of mechanical condition’. There have been many recordings of the Sonata, but this one is highly persuasive. Cox and Ian Buckle relax just a touch more than is common in the Molto moderato first movement, allowing a degree of rubato to make its expressive mark. The result accords with Brymer’s observation that Bax loved hearing the work, and hearing it romantically. Cox’s tone is variegated and warmly communicative, and his articulation is excellent.
 
Roger Fiske is better known as a writer and broadcaster than as a composer. His Sonata is heard here in a premiere recording. It opens in genial fashion, somewhat pastoral in orientation, though more astringent material redirects its course. There’s a bittersweet quality to parts of the variational central movement, as well as some lark-like ascents. It’s a piece as well written for piano as clarinet, and that includes the warm coda in the finale and droll closing figure. Iain Hamilton’s Three Nocturnes are concentrated and elevated examples of his sense of atmosphere and colour, not least in the ‘diabolico’ second with its phantasmagoria tinged with mocking insolence. The last Nocturne exudes a not wholly untroubled quietude.
 
Hugh Wood was a pupil of Hamilton. His ‘Paraphrase on Bird of Paradise’ is in five sections but plays without a break. The narrative and colours, the fugitive reminiscences and reflections, are compelling throughout. Finally Cox and Buckle play Richard Rodney Bennett’s Duo Concertante, as brilliantly extrovert as Wood’s was reflectively interior. It too harbours shadows and tersely quiet passages that brood uneasily. Both the Wood and Bennett pieces were written for Cox.
 
An excellent recording, then, well engineered, and with a booklet that offers everything a listener needs to appreciate a well balanced selection of works.
 
Jonathan Woolf
 
Cox’s tone is variegated and warmly communicative, and his articulation is excellent throughout a well balanced selection.