The day I listened to this disc for the first time, I received a catalogue
from one of the sheet music dealers I buy from. This particular list
featured 20th century British piano music - including a couple of the pieces
recorded here as it happened. Ignoring the 'big' names even
the first few pages featured works by Arthur Alexander, Ernest Austin,
William Baines, Bainton, Baldwyn, Barratt, Bath, Benbow, Benedict, Besley,
Burrows and Butler. All of which served to underline that there is a vast
amount of music of similar style and period and quality still waiting to be
unearthed. This begs the question whether Cooke deserves such a disc as this
before any of those named above. To be honest, I am not sure for all its
merits it is 'better' than much of the above. However, I
suppose any 'forgotten' composer needs the passionate advocacy
of a performer who believes that composer to be a special case. In Duncan
Honeybourne, Cooke has found just such an advocate and in EM Records a
company willing to promote the project in the best possible light
technically and production-wise. Recently, I have had several discs to
review where the inherent quality of the music-making has been marred by
poor presentation. This disc is a model of its kind with an informative,
interesting and extensive liner (in English only) making the best possible
case for Cooke, his life and works.
From this liner you gain a strong sense of a man fulfilled, living a rich
diverse and interesting life. From talented student at the Royal Academy of
Music, to performer, broadcaster, teacher and composer - as well as
fulfilling a role as parish priest - to contented great old age. Indeed, I
do not feel it is too much of an intuitive leap to hear this diversity and
essential contentment in the music. All of Cooke's works performed
here are receiving their premiere recordings. Honeybourne makes the valid
point that they are well-conceived for the keyboard and they range from the
big-boned Romantic Gothic Prelude which opens the disc to pastel
miniatures such as Tree-top Lullaby [No.1 of the 'Over the Hills
Suite']. All of the music is easily and instantly appealing and
all the more so because Honeybourne plays them with total conviction and no
little skill. So the large gestures of the Gothic Prelude are
dispatched with virtuosic panache and the miniatures tenderly caressed with
real affection. If I had one observation it would be that I did wonder if
some of Cooke's 'filling-in' figurations in the bigger
works have more than a hint of generic pianistic tricks. As though to keep
the energy and momentum going a couple of bars are filled with double-handed
broken octaves or leaping arpeggiations. Much as I enjoyed those pieces I
did find it harder to hear an individual musical personality - the
real Cooke. Curiously, the simpler the pieces and the more direct
the utterance the more I felt that those works contained the essence of
Cooke. Honeybourne mentions the charming High Marley Rest as his
introduction to Cooke's music and in many ways it encapsulates the
best of his work. Simple without being simplistic there is a real sense that
it has been written for the simple pleasure of its creation - there is no
great ego at work here just a craftsman delighting in the exercise of his
Art.
The warmth and wit shines through in the delightful Bargain
Basement suite too. In many ways I enjoyed this suite most of all the
music on the disc. Though utterly unpretentious it has a genuine wit and
plays to Cooke's strengths of gentle pastiche and miniature
tone-painting. Quite deliberately it teeters on the edge of salon cliché but
it such a knowing way that it avoids sounding simply trite. In the larger
scale works where Cooke falls back on generic gestures I think there is the
risk that some of the music becomes sub-Rachmaninov out of the Warsaw
Concerto. The two collections of three pieces; Over the Hills
and Three Pieces (1929) are particularly winning. Over the
Hills is dedicated to 'all my grandpupils' and has the
sense of pedagogic simplicity about it that challenges the musical
sensitivity of young players while staying firmly within their technical
compass. Honeybourne is especially successful at playing all of the music on
this disc of similar 'simplicity' with a perfectly judged
directness and artlessness. Likewise, in works such as Haldon Hills
and Meadowsweet you feel lies the essence of the man. Few would
argue that the bulk of this music is as significant or challenging as the
best written by Cooke's British contemporaries from Bax to Bridge,
Ireland or even York Bowen. Then again I do not think that Cooke wrote it
intending it to 'compete' with those composers - that being
the case it perfectly fulfils its role as beautifully crafted deeply
personal expressions of a private vision.
Running to some seventy-six minutes this is a generously filled disc
although I am not sure what the presence of the Holst or Vaughan Williams
works is meant to add. The Holst Nocturne is interesting as much of
being thoroughly un-Holstian in its impressionism as anything else. The
Vaughan Williams Little Piano Book is another pedagogic work but of
very limited interest indeed except for showing the composer trying his hand
at two-part inventions in the style of his beloved Bach. I assume there was
some other Cooke available or if not why not fill the disc with another of
the 'forgotten' composers listed above? As previously
mentioned, this is a beautifully presented production with interesting
essays and photographs simply but clearly presented in an attractive
booklet. The engineering is fine too - if I was being very picky I might
suggest the piano is recorded a tad too close for my own personal preference
but the recording manages well with the wide dynamic range and the
instrument itself is a fine one.
A wholly enjoyable introduction to the work of a gentle-man.
Nick Barnard
Previous reviews: John France and Rob Barnett
Track-listing (Cooke)
‘Gothic Prelude’ (1952)
‘High Marley Rest’ (1933)
‘Whispering Willows’ (1952)
‘In the Cathedral’ (1929)
Over the Hills: A Suite of Three Short Pieces (1934) (Tree-Top Lullaby, So
Fair a Field, Skip-Step)
Song Prelude (1955)
‘Cormorant Crag’ (1934)
Bargain Basement : A Suite of Seven Pieces (1936) (Good Morning, Mr
Harridge, Oddment (Superior Quality), Throw-Out (Greatly Reduced), Genuine
Reproduction (Excellent Value), Cheap Line (Absolutely not to be repeated),
Going for a Song (Yours for a tenor, fiver, 3d), Remnant (Only one
left))
‘Haldon Hills’ (Devon) (1929)
‘Meadowsweet’ (1929)
Three Pieces (1929) (A Sunny Morning, In the Park (Afternoon), An Evening
Lullaby))
Sundown (1953)
‘Reef's End’ (1934)
