British Works for Cello and Piano - Volume 4
Kenneth LEIGHTON (1929-1988)
Partita Op. 35 (1959) [20:20]
Elisabeth LUTYENS (1906-1983)
Constants Op. 110 (1976) [12:43]
Alun HODDINOTT (1929-2008)
Sonata No. 2 Op. 96 No. 1 (1977) [14:43]
Richard Rodney BENNETT (1936-2012)
Sonata (1991) [19:47]
Paul Watkins (cello); Huw Watkins (piano)
rec. Potton Hall, Dunwich, Suffolk, 2014
CHANDOS CHAN10862 [67:35]
The fourth volume in the series presents the thorniest music
(see reviews of Volume
1,Volume
2 & Volume
3). Previous releases have been of more stylistically centre-of-the-road
literature – volume 3 included Moeran, Rubbra and Rawsthorne for instance
– but this one embraces serialism and does so, moreover, with great
perception and instrumental finesse.
Kenneth Leighton’s Partita was composed in 1959 and is cast as an Elegy,
Scherzo and Theme and Variations. The opening is melancholy-expressive, Leighton
taking the cello high, and suggesting Baroque figures in the March section
that precedes the arriving of the Scherzo, a taut, nervy, syncopated affair
with hints of Prokofiev in the piano writing. The variations are very well
characterised and include a somewhat grudging-sounding but intense waltz,
before Leighton unveils the longest variation, the last one, which beautifully
lowers the temperature to end the work with a Chorale.
It’s still relatively rare to encounter Elisabeth Lutyens’ music
on disc so her Constants, Op.110, written in 1976, will be welcomed
by those still curious as to her compositions. This is a work of deliberate
constraint – not least in its rigorous use of intervals – but
out of this restraint comes a sense of fervour. The cello’s cries are
answered by sonorous piano passages that soon fragment into more crystalline
lines. The subdued nature of the interplay suggests a keening quality, with
tolling in the bass, that becomes explicit in the finale, the Canticle, where
Anthony Burton’s notes reveal that the cello’s wails represent
Lutyens’ own cries of ‘Edward, Edward’ – her late
husband was Edward Clark – when he was dying. Ever slower and ever more
mournful, this is an allusive but incrementally threnodic and powerful work.
Written the year after Lutyens’ piece, Hoddinott’s Sonata No.2
is again spare, and trades on inversions of the melodic line. There’s
something aloof and elliptical about this sonata
and the first two movements do not sufficiently prepare the listener for the
boisterous finale, where he finds a decisiveness earlier lacking.
Richard Rodney Bennett’s 1991 Sonata was dedicated to Alexander Baillie
and is cast in four movements with plenty of interesting features. One such
is the early arrival of a cadenza, another is the use of a mute during the
second movement – splendid textures to be encountered here – and
the exciting, stalking piano figures in the Feroce third movement,
which sounds like a mix of Prokofiev and Bartók. The most playful music in
this disc comes in this sonata, not least in the finale, which is full of
colour and dextrous interplay between the two instruments. It ends the disc
on a decidedly unbuttoned note – not something that can easily be said
of the remaining items.
Needless to say the Watkins Brothers again perform wonders with these works,
bringing a different character and colour to each. The recording is sumptuous
and the booklet notes of high quality.
Jonathan Woolf
Previous review:
Stephen Barber
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