Percy SHERWOOD (1866-1939)
Suite for Two Pianos (c.1901-02) [[22:21]
Sonata for Two Pianos (1896) [37:01]
Hubert PARRY (1848-1918)
Grosses Duo in E minor (c.1875) [19:36]
Parnassius Piano Duo
rec. 2018, Concert Hall, Wyastone Leys, Monmouth, UK
LYRITA SRCD.368 [79:01]
Percy Sherwood is coming in from the shadows. His Double
Concerto Piano Concertos and Cello
works have been recorded and now it’s the turn of Lyrita to
promote and premiere on disc his two-piano works, the Suite and the
Sonata. Both have been edited by Hiroaki Takenouchi (one of the pianists
here, along with Simon Callaghan) from manuscripts held by the Bodleian
Library and have recently been published, for the first time, by Nimbus
Music Publishing.
The Suite for two pianos was first known to have been performed in 1902
in Dresden. It’s very clearly intended for domestic rather than
public music-making and is cast in five movements. The rippling romance
of the Praeludium, both lyrical and untroubled, is boosted by rather
orchestrally-sized accompanying figures, before a charmingly old-fashioned
Minuetto is introduced. Sherwood’s influences in this work are
decidedly Classical, though Schubert is certainly the influence in the
powerful central Romanze and Mendelssohn haunts the succeeding Scherzo.
The Sonata for two pianos is a slightly earlier work dating from 1896,
though several movements had been more or less successfully completed
in 1890. Its manuscript too is held by the Bodleian. The opening movement
of this orthodox four-movement piece is in traditional sonata form and
here the more contemporary influence of Brahms can be felt. It’s
an altogether more serious and more commanding work than the easy-going
Suite, as befits its sonata status. The Adagio is an immediately attractive
movement; refined, elegant sonorities in the context of a flowing, songful
musical direction that cumulatively generates a passionate surging animation.
It eventually subsides into limpidity, almost to a mere whisper, before
Sherwood reprises his superbly nourishing melody and recapitulates;
in means rather like Schubert but to very different effect. The Scherzo
is perhaps the most advanced movement, its determined and technically
demanding writing coming to a droll full-stop, anticipating the finale’s
declamatory recitative and ensuing and ultimately triumphant Lisztian
cadences.
Whilst both of Sherwood’s pieces are new to disc, Parry’s
Grosses Duo has been recorded before. It was written when he was around
27 and whilst it reveals the influence of Bach it’s not a neo-Baroque
work, much less a pastiche, though Parry whips up the saturated organ
sonorities with youthful relish at the end of the opening movement to
suitably ripe effect. The central movement is very different, inhabiting
the world of Romanticism and, like Sherwood’s Sonata, more reflective
of the contemporary influence of Brahms, before returning in the finale
to the Bachian ethos with a prelude and fugue. This was Parry’s
only two-piano work.
This accomplished disc, graced by excellent performances from the Parnassius
Piano Duo, brings two premiere recordings and a little-known Parry work
to wide prominence. With fine notes and a recording to match, there’s
nothing to dislike here and much to admire.
Jonathan Woolf
