GOODNIGHT TO FLAMBORO': Piano Music of BAINES and
GOOSSENS
William BAINES (1890-1922) Pictures
of Light (1920?); Glancing Sunlight (1920?); Island of the
Fay (1920?); Concert Study (Exaltation) (1919?); Idyll
(Nocturne) (1919); Elves (1919?); Paradise Gardens (1920);
Tides (1920)
Eugene GOOSSENS (1893-1962) Nature
Poems (1919)
Alan Cuckston (piano)
rec Leeds, 12 April 1990
SWINSTY FEW 119CDr
[65.03]
The music of neither of these composers is commonly encountered in the concert
hall.
Baines, who died early after a life trammelled by sickness, writes in a saturated
but paradoxically transparent version of impressionism. This focuses demands
on the performer and Cuckston is strong on those subtle qualities though
the acoustic is not quite ideal. The approach is Debussian with eddies
anticipated, consciously welcomed, or otherwise, from John Foulds, Cyril
Scott and Scriabin. During his lifetime, and beyond, Baines' music was taken
up by the pianist Frederick Dawson, a fellow Yorkshireman. Fitting to a tee
the cliché of the doomed artist who died young, the music transcends
the tired biographical background. These pieces float by in flickering and
glowing colours. Pictures of Light comprises Drift Light;
Bursting Flames; Pool Lights. Paradise Gardens is all
summer heat-haze - a piece which one might naturally link with Alain Fournier's
novel 'Le Grand Meaulnes'. The Island of the Fay also exists in an
orchestral version premiered in the 1970s by Leslie Head and the Kensington
Symphony Orchestra. The grand gesture of the closing pages of Exaltation
deploy a stonily dissonant but heroic gesturing. Idyll is
Delian-bluesy woven into a structure like one of the gentler Rachmaninov
preludes then rising to ice-splintered grandeur. Elves is not at all
twee - a glittering evocative picture that might have come from the imagination
of Victorian painter, Richard Dadd. Tides comprises The Lone Wreck
and the study that lends its title to this disc: Goodnight to
Flamboro'. The green-black depths of the former would neatly partner
Cathédrale Engloutie.
William Baines' exotic piano music is not unknown on disc. In the very early
1970s Eric Parkin recorded a recital for Lyrita Recorded Edition. This LP
(now long gone, of course) suffered from rather feeble sound - fatal in such
fragrant blooms. Priory have a freshly recorded Parkin CD fully given over
to Baines piano music on Priory PRCD550 and this is well worth getting if
you want a complete Baines recital.
Baines is well worth exploring.
Details of Roger Carpenter's recently republished
study of the life and music appear as a note
to this review. Baines' symphony may still
be available in a rather creaky student orchestra
recording (CASSETTE ONLY) from
conductor George Kennaway and the Airedale
SO at 23 Ingledew Crescent, Leeds LS8 1BP
( /fax 0113
2663966. Mr Kennaway's e-mail address is mus1gwk@leeds.ac.uk
Mr Kennaway has been working towards sponsorship
for a CD of fully professional performances
of the Symphony, the Poem for piano
and orchestra and the miniature tone poem
The Island of the Fey. This would run
to 65 minutes. Surely the other tone poem,
Thoughtdrift, could also be accommodated?
The complete project was estimated to cost
circa £25,000.
Swinsty did well to vary the mix by adding the Goossens. Too much
Baines in a single recital might well have been a mistake. Goossens' Nature
Poems are a major sequence playing close to 25 minutes. It is dedicated
to Benno Moiseiwitsch. The Awakening is stony and angular of expression
with a slow blooming ecstasy. Pastoral continues in a similar vein
- not at all a facilely English picture. Goossens is, here, closer in style
to Frank Bridge than to, say, Delius. After two rhapsodic dreams comes the
turmoil of Bacchanal - still moderato in pace but troubled all the
same and always curving off into surreal landscapes.
The piano sound is warm and enveloping. The notes by the pianist are brief
and to the point.
Rob Barnett
.
Price per CD inclusive of p&p within UK is £11.00
Price per CD inclusive of p&p outside UK: please enquire
No credit cards
email:
alancuckston@email.com
NOTE:
Web links (courtesy of Ian Bown)
Biography, photos, reproductions of concert programmes, pages from Baines'
diary:
www.bl.uk./collections/epc/baines.html
Rare photograph of
Baines:-
www.geocities.com/Vienna/Strasse/7920/index.html
Baines article 'The Wind taught a Music Maestro':-
www.thisisyork.co.uk
GOODNIGHT TO FLAMBORO': The Life and Music of WILLIAM
BAINES by Roger Carpenter (BMS Monograph No. 4)
Decorations by Richard A. Bell limp-bound 210x148mm, 120pp plus 8pp of
photographs. 5 facsims, 34 music exx. British Music Society Monograph No.4
ISBN 1 870536 18 5 Price: £10.99 add £1 for overseas postage or
£2 for airmail outside Europe) Cheques in sterling payable to 'British
Music Society' IF PAYING IN US DOLLARS NOTE $19 US incl air mail and CHEQUES
ONLY - CHEQUES MUST BE MADE PAYABLE (US DOLLARS ONLY) TO 'Stephen Trowell'.
Book Orders please to The Honorary Treasurer, The British Music Society,
7 Tudor Gardens, Upminster, Essex RM14 3DE, U.K. Sadly no e-mail orders
