Artworks command our attention with a gallimaufrey
of solo piano music by Australian composers. This is one of two such
discs. I have reviewed the second ('The
Enchanted Isle', Artworks AW005) which similarly features the brilliant,
sensitive and wide-ranging pianist, Tamara Anna Cislowska.
Percy Grainger is probably the first Australian
composer you might be able to name. There are three Grainger
tracks here. The Gum-Suckers' March and Colonial Song are
works dating from the teens of the last century. They are sentimental
in the manner of the music hall and jaunty in the case of the March.
The simple and affecting Sussex Carol is played and written unadorned
with none of the populist sweeteners found in the other two pieces.
Mirrie Hill was the wife of composer Alfred
Hill and her Leafy Lanes of Kent is cool, dappled and in
the manner of Moeran's piano solos but with an easier languidly melodic
tone. This is almost impressionistic; more so than her husband's regretful
miniature Come Again Summer. Alfred Hill (see my review of his
symphonies and string quartets on Marco Polo) was a determined traditionalist
with his Leipzig training leaving a Mendelssohnian trail over a life-time
of composition.
Frank Hutchens' innocently playful pixy dream,
At the Bathing Pool momentarily recalls Mussorgsky's Unhatched
Chicks. By the River suggests a warmly chuckling brook. Evening
is a Debussian suggestion - not a diabolical one but a child's drift
from evening's reflection into sleep. It is wonderfully carried off
by Cislowska. Hutchens was born in New Zealand but made his career in
Australia. Both Goossens and Hutchens wrote Phantasy Concertos for piano
and orchestra.
Poetry and violence are to be found in the Roy Agnew
items. Autumn Morning, A Child's Dream (a cradle song
- gravely beautiful as if shaped by Ravel's Ma mère l'oye),
Toccata (pretty bell-like chatter) and Before Dawn (ominously
wistful) reflect the poetic strand. Trains breaks the spell with
clangour, discord and the motor activity of Prokofiev and Bartók
and even a nod towards Gershwin. The Dance of the Wild Men carries
the impress of Scriabin and Prokofiev. It is dedicated to Moiseiwitsch
who played Agnew's music during the composer's stay in England. Gieseking
and Cortot also took a practical interest in Agnew. I gather that one
of the Australian universities issued recordings of more of his piano
music but have not been able to track these down. Roy Agnew's piano
music can be had from The Keys Press, 66 Clotilde Street, Mount Lawley,
WA 6050, Australia
Lindley Evans (born in South Africa but settled
in Australia) is represented by the musing sentimental sigh of Vignette,
the jaunty-humorous Merrythought (a Howellsian title, if ever
there was one) which has much in common with Grainger, and Rhapsody
which is darker, glinting and robustly sentimental.
This recital of pleasing and usually contemplative
miniatures will delight anyone who responds to the English pastoral
school. Indeed England can be felt as a distinctive influence. The unbridled
Antipodean character, vigorous, unabashed and emotional, can be heard
in the Grainger and Lindley Evans. The energy of a Young World paralleling
Cowell, Mossolov, Ornstein, Prokofiev, Stravinsky and Goossens can be
heard in Agnew's Trains and Wild Men.
Time for a similar recital of the solo piano miniatures
of Greville Cooke (when will we hear his Cormorant Crag, High
Marley Rest, Reef's End and Haldon Hills), Cuthbert
Nunn, Harry Farjeon, Ernest Farrar, John Pullein and Norman Peterkin.
I commend the present disc to adventurous listeners
and pianists alike. I am sure that Jack Gibbons, John Lenehan, Lionel
Sainsbury and Phillip Dyson will find pieces here that would sit well
alongside miniatures of Moeran, Mayerl, Confrey, Bax, Warlock and Macdowell.
These Australian pieces stand confidently in this company: more sophisticated
and 'classical' than Mayerl and Macdowell yet sharing much of the same
irresistible innocence.
Rob Barnett
Tamara Anna Cislowska (piano)