Una Hunt makes a superb job of the Moeran piano
music and is extremely well recorded.
We start with the smilingly undulating Bank
Holiday (touches of Grainger in this) though it could
have gone with more zest as I seem to remember was the case when
John McCabe recorded this for Decca. White Mountain sings
with the quintessential Irish ‘fall’ that speaks of melancholy
and beauty its refrain echoing ‘I love my love’ from Holst's Tomorrow
Shall be my Dancing Day. Then comes the knockabout Toccata
which also has a powerful emotional undertow. The Two Legends
take us into Baxian mindscapes. The arpeggios of A
Folk Story mimic the bardic harp and suggest the wilderness
lakes in RVW's Prelude to The 49th Parallel. The same resonance
can be found in the Irish Love Song and Rune's
argent tracery. The Lake Island ripples smoothly
like the wavelets ceaselessly wearing away at the shore. Autumn
Woods is more impressionistic than bardic. The boozy scherzoso
of At a Horse Fair reminds in parts of the central
movement of the Moeran Violin Concerto. The Two Pieces of
1933 are respectively Prelude (complex at first
but tracking through a child's songs and singing as if caught
in the wrack) and Berceuse a drooping Debussian
sigh.
Theme and Variations is the single
biggest piece here and although it has its moments I am not at
all sure that Moeran was at ease with such structures - at least
not for the piano. Then comes the lambent dream of Summer
Valley dedicated to Delius, the composer admired by both
Moeran and his friend Warlock. Stalham River is
perfect in its expression of a sollipsistic repose; it was inspired
by the same stretch of Norfolk water as his orchestral piece Lonely
Waters. The Three Fancies are very much of their
time: colourful mood pieces ... the introversion of landscape
into mindscape.
We can only keep our fingers crossed that Una
Hunt will next turn to the similar romantic-impressionist piano
poems of Greville Cooke (who will be the first to record Cormorant
Crag?) and the piano miniatures of Farjeon, John Pullein and
Norman Friskin.
Even in Theme and Variations you will
not find anything as sweepingly potent as the symphony. However
of poetic and sensitive melancholy you can drink your fill. Wonderful
stuff, superbly recorded and strongly recommended.
Rob Barnett
see also review
by John Talbot
Una Hunt (piano)