MusicWeb International One of the most grown-up review sites around 2024
60,000 reviews
... and still writing ...

Search MusicWeb Here Acte Prealable Polish CDs
 

Presto Music CD retailer
 
Founder: Len Mullenger                                    Editor in Chief:John Quinn             

Some items
to consider

new MWI
Current reviews

old MWI
pre-2023 reviews

paid for
advertisements

Acte Prealable Polish recordings

Forgotten Recordings
Forgotten Recordings
All Forgotten Records Reviews

TROUBADISC
Troubadisc Weinberg- TROCD01450

All Troubadisc reviews


FOGHORN Classics

Alexandra-Quartet
Brahms String Quartets

All Foghorn Reviews


All HDTT reviews


Songs to Harp from
the Old and New World


all Nimbus reviews



all tudor reviews


Follow us on Twitter


Editorial Board
MusicWeb International
Founding Editor
   
Rob Barnett
Editor in Chief
John Quinn
Contributing Editor
Ralph Moore
Webmaster
   David Barker
Postmaster
Jonathan Woolf
MusicWeb Founder
   Len Mullenger


Support us financially by purchasing from

Freda SWAIN (1902-1985)
Piano Music - Volume 1
Sonata Saga in F minor (1925–30) [29:39]
The Croon of the Sea (1920) [6:21]
Piano Sonata No 1 in A minor, The Skerries (1936–37; rev. 1945) [14:18]
An English Idyll (1942) [4:46]
Piano Sonata No 2 in F-sharp minor (1950) [17:57]
The Red Flower [4:36]
Timon Altwegg (piano)
rec. October 2021, Wyastone Concert Hall, Wyastone Leys, Monmouth, UK
TOCCATA CLASSICS TOCC0579 [77:34]

Freda Swain’s is a name encountered in British music but the same can’t be said of her music. By a long process, the owner of her surviving manuscripts is Timon Altwegg whose booklet essay offers a first-class introduction to her life and work and also, it needs to be said, to the somewhat problematic state of her manuscripts, which he has laboured long and hard to bring to a performing standard. She could hardly have had a more versatile or a more understanding interpreter than the Swiss musician.

The music in this album, all heard in first performances, starts early with The Croon of the Sea, written when she was 18, and carries on to the Piano Sonata No 2 of 1950. The Croon is a brief sea picture, which captures the sway of the plume and spray, before moving onward to embrace the rich opulence of the sea, ending quietly. Effective though this piece is, it was intended for her piano teacher, Arthur Alexander, who married her shortly afterwards. The Sonata Saga was her first real sonata, though it was not noted as such, composed between 1920 and 1925. There’s Rachmaninovian glower in the early pages as well as some clotted storm-tossed chording and a real sense of textual density. In the slow movement one can feel the tension between the pull of the left hand and the right hand’s attempts to rise free, before a dour episode that generates more drama – the treble here really glints. Her grandeur is not unmixed by persistence in a finale which is again quite clotted.

The problem of textual density embodied by this work, effectively her first sonata, is resolved by the actual Piano Sonata No 1, The Skerries, which occupied her during 1936-37 and was revised in 1945. Here the writing is much clearer and cleaner, devoid of clutter. She relishes the toccata-like clarity and direction of the music and the neo-classical cum pastoral nature of the central music and the finale. This quality is reinforced by the Second Sonata of 1950, where the toccata element is made explicit in the title of the first movement, which develops a boogie effect – not that Swain, in all seriousness, would have seen it as such. The Canzona Pastorale is the slowest music in the album – a pastorale of limpid refinement – whilst the intriguingly titled finale, a Pandean Rondo, generates a fast folk-like play that is both convincing and catchy. Which leads to the last piece, The Red Flower, undated but timeless in its pastoral allure.

Thanks to Timon Altwegg and Toccata we now know a lot more about Swain and her music in its movement from rich late romanticism to a palette-cleansing clarity that shows awareness of Debussy.

Jonathan Woolf



Advertising on
Musicweb


Donate and keep us afloat

 

New Releases

Naxos Classical
All Naxos reviews

Hyperion recordings
All Hyperion reviews

Foghorn recordings
All Foghorn reviews

Troubadisc recordings
All Troubadisc reviews



all Bridge reviews


all cpo reviews

Divine Art recordings
Click to see New Releases
Get 10% off using code musicweb10
All Divine Art reviews


All Eloquence reviews

Lyrita recordings
All Lyrita Reviews

 

Wyastone New Releases
Obtain 10% discount

Subscribe to our free weekly review listing