One man's champion of the undeservedly neglected is often another man's frequenter of unrewarding backwaters. With this collection Eric Parkin not only invites either assessment, depending on your point of view, but he also risks the accusation of assembling a rag-bag rather than building a proper recital. Even if you feel that on this evidence George Antheil, Halsey Stevens and Franz Waxman barely earn their places, however, Samuel Barber, Aaron Copland and George Gershwin more than save the day. A rag-bag with these composers mixed in can afford to take a few risks in the name of giving the less familiar a hearing.
The Antheil sonata is the largest piece and the biggest disappointment, its overblown climaxes recalling the composer's intransigent youth but underlining the besetting blandness elsewhere. Only the relatively short finale consistently rises above this fault, and even here a Hindemith-like subsidiary theme threatens to undermine the music's march-like energy. Hindemith's influence is even clearer in the pieces by Halsey Stevens worthy demonstrations of a neo-baroque academicism, but nothing more. As for Franz Waxman's short suite The Charm Bracelet, were he not deservedly admired as a composer of film music it is unlikely that these pieces would be thought worth resurrecting.
The compensations are in Gershwin's Three Preludes, especially the marvellously evocative and lyrical No. 2; the Copland miniatures (the last two relatively recent workings-up of much earlier material), all of them blessedly simple, direct and personal, and in Barber's Excursions a brilliant fusion of popular and serious idioms. A final, considerable compensation is Eric Parkin's playing. Not only does he (and a generally faithful recording) keep a potentially fierce Steinway under reasonable control, but in resisting all temptation to inflate or exaggerate, he makes the best possible case for this unusual and despite the back-waters—worthwhile programme. (The insert gives separate timings for all 24 pieces and movements, but the disc itself recognizes only the nine main tracks.)'