This is some of the finest British piano music of the century, so it is particularly rewarding to have a second version of the substantial, half-hour Sonata available on CD. If you find Bax turgid, Ireland too sweet, Tippett gawky or repetitive, Britten and Walton virtually non-existent in the solo repertoire, then Sir Lennox Berkeley's consistently melodic piano writing should be a real discovery. Not that this music is unknown. Amateurs and students play the Six Preludes but find two of them (Nos. 1 and 3) more difficult than the rest, as the composer realized. And at the top level our recent Gramophone Award-winning pianist, Shura Cherkassky is now playing them on the international concert circuit, enjoying them enormously and getting an enthusiastic response from audiences everywhere.
Both Terroni and Headington really understand the Berkeley style: the latter pianist was Berkeley's first pupil at the Academy. The outer movements of the Sonata (a work written for Curzon but much more associated with Colin Horsley's frequent performances) demand a special feeling for flow to give quite diverse material continuity. Both Terroni and Headington achieve this. The Presto understandably gives them both slight problems in obtaining pianissimo when required in the non-stop passagework. The idyllic slow movement in both cases seems to need a greater sense of climax in the middle. (I think Terroni's chord at 4'02'' ought to have corrected the misprint in this recapitulation, as Headington does, but not Horsley who studied the work with the composer.) But these are details—Terroni's finale is excellent—and the overwhelming impression is to confirm what Malcolm Williamson, in my BBC Radio 3 documentary on Berkeley, called ''a flawless masterpiece''.
There are real delights, too, in the rest of Terroni's offering. His Six Preludes are just right, musically dedicated and unidiosyncratic. The Five Short Pieces are a microcosm of Berkeley's style in the 1930s, as are the Preludes for the 1940s. Terroni gauges them beautifully—the balance of melody and accompaniment in No. 4 is sheer perfection. And his duo with Norman Beedie is everything one could ask for in the Sonatina and Theme and Variations, exquisite piano duets in the great tradition of Schubert, Faure or Satie.
The piano sound is a little close at times, and the CD lasts just under an hour, but here is a valuable release which was needed to bring this attractive and memorable music to the wider audience it deserves.'