Lord Berners was born in Bridgnorth, Shropshire as Gerald Hugh Tyrwhitt-Wilson but succeeded to his baronetcy in 1919 and left his hyphenated family name behind him. He was a diplomat as well as musician (encouraged by Stravinsky) and essentially self-taught. But he was the only English composer who made it into the Diaghilev pantheon. (Remember, that great impresario had welcomed Berners’ Triumph of Neptune – as had Beecham – but turned down Vaughan Williams’ Job). Both enjoyed Berners’ witty, eccentric, cosmopolitan, often Gallic wit, yet placed within a style often retaining an underlying Englishness – which shows here in the opening Polka.
Berners was a painter and poet too, and the minuscule, dejected, lovelorn Le poisson d’or was based on his own poem. It has a distant Debussian inheritance, while the Trois petites marches and Fragments psychologiques are Satie-esque, and not just for their bizarre titles. Yet they, too, have a distinct avant-garde precocity, and ‘Un soupir’ (the third of the Fragments) brings a pensive dolour all its own. Berners’ sense of fun erupts in the simulated German Lieder Album (the seriousness underpinned with a twinkle), and the French Trois chansons are naturally idiomatic, with ‘La fiancee du timbalier’ engagingly light-hearted. The English songs are most winning. Tom Filuter’s dialogue changes mood chimerically, and the Three Songs of 1921 are like a re-discovery of the English folksong idiom, while the sentimental Red Roses and Red Noses has an endearingly flowing lyrical line. It is followed by the irrepressible Come on Algernon, about the insatiable Daisy, who always ‘asked for more!’, a perfect music-hall number, written for the film Champagne Charlie. It makes a delightful pay-off to end the recital.
Ian Partridge obviously relishes all the stylistic changes like a vocal chameleon. His words are clear, too. Len Vorster backs him up splendidly and is completely at home in the solo piano music. The recording is truthful, but Berners’ vignettes are not best served up as a banquet in themselves: they are much more enticing as an aperitif, or a dessert following other music. But their individuality is in no doubt, and they certainly ought to be featured more often in recital programmes.'