Holbrooke; Rootham; Walford Davies Violin Sonatas

Persuasive performances of pieces from the byways of British music

Record and Artist Details

Composer or Director: (Henry) Walford Davies, Arthur Benjamin, Joseph Holbrooke, Cyril (Bradley) Rootham

Genre:

Chamber

Label: Epoch

Media Format: CD or Download

Media Runtime: 63

Mastering:

Stereo
DDD

Catalogue Number: CDLX7219

Tracks:

Composition Artist Credit
Sonata for Violin and Piano No 3, 'Orientale' Joseph Holbrooke, Composer
Jacqueline Roche, Violin
Joseph Holbrooke, Composer
Robert Stevenson, Piano
Sonata for Violin and Piano No 2 (Henry) Walford Davies, Composer
(Henry) Walford Davies, Composer
Jacqueline Roche, Violin
Robert Stevenson, Piano
Sonata for Violin and Piano Cyril (Bradley) Rootham, Composer
Cyril (Bradley) Rootham, Composer
Jacqueline Roche, Violin
Robert Stevenson, Piano
Sonatina Arthur Benjamin, Composer
Arthur Benjamin, Composer
Justin Pearson, Cello
Sophia Rahman, Piano
This is an age of revivals promoted through the CD catalogue – Cyril Scott and John Foulds have benefited recently. Now we have some of Dutton’s particular favourites adding to chamber music by Holbrooke and Benjamin as well as two Walford Davies CDs, including his choral and orchestral Everyman (2/05).

This CD is full of surprises. The singlemovement Holbrooke Sonata is strikingly coherent and shows a British composer taking more notice of European models than usual in the mid-1920s. The Walford Davies dates from 1896, the year the composer went to some trouble to visit Brahms and show him some scores. The great man approved but his shadow has fallen on this work like so much British music of the period. However, the Allegretto is pretty and the “Burden” anticipates the serious side of Davies’s Solemn Melody.

Cyril Rootham is even more of a curiosity. The first movement of his 1925 Sonata starts with some harmonic ingenuity but goes on in a notespinning continuity – Fauré in the background rather than Brahms – with a folksy finale.

Arthur Benjamin’s Sonatina arose from the composer’s connection with the cellist Lorne Munroe who must have premiered this Sonatina at the age of about 14. It brings an attractive, light touch from the composer of the Jamaican Rumba.

These are fascinating byways of British music – pieces one never expected to hear – but with performances like these anything could happen. Some of them could even enter the mainstream.

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