It's good to know that Kenneth Leighton learned before his untimely death last year (he was 58) of Abacus's project to devote two CDs to his piano music and that he was ''very thrilled'' at the prospect. I wonder whether any British keyboard work of the last 25 years (save the Third and Fourth Tippett sonatas and perhaps Maxwell Davies's solitary sonata) approaches Leighton's fantasy Conflicts in stature. It is a formidable 20-minute set of variations, or rather a structure based on the continual variation and development of two themes, whose impressively close and rigorous argument is matched by the remarkably sustained eloquence of its expression.
Its language is both 'modern' and 'conservative', in a way that makes that dichotomy seem more than usually absurd. Leighton was by all accounts a superb pianist; I should imagine from the other works in this very varied collection that he much enjoyed playing French music, that he revered Bach and was by no means averse to the pianistic late-romantics. As a composer he was strongly drawn towards stringent thematic economy and he was bound to find some aspects of serialism attractive. Bach's contrapuntal strictness appealed to him also (as is obvious in the avowed 'homage to Bach' of the Fantasia contrappuntistica) but Leighton was not the sort of composer to conclude that an affinity with Bach necessarily ruled out kinships with Bartok or Hindemith (two other shadows that pass over his music from time to time), or that an acknowledgement of Schoenberg imposed the toeing of any party-line. So Conflicts is a quasi-serial work, but by no means a non-tonal one, and he has felt no need to exclude ornament, filigree, or pianistic rhetoric from it; certainly not a bold cragginess which to me sounds landscape-related and fundamentally English.
The Fantasia contrappuntistica is the other major work here; it is a homage to the art of counterpoint as much as to Bach, and unlike the author of the excellent notes accompanying this recording I do hear in it a kinship with (if not an influence from) Busoni. It certainly echoes Busoni's belief in the compatibility of Bach-rooted counterpoint with a contemporary but inclusive vocabulary (it is also richly and enjoyably—Busonianly, you might say—pianistic).
Both these are important additions to the recorded catalogue. The other, shorter pieces here are at least pleasant ones: the very early Sonatina, a charming exercise in Gallic neo-classicism; the Studies, etudes in the literal sense (they sound fiercely but rewardingly difficult) but each having a touch of melodic distinction to lodge it in the memory. The first six movements of Household pets are agreeable, onomatopoeic light music (guinea-pigs squeak, rabbits lollop, and all within the restraints of Associated Board Grade VII) but the lovely finale (a serene, delicate and even solemn evocation of ''Animal heaven'') is rather more, and would make a perfect encore piece. Eric Parkin plays all the music here with great affection as well as commanding technique; the recording is very acceptable. I look forward eagerly to Volume 2.'