Enterprising Chandos and Vernon Handley again! What chance otherwise would most of us have to become acquainted with Stanford's Second Piano Concerto? And is it worth it? Yes, even if—as always—one is left with ambivalent feelings about what one has heard. It is very obvious, as Lewis Foreman's characteristically informative and scholarly note points out, that Stanford began work on this concerto shortly after he had conducted the British premiere of Rachmaninov's C minor Concerto at the 1910 Leeds Festival. If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery then Rachmaninov should have blushed scarlet If he ever heard the opening of this work!
Thereafter the music pursues its romantic and cultivated way, with echoes of Liszt and Tchaikovsky, too, and pre-echoes, dare I say it, of the Warsaw Concerto. It is a very pleasing, attractive and not very original work, let down by an overlong and empty finale. But it deserves to be performed, like so much of the neglected British repertoire recorded in recent years. Gramophone reviewers continually draw attention to these works, but do our orchestral managements ever take a risk with them? Do they even read record reviews? Or are they utterly convinced that the British public today will only go to hear what it knows it likes or what is 'hyped'? Perhaps they are right, I fear.
The variations on Down among the dead men is the sort of work I imagine Stanford could have written standing on his head. It, too, is worth an airing and there ought to be room for it somewhere. That somewhere, I suspect, is the gramophone library, for the concert-going and record-collecting public seem to be separate groups, at least where British music is concerned. Those who like to explore will enjoy this disc, which is beautifully recorded, with excellent performances by Margaret Fingerhut and the Ulster Orchestra.'