The titles themselves—assorted birds, flowers, echoes and warblings—will readily conjour up an impression of the sort of pieces on this record—pieces that our Victorian forefathers would have found near the top of the pile of music in their piano stool as they prepared for an evening's drawing-room entertainment. Corny and derivative many of them may be, and yet endearing too in their simple melodic way. Ethelbert Nevin's Narcissus and Joseph Ascher's Alice—the latter heard here in a showy piano fantasia—are the pieces probably most familiar today. I don't think that any of the other items can readily challenge the Nevin piece for originality and lack of sentimentality. At the same time each of these pieces has its interest, and Leander Fisher's The robin's return, Sydney Smith's Chanson russe and Gustav Lange's Blumenlied (something of a classic in its day) make particulary worthwhile listening.
Alan Etherden is a young Midlands pianist who studied at the Royal Academy of Music and with Louis Kentner. He possesses not only the technique to encompass the more demanding passages that this music can offer but also the obvious affection for the genre that enables him to take the simpler passages at their face value. The piano tone is full and rich, if a little jangly in the upper reaches, and the recorded sound is admirably clear.
I doubt whether those who have already written off Victorian salon music are likely to be converted even by this committed advocacy, but those who succumb to such music's modest demands should welcome this enterprising attempt to bridge a gap in the record catalogues.'