''Instead of writing an indifferent symphony or quartet which no one wants and which you'd have to wait ages to hear performed,'' I remember a trenchantly clear-headed professor of composition saying, ''why not a piece of good light music? It takes every bit as much skill, and it'd give a damn sight more enjoyment to more people.'' Such sound advice is only too rarely followed, and there is in general a regrettable tendency to look down the nose patronizingly at composers who, however gifted, make no intellectual demands but set out only to please or charm. One such was Cecile Chaminade, about whom dictionaries are often sniffy, referring offhandedly to her ''salon music''—though besides her numerous piano pieces she in fact wrote an opera, a ballet, a symphony with chorus, several orchestral suites and a Concertstuck for piano and orchestra rather oddly labelled as ''in C sharp and D flat''.
If her music reveals some genes from Chopin and Schumann, well, there are worse models; and her melodic fluency, harmonic invention, freedom of key movement and pianistic resource are by no means to be derogated. There is distinctive charm here in, for example, the Serenade and the Meditation, but everything is not merely pretty or mild-mannered: there is considerable variety—agreeably teasing rhythms in Guitare, effectively written climactic passages (as in the habanera-like Danse creole and the Valse arabesque), real bravura in the well-known Automne and brilliance in the Toccata and the middle section of Autrefois. It would be hard to find a more sympathetic interpreter than Eric Parkin, who catches Chaminade's lyrical grace without lapsing into sentimentality and perfectly judges the delicate rubato required. The recorded piano tone is excellent, though ideally a more intimate acoustic than the empty Maltings at Snape might have been appropriate.'