Here is an enterprising record (like most Hyperion issues) of music we ought to know better. Ferguson, 78 this year, may rank as a minor figure, but it is not long since Faure would have been assigned to the same category. His lyrical gift is of a similar order to Moeran's and he also shares that underrated composer's clarity of texture and sense of structural order. He is also unusual in that nearly 25 years ago he decided he had no more to say and stopped composing. would that some others had such a clear-sighted view of their own muse.
The Ferguson works on this record date from 1933 to 1946, the earliest being the highly attractive and eventful Octet, which is here given a convincing performance by the Nash Ensemble. The distinction of the thematic material is impressive, not least in the finale, where the music achieves a genuine emotional and formal climax. The piano Bagatelles, first played by Dame Myra Hess at a wartime National Gallery concert, are intriguing epigrams which scarcely prepare one for the taut and dramatic Second Violin Sonata, music very much of its period, an impassioned outcry that seems to me to be the equal of John Ireland's equivalent work of 1917.
Ferguson's field Gerald Finzi is represented by the Elegy for violin and piano which was planned as the slow movement of a projected violin sonata. Thoroughly characteristic in idiom, it is also slightly enervating even in this excellent performance by Chilingirian and Benson. The long gestation of so many Finzi works and his apparent uncertainty over their final shape suggest some psychological block that only a long-awaited biographical study might explain. Hyperion's high standard of recording quality is maintained in all four works.'