Of the four items here for cello and piano (all arranged for Grainger’s close friend, the Danish cellist/composer Herman Sandby) , the most substantial is the 1905 Scandinavian Suite (‘La Scandinavie’) , the second of whose five movements (‘Song of Varmeland’) utilizes a Swedish melody also heard in Grieg’s ‘Once upon a time’ (which opens the tenth and last book of Lyric Pieces). We also get three violin-and-piano ‘dish-ups’, including Molly on the Shore (Fritz Kreisler’s arrangement which Grainger loathed, commenting ‘... the fiddle sawed away, fidgetingly, ALL the time ...‘) , and no less than six for piano trio.
As always with Grainger, part of the fun is playing ‘spot the tune’, and this anthology is no exception: The Nightingale and the Two Sisters is more familiar in its orchestral guise (where it forms the third movement of the marvellous Danish Folk-Song Suite) , while another Danish folk-song, The Shoemaker from Jerusalem, eventually made its way into the Jutish Medley (Grainger’s orchestration of which we know as the finale of the Danish Folk-Song Suite). We can thank annotator Barry Peter Ould for the expert realizations of Shepherd’s Hey, the incomplete The Maiden and the Frog and The Shoemaker from Jerusalem, and I was especially taken with the haunting Sussex Mummers’ Christmas Carol - another folk-song arrangement fashioned (like the Scandinavian Suite) for Sandby’s and Grainger’s Scandinavian tour of 1905, but played here in a version for violin and piano.
Deftly affectionate music-making from the admirable ASMF Chamber Ensemble, accorded excellent Chandos sound. Enjoyable, if perhaps hardly essential listening, save for Grainger acolytes.'