Parry’s piano music has received scant attention over the past 50 years. Recordings by John Parry (Pearl, 7/78 – nla) and Peter Jacobs (Priory/Heritage) have focused principally on the mature works, namely the fine Theme and Nineteen Variations (1885) and the two late collections of Shulbrede Tunes (1913) and Hands Across the Centuries (1916 18). Anthony Goldstone’s recording of 1994, performed on Parry’s Hagspiel grand piano at Shulbrede Priory (Albany), also featured the Theme and Nineteen Variations but, by contrast, included the two early piano sonatas and the Charakterbilder (all from the 1870s). Recorded very recently at the Wyastone Concert Hall, this new account of the two sonatas and the Charakterbilder is, by all accounts, the first on a modern instrument.

The earliest of these three works, the Charakterbilder, was published in 1872, predating the composer’s introduction in 1873 to his mentor, Edward Dannreuther, whom Parry approached initially for piano lessons. Conceived as ‘studies’, its seven movements were intended to reflect the ‘Seven Ages of Mind’ as appears on the title-page of the collection, and their stylistic eclecticism shows a young Parry beginning to shed his reverence for Mendelssohn in favour of Schumann, Moscheles and Chopin (his assimilation of Brahms and Wagner would be another few years in the making). Deering is at his best in the slower, lyrical movements (Nos 1, 5 and 7), and the euphonious episodes of the quicker ones. The faster studies, however, lack an urgency and crispness that is certainly present in Goldstone’s performances. I also feel this in the Scherzo of the Piano Sonata No 1, which, to me at least, requires a lighter, puckish demeanour in the outer sections of the ternary form.

The Piano Sonata No 2 of 1876 foreshadows so much more of Parry’s later mature style in terms of its thematic material and its larger structural conception, and while influences of Beethoven, Schubert and Schumann intrude from time to time (Schubert is especially prominent in the slow movement), Brahms is clearly at the forefront of Parry’s mind (as he would be in the first movement of the substantial Grosses Duo, which was composed soon afterwards). Deering seems most at home in the more poetic second and fourth movements (the latter an endearing Rondo recalling, perhaps, the ‘singing’ second movement of Beethoven’s Sonata Op 97), where there is more shape and space for nuance. In the Allegro grazioso of the first movement and the Scherzo (which should surely be much quicker and more agile), the tempos seem rather pedestrian (Goldstone’s Scherzo zips along and is wholly convincing) and I longed for more forward momentum, greater variety of touch and dynamic contrast and more judicious use of the pedal. The innocent character of movements such as ‘Sleepy’, ‘Pause’ and the tender, aphoristic ‘Envoi’ in the Five Miniatures, published posthumously in 1926, eight years after Parry’s death, is somewhat more persuasive, but the quirky ‘Capriccio’ (marked molto capriccioso) needs lighter, more eccentric treatment to bring out that childlike side of Parry’s complex personality.