Early keyboard enthusiasts will be delighted that Richard Burnett's recording on the instruments at Finchcocks in Kent has been re-released on CD. It is a wonderfully informative disc, with an extremely useful booklet for anyone curious about the evolution of keyboard instruments from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries. More than half the disc is devoted to piano music and a special effort has been made to point up the differences between square or upright and grand pianos made by Broadwood and Clementi. We are also treated to the subtleties of a hammonic swell mechanism on a Clementi grand and the brashness of a Fritz grand, replete with 'bassoon' and janissary effects.
Burnett has chosen music carefully to reveal the strengths of the museum's instruments and at the same time to entertain. To hear Arne's sonata played to great advantage (particularly in the Andante) on a superb Kirckman harpsichord, Stanley's jolly voluntary on a Byfield organ Mozart's exquisite Adagio for glass harmonica played on a Walter square piano, Schubert's dances on a Fritz grand and Chopin's waltz on a Graf grand, all on one disc is a bargain by any measure.
Burnett plays very interestingly and clearly enjoys the challenge of adapting himself to his many fine instruments. He plays throughout with spirit and expressiveness (only the J. C. Bach finale seems slightly lacking in control). It is rare to find a person who not only builds and collects instruments but also plays them well, and the sum of these parts has resulted in an intelligently conceived guided tour of a unique instrument collection.'