Last May 12th Sir Lennox Berkeley celebrated his eightieth birthday. Hyperion's tribute is perhaps on the late side for a birthday ode; but it is by no means on the late side for making a good record of Berkeley's music.
The conspectus of music is quite wide, covering some 20 years in time, and also covering varied media, in the manner made possible by today's acceptance into fashion of mixed, string and wind performing groups. (For that matter, mixed, men and women, too, for it was not always thus: can anybody tell me who was the first woman to penetrate an otherwise male professional string quartet?)
Here the instrumental mixture admits of piano duets: the elegant Sonatina, which must be a joy to play, and the curiously flat-footed Palm Court Waltz (I do not think it would have been a great hit in the Piccadilly Hotel). The major works, though, will certainly take the mind off the waltz. Diversions is among the more sober divertimentos, verging on the serious and highly rewarding music that forms the Sextet. Here there is no sort of confusion of aim. Nor is there in the Oboe Quartet, where the touch is rather staider than is usual in combining an oboe with string trio, and where also the integration of the four players is on something more of an equal footing than is usual. The Sextet, and the Quarter: here are two most rewarding additions to the recorded repertoire of chamber music.
It also is, I think, the case that all the other music appears in recorded repertoire for the first time, suggesting that great care has been taken in selecting the programme. Great care has been taken, too, by the various players to ensure that theworks concerned have a splendid send-off. Where, as always in the Nash Ensemble, the standards are so very high it may seem invidious to choose individual players for mention; nevertheless it seems impossible not to point, in the Sextet, to the wind contribution of clarinet and horn, Michael Collins and John Pigneguy, both playing with a rich, warm tone and great poetry. No implication is intended that the strings are not also poetical, but their collective sound is on this occasion less warm and full than that of the wind.
Perhaps this is a reflection of their recorded quality; the wind may have been intentionally brought forward in effect, for, in some small degree, so they certainly have been. But the balance still works well.'