Category: CD

TANGO FANTASY

Ken Herrera

Move Records MCD 649

The composer/pianist presents four of his works on this disc: two short isolated pieces, and a pair of collections, finishing with the five-movement, 33-minute-long Tango Fantasy. Herrera studied piano at the Tasmanian Conservatorium of Music, then moved into composition. He appears to be self-taught in this latter field and – unfortunately – it shows. You’re not getting many contemporary sounds here; Herrera is content to manipulate a harmonic vocabulary of rudimentary proportions and his professed devotion to the tango is not persuasive when it comes to putting that particular dance into his own language,

For instance, the opening Tango Waltz begins with some flourishes that might suggest a tango but, 30 seconds in, the piece has settled into a 3/4 rhythm. Following this straightforward move to waltz-time, Herrera doesn’t move out of it. Furthermore, the melodic content is rather wayward; sure, there are repetitions of his basic tune, punctuated by episodes that have little relation to anything but themselves. Apart from a well-pedalled scale eruption about two-thirds of the way through, there’s not much here to raise expectations of virtuosity; some flourishes are welcome but the 2018 piece is couched in a pre-Nino Rota/Fellini atmospheric without the original’s spartan melancholy.

Pairing up with this waltz is the album’s other brevity, Herrera’s Third Nocturne from 2012 which aims to suggest a Latin American night spot complete with its atmosphere-establishing piano in a blending of bossa nova and blues. Well, you get the first-mentioned’s rhythm, all right – it obtains throughout – but the blues consists of some predictable chords and not much besides. Our nocturne isn’t in the Field/Chopin line but more along the lines of something you might hear at a cocktail bar; sadly, not one where you’re tempted to tip the pianist. As with the waltz, the piece sounds aimless in its right hand which wanders at its own sweet will in a chain of 7th chords and tinklings.

Herrera’s first major construct is a Suite dating from 2013. The inspiration comes from Bach – a laudable aspiration, although the shape of the collection puts it closer to Grieg’s Holberg or even the Karelia of Sibelius although its four elements are given non-suggestive tempo titles: Allegro, Allegro, Andantino, Presto. The first is proposed as an introductory toccata but the only shadow of that form comes close to the end in a quasi-improvisatory passage that recalls some of the foibles of Sweelinck. For the most part, it proceeds like a fitful study with left-hand cross-overs for excitement, building to a loud highpoint rather early in proceedings but, like a Buxtehude toccata,. owning several sections.

At the end of this opening, you’re also left with several questions about the movement’s harmonic shape which tends to follow a predictable path, if sometimes an ungainly one because it veers off from its own patterns more than little self-consciously. We’re in much more solid Bach territory with the second Allegro which begins like one of the Inventions but lacks the rigour to follow a simple contrapuntal matrix, the left-hand settling into a bass role where you expected a mirroring of the initial statement. Progress is sometimes quirky, but not in an adventurous way – for instance, a sequential pattern is held up for a moment when a repetition is interpolated so that you’re left feeling unbalanced when the sequence is resumed. Later, when the left hand gets hold of the initial line, the treble provides a functional harmonic accompaniment rather than a complement. At about the 1’30” point, we enter a new world of repeated chords for a moment, returning almost instantly to the suggested/unrealized linear interplay of the opening.

Herrera sees this as a lively dance movement; to me, it’s more in the nature of a march in that I can’t see any potential choreography beyond a military stamp. When it comes to the obligatory slow movement, we are offered an Andantino that opens with a simple old-fashioned melody, followed by a series of episodes that numb with their predictability in terms of shape and modulations. Added to which, the composer reaches some points where inspiration is at a premium and we experience a good deal of repetition and note-spinning, e.g. at about the 3′ 50″ mark and at 5′ 00″. An abruptly determined conclusion sits at odds with the placid opening; it’s as though the writer has turned semi-aggressive and avoided a tempering of his mood.

When we reach the Presto, Herrera points to the gigue conclusions to Bach keyboard suites and proposes a further historical reach by wanting to summon up the Irish jig spirit as well. He opens bravely, with a flourish that hints at Litolff’s Concerto Symphonique No. 4 Scherzo before we reach a melody peppered with hemiolas. Before long, the jig has turned into a momentary waltz, then coming back to jig with some slight suggestions of a blues chord or two. A descent to the bass register moves us back into the land of the totally expectable, followed by a rise in alt – and we’re back to Litolff, albeit rather laboured. A chromatic rise brings us to a reprise of the opening material, and a soft-dynamic ending with preparatory booming bass and ornamental sextuplets on top.

This is the most effective of the suite’s movements, mainly because of its energy and occasional charm, yet it still leaves an impression of beating the bounds through interludes – to the point where the exercise sounds like a disjunct rondo.

But there’s more. Herrera’s final offering is the 2016 Tango Fantasy in five movements that begins with a solid Andante – Allegro – Allegretto – Presto sequence. The opening is a sort of recitative, beginning with a single line that acquires another as well as some gruff bass burps before reaching for some chord chains that would have satisfied more if the composer had been more severely self-critical, giving coherence to his modulations and animating the piece by using his instrument’s outer reaches with some purpose.

The remaining three sections are all tangos, taken at various speeds, the fourth being something of a recapitulation of the second although the pace doesn’t justify the Presto label. I found it difficult to detect how the Allegretto was related to anything else, although it opened in a quasi-improvisatory manner that suggested the piece’s first pages/bars. But a great deal of territory is covered by the fantasy nomenclature, so – as with Chopin and Schumann – you just have to go with the prevailing flow. We now come to a Vals – Allegro vivo which follows a similar Rota-type insouciance as we heard in the opening Tango Waltz; the main tune opens deftly enough but fails to live up to its promise with a rather aimless consequent to its initial statement. Here the intention is clearly to spike up the piece’s orthodox harmonic scheme with some wrong-note interpolations. That might have come off if the overwhelming tenor of the movement was not so traditional at its many harmonic fulcrum points. Added to this, some of the movement’ phrases didn’t balance; and you’d be working hard to find much vivo in these pages.

Now attention turns to the Milonga, the tango’s precursor; this movement is also set up as a Presto, which it isn’t. Here is a harmonically orthodox dance with some traces of the habanera’s triplets and at least four passages of fortissimo writing that come straight from the Lisztian handbook of virtuosity if not as dynamically sustained or as digitally taxing as in the Hungarian master’s workplace. An Andantino opens questioningly but follows an inchoate path, taking its time before settling into a languorous tango, then seeming to doodle a melodic path leading in no particular direction. In fact, this whole movement struck me as aimless if centred on a minor tonality (G?) – as is so much of the music on this CD – before a concluding over-emphasized tierce de Picardie.

at the start of the concluding Presto, Herrera introduces a key motif of five consecutive semiquavers rattled out like automatic fire before moving into a Piazzolla-reminiscent melody that gives a format to this rondo-tango which comes equipped with a substantial coda. Again, I’d question the tempo direction which, to my ear, sounds in actuality more like a tempo di marcia. But the real problem comes not from the piece’s impetus, which is well-sustained, but from the diffuse nature of its harmonic ramblings which lead into some thorny thickets before moving back into diatonic safety.

Nothing wrong with being a tango tragic. Never forget that splendid man-of-letters Clive James and his installation of a special room in which he could practise this specific dance: that’s enthusiasm. But, for a composer, you have to add something original to a field that boasts the riches of Albeniz in D, Por una cabeza, La Cumparsita, Besame mucho, and even Libertango. This CD is the work of a talent that appears devoted to this specific form but his output needs more focus, not to mention more sophistication.

TREING TO REMEMBER WHAT I CHOSE TO FORGET

Trish Dean, Graeme Jennings, Alex Raineri

Move Records MCD 642

Yet another compositional voice that has passed me by, Millward is best known for his collaborations with film makers and stage artists, although chamber music is a respectable element in his catalogued output. His language runs to the jazz/popular/sonic art vocabularies and his performances seem to tend to pre-recorded. In fact, much of his work has been recorded on three CDs, including a piano works collection by Sally Mays. Matters are further complicated by several works being sub-sets or spin-offs from larger constructs; it’s an instance of cross-transference, something like trying to chart Sculthorpe’s string quartets.

Still, this recording is Millward’s first for Move Records and it features three exceptional musicians. Despite the suggestive titles – Trying to Remember What I Chose to Forget; Contact – Connect – Tracer; Sadness to Madness – all three of the works presented are good old-fashioned duo sonatas. Pianist Alex Raineri is the constant thread in all three works; violinist Graeme Jennings performs the 2019 violin sonata (Trying to Remember . . . ), then tries his viola hand at the second (Connect etc.), written in 2021; Ensemble Q’s Trish Dean manages the two-movement cello sonata which came to fruition last year.

To begin, I’m having trouble with the composer’s CD title which applies not just to the violin sonata but also to the other two works. In essence, Millward is facing us with sounds that he has in his memory as well as sounds that he has chosen to obliterate from his memory – which is a mental tour de force that you confront at your peril. What is being proposed is a scouring confrontation with the self where you easily take into account the positive facets of your personality/identity, at the same time as facing up to events or characteristics that cast you in a less-than-flattering light. Further, Millward proposes that this admission of the traits we decide to eliminate isn’t just a personal failure but a cultural one.

I don’t think any of us would have an argument with this last projection. You only have to look at any arguments against the Voice to encounter a world of unconscious admissions of cultural failure – obvious time-honoured maltreatment dismissed in favour of self-righteousness, led by a character who seizes on Farnham’s words, ‘try and understand it’ while missing the relevance, inherited from his former career, of the lines, ‘How long can we look at each other/Down the barrel of a gun?’ So Millward has concerns with an unassailable truth: we do choose to forget – what we find uncomfortable, unpleasant, unconscionable.

How this translates into his music remains a mystery that could only be solved by a psychological journey into his compositional practice, an analysis separating the wheat from the one-time tares. But then you’re faced with discerning what the composer wants to use as material, has always wanted to use, and presents – but alongside or in between other compositional matter that has been ignored quite consciously and can now be recalled! It’s an intriguing double-take but I fear many of us won’t rise to Millward’s expectations, content in our intellectual sloth to take his work as a composite – that is, if we aren’t being confronted by an entire creative swathe that involves the formerly-repressed rising to the surface intact: not alongside, but instead of the consciously accepted inspiration for the composer’s products.

The CD’s title work opens with Partial Reflection in which Raineri’s part dominates for its block chords while Jennings presents a Hindemith-like strong, if meandering line. The contrapuntal interplay between both instruments is occasionally intense in its tautness but then gives place to some lyrically soaring flights for the string player, especially towards the movement’s conclusion while Raineri proposes an atmospherically varied backdrop. A meditative break follows in Memoire Omissions where an unhappy nocturne finds cells repeated, extended, varied, shared with sudden patches of orthodox harmony penetrating the atonal texture that dominates proceedings. A sudden burst into action from both players heightens the outward tension before a return to the opening’s melancholy reserve and a few aggressive concluding bars.

Which take us through an attacca into the final Tangled Tango. About a minute of violin cadenza reminiscent of Tzigane precedes Raineri’s entry into the partnership before the work’s progress becomes a sort of tango, if one that you wouldn’t have much luck dancing. After a dynamic climax/collapse, the players move into a tranquil zone that eventually takes up the tango rhythm en clair about 2/3rds of the way through before becoming a rather strident exercise in opposing and complementary ejaculations. A return to the tango prefaces a menacing conclusion on a looped phrase that suddenly cuts itself short. For sure, the tango (which bears an odd similarity to a polonaise at certain spots) is a miscellany of sectionalized inventiveness; as with its predecessors, I find it hard to trace the elements or to appreciate what Millward is doing with them. Adding to the unsettling character of this work, Jennings sounds under-miked in the opening movement, a second-stringer to the piano’s aggression.

On to the slightly longer (9 seconds) viola sonata and we seem to have landed in more immediately digestible territory with Raineri outlining a steady quaver pattern rather like an Alberti bass, the viola giving us a lean, meandering melodic line. Both instruments work into an angular duet that follows a steady pulse and into a well-integrated partnership. A change of mood actually means a change of output and emotional prospects with some savage double-stopping for the viola and a willful piano percussive exhibition. The closely-argued relationship of the first section is here a more frantic creature: the quaver pattern persists but much more explosively and fiercely. There is no relief: the pressure is maintained and the movement ends abruptly.

So why call it Contact? Possibly because of the duelling brought into play, both instruments intertwining but also exploding against each other’s activity. Further, the juxtaposition of moderate and rapid tempi exposes a dual arena of sorts in which the tactile scenario is pursued consistently, if under two different guises. It’s a more placid scene in the following Connect, the amiable soundscape a throwback to English impressionism. Where the viola weaves another generously lyrical line, the keyboard ranges across its compass in support as well as shifting backgrounds. The whole piece reminds me of Cyril Scott’s Lotus Land – which is probably being a bit unfair to both writers. But they share a kind of directed languor, relieved by an occasional spurt of temperament.

As for the concluding Tracer pages, I can only conclude that this refers to one instrument following the other’s path. From the opening, Raineri sets the pace while Jennings punctuates with decorative interpolations that distract from the somewhat steady keyboard progress. Then the roles are reversed and the movement soldiers on, like a hard-worked sample of kammermusik. Eventually, the moto perpetuo aspect dies off for a terse viola cadenza, before we return to the same patterns as the opening and the sonata ends on a question mark, like Petrushka.

Mind you, I could have this all wrong and Millward could be following a quasi-military inspiration; the contact-connect-tracer sequence might have something to do with warfare. But I doubt it; whatever the tracer suggestion, I don’t think it refers to bullets. Without a score, it’s impossible to discern the parallel contours (if there are any) of both instrumental lines and, while there is plenty of mimesis, it’s hard to see a continuous layering of timbres and melodies. Still, the performance is assured and clean, Jennings’ pitch invariably true and Raineri giving his part a welcome clarity, especially in the outer movements.

The cello sonata’s two movements are called, rather obviously, Sad and Mad. In the first, both performers seem to be goading each other into depression, Dean’s cello leading the way into an emphatically dour emotional landscape. Indeed, it’s a rare moment when the string voice isn’t clearly in the ascendant. A brief outburst of staccato high notes for Raineri is one of the few points of piano exposure, even if the instrument’s timbre is used deftly at either end of this movement to reinforce the cello’s low moans.

Another attacca launches us into new territory, the piano rumbling in its lowest register against a striving cello circling on itself. And suddenly we emerge into the relative light of a partnership that follows a coherent path for a few measures, only to lapse into a downward cello solo. The music takes a turn for the manic, the piano producing a chain of hand-muffled notes; followed eventually by eruptions, a high tinkling/near-harmonic that suggests mental disarrangement, if not an absence of mental control. But this is followed by a quietly balanced cello lyric, sensitively carried forward by piano chords, before the final ascent to a high sustained note that wavers (intentionally, you’d hope) into something like those woodwind multiphonics that were so popular in the 1960s.

Is this all intended to depict a crazed state with occasional facets of crisis and release? I suppose so and it’s effective in its chameleonic shifts from one phase to another and back. Certainly, it’s a fine demonstration of performance involvement from both executants who appear to be comfortable with Millward’s language and technical demands. The cello and violin sonatas share common ground, in particular a mobile dissonance that impresses for its clear sense of purpose, as opposed to the relative sweetness of the work for viola and piano. Nevertheless, the composer’s triple offering here is challenging and he is content to offer a fairly abstract set of observations to explain his field of operations; hence the diffidence of the observations above . Not a new voice, then, given the composer’s substantial academic and professional career, but one well worth knowing.

CONTRA

Contra Guitar Duo

Move Records MCD 644

IMPULSES

Hamish Strathdee

Move Records MCD 645

No sooner does Move put out one guitar duo recording than another comes hot on its heels. The Contra ensemble comprises Hamish Strathdee and Emma-Shay Gallenti-Guilfoyle, musicians who met as students 12 years ago. In this brief collaboration, they perform four works: Segovia’s slight Divertimento, an arrangement by Angelo Gilardino (the recently-deceased Italian guitarist/musicologist) of Puccini’s bagatelle for strings Crisantemi of 1890, three pieces by Australian Phillip Houghton (the first from 1976, the latter two from 1990), and Alexandre Tansman’s Variations on a Theme of Scriabin, originally a solo work written in 1972 for Segovia and here arranged for two by German guitarist Tilman Hoppstock.

Simultaneously, Strathdee has produced an EP of his own, on which he performs some works that inspired and ‘accompanied’ him across his student and professional years. These meaningful Impulses include two movements from Bach’s Keyboard Partita No. 1: the Saraband and Gigue as arranged by Hoppstock. As well, the disc contains Leo Brouwer’s 1996 Hika, In memoriam Toru Takemitsu, and a flamboyant piece of virtuosity in Napoleon Coste’s Le Depart, fantaisie dramatique Op 31 of 1856 which, like Beethoven’s sonata, also features a return.

Both CDs are rather short: Contra lasts 26’24”, Impulses 19’0″. Quality in small doses, you’d expect. And that’s the way the duo disc begins. Not that Segovia’s small-scale Divertimento makes claims to depth but these executants give it a handsome outing with a freshness of delivery – dynamic variation, linear attack (or its absence), rubato at logical points – that demonstrates a flawless confidence in each other and an affection for this F Major bagatelle. You can best read the collegiality in bars 15 and 16 when the imitations and counterpoint stop for a moment and the pair play a series of chords together – a generous balance obtaining here as it does in the piece’s four final bars which serve as a crisp chaser to the exercise.

As far as an arrangement goes, Gilardino’s work on Puccini’s Chrysanthemums shows a staid mind at work, Guitar 1 generally getting the top violin lines, Guitar 2 taking on viola and cello, although that can vary e.g. Guitar 1 taking up the cello’s bass note (F sharp in the original) across bars 57 to 62, and taking the viola part at bar 92 and beyond. As you’d expect, the piece’s fabric is necessarily changed, these performers not having the luxury of drawing out melody lines or being able to muffle accompanying semiquavers which are a feature of the middle segment starting at bar 32. Still, their treatment is consistent in its elegiac nature and takes its time negotiating the structural cracks.

The Mantis and the Moon is the first of Houghton’s Three Duets and it falls into two unequal parts, even if there are hints of a combination at the end. The opening is a march with triplet underpinning: quite brash, aggressive, with clear suggestions of the insect’s stridulations (to my over-active sensibility). This Prokofiev-style abruptness suddenly changes to a new landscape of an angular melody lying over a muted regular quaver support which stands in for a placid moonscape, with some suggestive antenna-waving in the final measures.

Lament is an elegy for one of Houghton’s friends, the composer/pianist Andrew Uren who died in 1989. The piece works as a threnody above a slow, constant bass; its atmosphere is funereal, verging on dirge-like but leavened by a strong melodic line that reaches a fierce highpoint before sinking back into the sombre inevitability of the piece’s opening. Alchemy is all movement and flashes of colour, operating over a sort of continuous undercurrent of triplets. Its 6/8 motion transforms into hemiola-like 2 crotchets in the bar at the end – a striking passage with vehement chords from both players. Houghton imagined his performers sparking off each other, the music mutating throughout – and so it does, although you can’t avoid the suggestions of the old scientific search for gold formed from disparate elements.

Finally, we’re treated to Tansman’s set of six variations on Scriabin’s 12-bar Prelude Op. 16 No. 4, originally in the recherche key of E flat minor. The Polish composer begins by moving the key to B minor (which I think Hoppstock has followed) and dividing the original between the players. I can’t see much difference from the original in the first two variations beyond a doubling of the melodic line. As well as an added richness of chording (all in keeping with Tansman) that operates throughout the longer Variation 3, the work gains from a sense of ease where the original’s responsibilities are shared.

I can only see one point in Variation 4 where the arranger adds anything beyond some doublings and transpositions down an octave, and that’s an unexpected semi-harmonic appearing at the start of bar 6; the rest moves placidly along its lento path. Again, in the Variation 5 quasi Mazurka, you can enjoy the part-writing more readily because of the division of responsibility, particularly in a page that holds a fair share of accidentals. To end, Tansman goes fugato with some close writing that threatens to progress into something full-blown – but then the contrapunctus stops in its tracks and he rounds off the piece by re-stating Scriabin’s prelude with a subtler harmonic content and the addition of a cadence-reinforcing last bar.

This is excellent work from both Gallenti-Guilfoyle and Strathdee: a sensitively structured partnership, obvious from the shared level of responsiveness, not to mention the technical balance and simultaneity on display, Not just in this Tansman, either; I doubt if Houghton’s duets have been better served by the various artists who have performed them since Tim Kain and John Williams issued their version in 1995.

MOVING to the Strathdee solo disc, his Bach sarabande is rather languorous in approach, with a few delays in getting off this dance’s pivotal second beat. Speaking of which, the second-beat chord in bar 8 has lost some of its components in this arrangement and the upward transposition of the original’s left-hand demi-semiquavers in each half’s last bar strikes me as unsatisfying. And I, for one, would have welcomed repeats! The reading of the gigue showed the player’s clarity of output and the piece avoided becoming a study – just. Strathdee repeated the first half but not the (admittedly longer) second part. I don’t know whether it was intentional but I missed the two ornaments in bars 5 and 7. In his transcription of the entire partita, Hoppstock moved the original tonality from B flat Major to D Major; a much more congenial arrangement for this instrument’s aficionados, of course.

Has Leo Brouwer incorporated any original Takemitsu strands into his elegy/eulogy? It’s hard to tell. He begins with a set of epigraphs, detached on the page and articulated as separate units by Strathdee. But, as we move into the piece, each fragment enjoys a generous variety of treatments: arches expanding or contracting by a short interpolation or its absence; flourishes of accidental chains that end in a suspended harmonic; two bursts of brief velocissimo; a central vivace providing for an abrupt volte face in personality before the initial calm resumes. Strathdee gives a vigorous account of this last but takes his time over the meditative stretches; importantly, he makes sense of this abschied‘s emotional permutations, setting up the initial framework with obvious empathy.

One authority has linked Coste’s Le depart to the Crimean War and the piece certainly has an emphatic martial quality. It’s not hard to read what you like into the piece’s progress so that, by the time you get to the concluding Le retour: marche triomphale, it’s clear that the military have been involved. Added to which, the first edition has a date for this concluding section – December 29, 1855 – by which point the war was almost over and it’s conceivable that Coste was indulging in a bit of chauvinistic self-congratulation; if the French troops (those that survived) weren’t already home, they were on their way.

Strathdee follows the piece’s narrative with an enthusiastic embrace of its emotional switches. A fulsome Andante Largo could accompany a soldier’s farewell coloured by patriotic aspirations; it’s certainly a personal, possibly sentimental statement, and framed in a positive E Major. The interpreter gives the soprano line a wealth of expressiveness, enriched by some brief inter-note glissandi/slides. Then the fireworks begin with some martial trumpet calls at an Allegro assai of 28 bars that suggests action, if rather well-organized. A brief three-quaver chord progression leads to an Andantino in B Major and an Agitato of 10 bars (the wounded followed by a final flurry before the peace is signed?), and we’re into the somewhat overlong E minor march, which continues the piece’s inspiration of serving as a brilliant display-piece for its creator – and later guitarists (a lot of them) – to display dexterity and responsiveness across this fine flower of mid-19th century Romanticism.

Le depart works well as a finale to Strathdee’s mini-recital which moves across a vast period of history with success. One of the finer factors of both CDs is that neither hits the all-too-familiar Spanish/Latin American repertoire that has been flogged mercilessly by guitarists for decades. You are spared the transcriptions of Granados, Albeniz or Falla; there’s not even a Piazzolla mundanity bringing up the rear. In fact, the only Spanish piece offered is an actual guitar duo written by the dominant figure in guitar across the last century.

It’s also worth noting that the more arresting sequences on both discs are semi-contemporary: Brouwer’s salute to his dead friend, and Houghton’s triptych. Still, the duo has (I hope) much more up their communal sleeve and you’d have to be confident that their next recording will be a more sustained experience for us all.

SIDEKICK

Ziggy and Miles Johnston

Move Records MCD 648

This duo has been around the country – and overseas – for some time. At this point, both musicians are studying – as a guitar duo – at the Juilliard School in New York where their craft will continue to be honed to an even finer point. As is inevitable, these musicians have won prizes from operations like the Guitar Foundation of America, the Adelaide International Guitar Festival, and the Concert Artists Guild Competition. The brothers’ second CD, as far as I can tell, oscillates between Brazilian/Spanish voices and home-grown ones, with sideways glances at one of serious music’s best-known vignettes in Debussy’s Claire de lune, and Welsh composer Katie Jenkins‘ Sidekick, written specifically for these players by a co-student at the famous American academy.

Ziggy and Miles begin their excursions with Jongo, a rhythmically clever piece by Brazilian guitarist Paulo Bellinati; it alternates 6/8 with 3/4 in a time-honoured Latin tradition and bases its development on a catchy D Major tune that doesn’t venture outside its home key. We hear a cut version of this arrangement because the musicians omit about a minutes’ worth of ‘percussion work towards the piece’s ending where performers have the option of snapping strings at various points along the neck/fretboard or slapping the instrument’s side, outlining the same rhythmic interplay that has featured so far in the piece.

It all makes for a nice study in ensemble and this duo comes up trumps, even if the last bar’s arpeggiated chord is prepared by a carefully-considered chain of what you’d expect would be rapid acciaccature. Still, its determination leaves you in no doubt that we’ve reached the end of this frolic.

This is followed by the three-movement Tonadilla of Rodrigo. which you can find on YouTube, the Johnston brothers giving a most focused reading of this brightly textured suite. The initial Allegretto ma non troppo sets up the composer’s trademark 2nds, placing E in one instrument against E flat in the other, the bitonal suggestion a continuous spur as the players exchange material and unite for full-blooded rasgueado chords with sparkling clarity.

The second movement Minuetto pomposo doesn’t really get affected until a fair way in, beginning with a delectable alternation of material and spice added by ‘wrong-note’ chords like the opening D Major chord in Guitar 1 set against an F sharp minor triad on Guitar 2; this polarity persists but it’s not that remarkable – just a muted form of bitonality. The stately section starts well into the piece’s centre with a definite change of character, into the minor if anywhere, and a definite strut to the rhythmic motion. A series of concerted common chords (recalling bars 11 and 12 of the opening segment) follow a cadenza for Miles Johnston, and we return to the opening material and a curt conclusion.

Then the concluding Allegro vivace is an infectious rondo, notable for some stunning scale passages from both players. Here, the harmonic spikiness is underplayed although Rodrigo can’t bring himself to complete orthodoxy. But these pages exemplify the finer points of this duo’s abilities – from the carefully managed rubato and decelerandi to the fine timbral eloquence from Ziggy Johnston in a mid-movement minor mode bass-line solo, and the combined effervescence of the concluding bars’ semiquaver unison run.

Now we come to the CD’s longest track in Granados’ Ochos valses poeticos, written sometime between 1886 and 1894 for piano solo. All of them have been transcribed for two guitars, some of them by several arrangers, but the Johnstons have chosen the version assembled by the duo of Christian Gruber and Peter Maklar. In fact, the waltzes are preceded by a bright march-like introduction and the first of the dances recurs as a postlude to the whole collection. Right from the start, you’re aware of transpositions across bars 10-12 where the piano in alt can’t be handled by the guitar; as well, you hear a few supernumerary bass notes starting 13 bars from the introduction’s bridge/conclusion. But the players capture effectively the good-humoured charm of this preface.

Most of the waltzes are a page long in the original; repetitions abound, as they do in Chopin and Brahms, and the Johnstons give great pleasure in their ease of delivery and supple gradations of tempo and timbre. You can’t fault them for accuracy either with many striking passages of close duet. For all that, the waltzes are amiable salon matter, their phrases falling neatly into four-bar patterns with nothing needlingly sharp to their gentle progress. Certainly, the first Melodioso holds the most memorable melody, well worth revisiting at the conclusion to Waltz 8’s Presto in contrasting 6/8 and 3/4 (only an unadventurous two bars’ worth of this).

But the inner pieces have considerable charm under the Johnstons’ care: the gentle, ascending chromatic pattern of the second Tempo di valse noble; the slightly off-kilter shape of the following Valse lente with its groups of three four-bar phrases; an abrupt muffled pizzicato effect in the Allegro umoristico at bars 21 to 24, and later at bars 29 to 32 which are treated with precision by both players in turn; a telling Viennese-style hesitancy applied in Waltz 5, meltingly effective at bars 11 to 18 the first time round; followed by a carefully shaped Quasi ad libitum where the performers take their time but do so with a single mind; the impeccable realization of Gruber and Maklar’s division of labour in the Valse 7 Vivo, even if the piano’s full-blooded chords (e.g., bars 6 and 8) have been thinned out.

The set displays the brothers’ command of Granados’ none-too-complex emotional landscape in these unsophisticated bagatelles. Even the more introspective waltzes (Nos. 3 and 6) make no bones about the modesty of their forays into a (slightly) darker world. Still, the pieces meld successfully into each other, in this instance because of the interpreters’ uniform interpretative vision.

I’ve not much to say about the Johnstons’ transcription of Debussy’s famous piano extract from the Suite bergamasque. Their approach emphasizes the pages’ innate calm, even at the En animant change of key for six bars at the work’s climax. And the transcription manages to keep the melody line prominent – although that might be due to the players’ subtle treatment of the splayed chords/arpeggios at the un poco mosso from bar 27 on. An agreable 5 minutes’ worth.

Most senior of the three contemporary voices is Nigel Westlake‘s Songs from the forest in its original duo guitar form of 1994. I’ve heard the Grigoryan brothers play this work, possibly at Monash University – more a matter of history than actual reminiscence. It has a catchy opening gambit in the best Westlake style and the composer brings this back to round off his sonically effective score. Interpreters are kept busy with a wealth of effects and rhythmic slips and slides, demonstrating Westlake’s insights into his instruments’ capabilities. As expected, the Johnstons find the mellifluous melodic passages and the mildly aggressive interludes suit their partnership down to the ground and – if anything – the work accelerates in interest the further it advances.

Jenkins wrote Sidekick in 2021 during the COVID outbreak at the invitation of the Johnstons. It is intended to be a reflection of the brothers’ relationship, both fraternal and professional – which immediately presents interpretative problems. Which one is the sidekick – Miles or Ziggy? Or are they both each other’s offsider? I guess that Jenkins doesn’t have any narrative in mind; she’s not committing to a story like Macbeth, Don Juan or Till Eulenspiegel but potentially essaying a pair of thumbnails like Lavine or Pickwick. Yes, certain moments present intimations of sequential thoughts racing between the instruments, or even complementary ideas that find common expression, as well as times of divergence from each other.

All the same, the composer is at some pains to outline a kind of aesthetic compatibility where competing flurries of action lead to a common end, quietly fusing into a shared output. The experience is heightened by listening to the track through headphones where the two voices are spatially separate. But that’s the case for the whole CD, by which means you can detect the labour division – or better, the sharing of responsibility. Jenkins’ language is pleasantly catholic, moving into old-fashioned harmony near the piece’s conclusion but tracing a lightly acerbic path in its central pages.

Written last year, Ken Murray’s Trin Warren Tam-boree depicts wetlands in the north-west of Melbourne’s Royal Park; specifically, the bellbird waterhole that sits there, just behind those yellow and red slanted pillars that mark the Tullamarine Freeway’s starting point. Also written for the Johnston brothers, this presents as a meditation on the area’s restless placidity, the piece’s forward motion dominated for the greater part of its length by a minor 2nd oscillation: D-C sharp-D, for example. Over this underpinning, the players outline Murray’s wide-ranging melodic output, the whole complex packed with incident but not alarmingly so. This is an expertly pitched soundscape, created by one of the city’s leading guitarists and a solid contribution to the still-slim catalogue of serious Australian music for duo guitar.

Here is a welcome exposition of the Johnstons’ obvious talents, well placed in a field of musical practice that is not quite unknown or unrepresented but has rarely been graced with such expertise in execution. Admittedly, a substantial track (Granados) and a slight one (Debussy) are arrangements, but the execution of those and the original two-guitar works is exceptionally fine. This CD was recorded at the Skillman Studio in New York and the artists have been well-served by an operational team which captured every detail of their polished interpretations.

IN FLIGHT

Harold Gretton

Move Records MCD 627

This musician is a new name to me but not to guitar aficionados in Canberra or the Riverina Conservatorium in Wagga Wagga. This CD, recorded in early 2019 at the Holy Trinity Anglican Church in Weston, UK, has been delayed by the universal plague that reduced serious music-making to a dribble for at least two years. Its content is, to put it mildly, eclectic with some classics like Sor’s Introduction, Theme and Variations on ‘O cara armonia‘ (that distracting little number from Mozart’s The Magic Flute), and a quartet of Latin-inflected favourites in Morel’s Danza Brasilera, Lauro’s La Negra, Estrellita by Ponce, and – just to show the performer’s 1990 credentials – Piazzolla’s La Muerte del Angel.

Adding to the regular repertoire security blanket, Gretton performs Mertz’s Fantaisie Hongroise and tucks in three pieces by Weiss. For a bit of contemporary relief, he outlines The Prince’s Toys suite by Moscow-born Nikita Koshkin. Just as interesting is his own five-part collection from 2013, Flock, which gives us Gretton’s musings on Australian birds. And he concludes the CD with another of his compositions: Inarticulate Music, composed after Gretton’s move to Wagga as Deputy Director and Head of Guitar.

Earliest in time is the Weiss trilogy: a Fuga, Passacaille, and the well-thumbed Capriccio. Gretton gives excellent interpretations of them, certainly superior to anything I heard from other guitarists when scrabbling around for comparisons on the internet. The D/B minor fugue version allows for plenty of liberties in placing the bass line in the instrument’s lowest octave or using an upward transposition, e.g. in the middle of bar 10, or across bars 32 and 33. Also, the ornamentation is very discreet, like the small semiquaver run interpolated in bar 40.

He sets up the passacaglia by playing the initial seven bars twice before launching into the 11 variations, which are accounted for with touching sensibility, nowhere better than in the 8th variant in 3rds and 6ths, and the following two semiquaver-rich strophes before a moving reversion to the original: a Goldberg in miniature. What strikes you particularly about the Capriccio is its rapidity, yet all lines remain clear and unfudged, with some finely resonant bass work (viz. bars 4 to 6) and a restrained outline of when the fugato stops from bars 50 to 53 and the splayed chords emerge as an unexpected, final jeu d’esprit.

Sor’s variations on Papageno’s Das klinget so herrlich features among the composer’s most popular works. The portentous preliminary bars, all 24 of them, serve as a kind of tongue-in-cheek prelude to the infectious, superbly balanced melody that Sor elaborates. Gretton observes all the repeats in this, the CD’s longest track, with an expert eye for second-time-around changes and an effective use of vibrato and that muted effect achieved by plucking above the fingerboard rather than directly above the sound hole. Of course, the player uses that time-honoured trope of setting loud against soft in identical repeated passages but it isn’t over-worked. Still, this is a reputable sequence, coming fairly close to the opera’s premiere and before the advent of the thunder-and-lightning virtuoso.

Speaking of which, Mertz’s fantaisie, the first of 3 Morceaux from an 1857 posthumous publication, is a splendid display piece with as many separate sections as a Liszt rhapsody, like a 15-bar lassan marked Lugubre, followed by an Allegro vivace that stands in for a friska. As with the Sor, Gretton includes or ignores bass notes as he pleases, omitting several low fundamentals for reasons (I assume) of articulation clarity. But he follows the wilful Romantic attitude to metre – taking his time over the Adagio maestoso con entusiasmo, and the two volante brief cadenzas.

Then, when he comes to the final 1 and a 1/2 pages, he is an exhibitionist’s delight, playing nearly all the notes I find in an old Haslinger edition and elevating the tension in a dazzling series of semiquaver patterns for the jubilant A Major of the maestoso. No, it’s not profound, but it’s not trying to be anything but exuberant and nationalistically coloured in the Liszt vein; the first 15 of the Hungarian Rhapsodies were available for general consumption by 1853.

Ponce’s Estrellita of 1912 remains the Mexican composer’s most well-known melody, having been subjected to many transformations, but it’s rarely heard in its original form – as a song, a cancion mexicana . But then, how many contemporary vocalists have the required range of a 13th? The arrangement used by Gretton, attributed to Scots guitar master David Russell, underlines the lyric’s plaintive quality with plenty of space allowed for the vocal line to breathe. A pity that the song’s second half was not repeated.

La Muerte del Angel was written as incidental music for a play in 1962 and, in its original shape, is a typical Piazzolla affirmation, packing an impressive punch in its outer sections which cradle a quite substantial central lyric. Gretton plays Leo Brouwer’s arrangement which expands the Argentinean composer’s horizon with an introduction that goes into improvisation-suggestive territory before settling into the biting, catchy main topic. To be honest, I think Gretton plays this piece better than its arranger, with a deft whimsicality colouring the introduction’s more fragmentary elements and a powerful rasgueado attack at the work’s dynamic highpoints. As well, unlike several other interpreters, he doesn’t underplay the final chord’s inbuilt ambivalence.

Another Argentinian, Jorge Morel, produced a samba in his Danza Brasilera of 1968, and Gretton plays it straight, without any irregularities of rhythm; it’s as though he’s accompanying dancers who don’t look for any idiosyncrasies. You can hear a nice sense of urgency throughout this as the main theme’s recurrences lead to a kind of return to a turbulent base after some more texturally transparent excursions, like the central 14-bar repeated bracket leading into a chain or two of quick single quavers before the catchy principal melody returns: excellent articulation throughout, especially the no-fuss negotiation of the harmonics patches.

Last in this Latin bracket, Antonio Lauro’s 1976 La Negra (third in his Triptico suite for Segovia, after Armida and Madrugada) is approached with a more supple rhythmic outline, including some fetching pauses as at the end of bar 16 each time it comes around, later in the work’s central section at the end of bar 32, and – most lingeringly – at the return to bar 2 for the second-last time. This interpretation is a fine example of controlled sentiment with a graceful lilt illustrated by several carefully positioned portamenti.

Russian guitarist Nikita Koshkin achieved initial prominence with his suite The Prince’s Toys of 1980, a variant on Ravel’s L’enfant et les sortileges plot where the abused turn on the abuser; in this case, the toys take the prince to another world/dimension. Gretton plays five of the six elements in this collection, omitting the final Grand Toys’ Parade. His opening, The mischievous prince, is a gratifying setting-up of the central character’s psychopathology in which portamenti play a large part as well as some fiercely (potentially sadistic) hard-hitting single-notes and chords; the whole ending either in melancholy or menace, according to your taste.

Some of the effects achieved during The mechanical monkey are remarkable. A side-drum imitation is highly persuasive but no more so than the cymbal clashes that the toy produces with extraordinary fidelity. Added to which, the central pages in 6/8 (or a variant) pass along with sterling fluency and irreproachable security of left-hand work. Next, The doll with the blinking eyes becomes more intriguing the longer it lasts with Koshkin including in his piece two articulation problems that afflict all guitarists: the audible swipe when rapidly changing fingering positions, and the buzz that comes about when a string vibrates against frets. Both make for fine image suggestiveness, probably bettered by the final music-box harmonics that come in the piece’s final pages.

The soldiers opens bravely enough with tuckets and trumpet imitations, the former achieved by a unique series of intervals rather like an organ’s mixture stop. The movement sticks to a quick march tempo for about half its length when material starts disintegrating until, by the end, the martial sounds have been mutated, the toy soldiers shadows of their former glory, the prince’s miniature army falling on hard times. Here again, Koshkin’s technical skills are outlined with considerable craft by Gretton. As for The prince’s coach, this begins bravely enough with plenty of assurance and forward progression that eventually accelerates until the inevitable crash when the unleashed horses gallop off into the distance.

The whole suite is written for a virtuoso performer with the ability to take on novel sound-production demands and remain unafraid to indulge in sound imitations with panache. Gretton fits the bill with a mastery of Koshkin’s technical panoply and the composer’s blend of vocabularies, mainly coming down on the side of neo-classicism best exemplified by the leading 20th century Russian composers, both resident and expatriate.

So we come to the guitarist’s own compositions. Gretton’s Flock includes the currawong, magpie, blue wren, galah and rainbow lorikeet. and his CD’s booklet is illustrated with five water colours by Penny Deacon from which this ornithologically-challenged observer can identify three birds with some certainty. We are not in Messiaenland where the bird calls are notated and indicated, as in Oiseaux exotiques, Catalogue d’oiseaux, or even Le Merle noir. Gretton is more concerned with each bird’s character – or, better, its characteristics. So his Currawong presents as jaunty, almost cakewalking: the C. J. Dennis of birds, staying firmly on the ground before a transfiguring ending rich in harmonics. Unlike a Collingwood supporter, the Magpie is a conversationalist – or he could be involved in a fluent soliloquy; this personality is amiable enough, apart from the occasional abrupt outburst.

With the Blue Wren, we come across a questing, inquisitive busybody who suddenly bursts into a flurry of activity; the following Galah is similar if more consistent in his activity before normal behaviour gives way to near-aggressively restive, then off-the-wall temperamental flights (the CD’s shortest track). Finally, Gretton’s Rainbow Lorikeet begins with a motif/melody like its predecessors but accretes more lines as it progresses. At its opening, this seems the most harmonically conservative member of the set but, as with some of the others, it moves out of an avian comfort zone into a dissonant and unpredictable landscape with powerful, confrontational chords. Finally, the piece returns to its opening melody, immediately more rich in its setting before a conclusion of heightened power.

Yes, the bird titles aren’t necessarily attached to the music itself and one man’s lorikeet is another woman’s buzzard. Yet each of these five vignettes has a distinct flavour which might as well represent the animal of its title. Gretton writes that, when overseas, he missed Australia’s bird sounds and so we have to approach his suite as a kind of memento sequence, even an exercise in patriotic nostalgia. It’s not on the same intellectual level as the French master’s imagery but it’s certainly easier on the ear.

In the CD’s last track, Gretton is responding to a conversation with a painter who decried the verbiage surrounding art, wondering why art cannot be allowed to speak for itself. Inarticulate Music attempts to create a music that requires no explanation, no exegesis, no apologia. It consists of an alternation between repeated common chords (Major mainly, with one minor excursion) and single notes and, in that, it resembles a simple man’s The Unanswered Question. It’s probably the most conservative piece on the CD in terms of form, vocabulary, melodic content and metrical variety. But it makes for a placid conclusion to Gretton’s considerable efforts, a simple Amen to a string of finely-executed works from across a wide time-frame.

LATIN AMERICAN PIANO MUSIC

Alejandro Alberto Tellez Vargas

Move Records MCD 639

You’d have to assume that this pianist is Mexican-born, if only because the few life details you can glean point to his bachelor’s degree coming from the Escuela Superior de Music, even if his Ph. D. was earned at the University of Melbourne and – as far as I can find – he resides in that city. On this CD, he performs works by seven composers: Cuban writer Ernesto Lecuona enjoys four exposures; Ricardo Castro from Mexico is heard in three tracks; the voice of another Mexican, Manuel Ponce, is heard twice; and three of the remaining four writers, all of whom are heard in one manifestation, are also Mexican – Alfredo Carrasco, Ernesto Elorduy, and Mario Ruiz Armengol. The odd man out is Luis G. Jorda who was born (and died) in Catalonia.

As a preface in the CD’s booklet, Vargas writes a few words in Spanish. As far as I can make out, he says the following: ‘I dedicate this recording to my beloved fathers [artistic?], many thanks for my piano lessons and for all the support during my studies and concerts. Also, I want to thank my dear siblings for all your patience during those long afternoons when I sat practising in the living room.’ Pleasing and charmingly domestic, as is most of the music that the pianist presents which is either of the salon or a small bijou serving well as an encore. I didn’t anticipate that this courtly, colonial music would have much overtly striking about its character and that prediction was largely fulfilled; it’s hard to avoid the impression that this perspective into Latin American art has an all-too-comfortable European veneer – the landscape of the 19th century virtuoso pianist.

So none of the great names of the Romatic-to-Modern Mexican school appear: no Chavez, no Revueltas. Vargas has concentrated on the small-scale compositions of – in the main – a minor rank of writers whose vocabulary is slightly infused with national colour but is chiefly the product of the drawing-room. Fortunately or unfortunately, this ambience lacks any Chopinesque chromatic intrigue or superbly arched melodic contour; in many instances, composition is presented as a pastel-shaded art.

The works representing Lecuona are A la Antigua in D flat Major, Ante el Escorial in E flat minor, La Comparsa in F sharp Major, and Gitanerias in D minor. Well, the first has the key signature for C sharp minor for its first part before changing to D flat Major for the happier, scherzando second section; its main interest lies on the second beat syncopations and also in leaving you with the question: what is so old-fashioned about this? Standing in front of the monastery/palace, Lecuona begins with full slow chords in both hands in a melodic minor shape, a kind of chorale with which he also ends his meditation after a virtuosic flourish and a central passage in G flat Major. In fact, the piece consists of an arch form with the first melody, after those initial chords, being treated later to a left-hand enunciation before the aspirational chords return.

The composer’s vision of a Cuban carnival procession opens softly with a bass figure that persists across the piece’s brief duration as the parade arrives and passes, off into the distance following a resonant climax. The gypsy business comes from the composer’s six-part Suite Andalucia and falls into a predictable ternary shape with a semi-D Major relief in the middle; sprightly and attractive in Vargas’ treatment which disappoints only in a blurring across the crescendo four-bar link before the return of the initial material 54 bars from the end.

Castro presents as less folkloric than Lecuona. His three samples are an A minor Prelude (Barcarola), Polonaise in G sharp minor, and Caprice-Valse in E Major – the composer’s Opus 1. The Venetian-indebted piece is, as far as I can tell, in 9/8 – which might present some challenges for rhythmically illiterate gondoliers. This is eminently acceptable salon music, showing a mastery of orthodox Romantic writing for the piano, the piece notable mainly for its left-hand semiquaver motif. A lot of Chopin is present in the polonaise, including an aggressively strident introduction with plenty of bravely martial repeated chords, although the main theme and its consequents don’t strike me as really assertive. Also, a note at the top of the instrument is sounding out of tune, but I can’t isolate it (maybe the instrument’s top G sharp?); and Vargas inserts quite a few delays while he readies himself for some awkward arpeggiations. This is the second-longest piece on the CD (coming in a few seconds behind Castro’s Opus 1) and its repetitious material tends to fray.

In fact, the Caprice-Valse concludes the CD and is one of the more intriguing tracks of the 15. Your attention is taken up from the beginning by the waltz’s bantering between 3/4 and 6/8 which Castro plays very cleanly so that you don’t lose connection with the basic pulse. The piece begins with a bit of bravura and stops every so often for some interpolated fireworks, handled by Vargas with infectious brio. It isn’t demanding on a Lisztian scale but it does test the executant’s fluency. Castro also spices up this piece de concert with some rhythmic irregularities and a flashy vivo and grandioso that bring us home to general satisfaction.

I suspect that the only name familiar to many of us will be that of Ponce; in my case, almost totally for his association with, and compositions for, Segovia. Here, the first of his works is a Scherzino Mexicano in D Major, the shortest on the CD as Vargas doesn’t play the first part’s repeat of 16 bars’ worth. It’s a generally quiet bagatelle with an adventurous chromatic sequence in its central section, and the main melody is certainly catchy. Its complement is the Intermezzo in E minor, the first of three. This is another ternary construct with a slightly fierce central highpoint, but the main concept of repeated thirds travels just about as far as this work’s length will carry it. The executant allows the final quaver chord to linger for a long time; he probably didn’t agree with the composer’s curt conclusion to this melancholy miniature.

Carrasco’s Adios in A Major is a dance (a habanera, I think) as well as a song, because my copy has words inserted. This is another A-B-A format where the centre is stormy and ardent and the framing passages suggest languor in a set of two-bar phrases in balance with each other. The three danzas called Tropicales by Elorduy are one-page trifles that Vargas extends by playing everything at least twice. Perhaps the most successful is the third which is of a piece, without a fast introduction, and its language shows more sophistication than its companions; being kind, you call them ‘lightly atmospheric’ and the performer adds more of the same while employing an attractive rubato in the slower reaches of all three.

Armengol, last of the Mexican writers celebrated here, contributes a Prelude in E Major for piano or harp which deals with two key elements: a rapidly rising arpeggio-type figure, and a sequence of block chords – grist to the mill of any harpist, of course. What dominates everything is the spirit of Debussy: the Arabesque No. 1 and the Reverie come to mind straight away, followed by La fille aux cheveux de lin, Claire de lune, probably Danseuses de Delphes. For all that, the composer follows a fairly unsurprising harmonic plan and the piece’s elements circle each other with the inevitability of a rondo. Vargas treats these pages with considerable care and sympathy.

And so we arrive at the Spaniard in the works. Jorda’s Danzas Nocturnas is a series of three vignettes: Moderato, Con tristezza, and Mesto; 54, 16 and 48 bars long and in F minor/Major, D minor and A minor/Major respectively. All partake in the habanera rhythmic underpinning, although it’s not a strict observation with a plethora of languid triplets brought into play. Vargas handles these short dances with elegance and fine responsiveness, extending their substance by playing all the repeats and then some, my only quibble coming with his interpretation of mesto which here has little of that depression I usually associate with the term, having first encountered it in Beethoven’s Piano Sonata Op.10 No. 3.

It rounds out a CD of considerable charm, expertly carried off by Vargas who is at some pains to demonstrate the restraint and fresh-eyed inspiration of these writers. Owning a considerable technique, the interpreter offers fluent versions of pieces that have been passed over in favour of more flamboyant Latin productions by famous names, significant composers with advanced skills and insights. Much of the music recorded here can be found on the internet, scores and performances; still, as far as the latter are concerned, few match Vargas in ease of production and sympathy with his small-frame material.

ECLIPSE

Concordia Mandolin & Guitar Ensemble

Move Records MCD 612

The latest product by this well-known Melbourne group comprises works by well-known guitar/plucked instrument expert Michelle Nelson who was first guitar with the Melbourne Mandolin Orchestra across this century’s first decade, taking up the same position with Concordia in 2013. In fact, Nelson has been conducting a healthy professional life for 40 years now and has produced several additions to the Concordia repertoire – all of them, as far as one can judge from this CD, traditional in language and instrumental use.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that. This composer is given to wondering how modern music composition (20th century) strayed so far from popular taste of the time. Yeah: it’s the same sort of thing I self-divert with when listening to the Gabrielis and Bach, Gesualdo and Chopin. Funnily enough, I tend to come down on the side of the benighted composer who finds little stimulating in the simple-minded. But, if you want to continue finding your inspiration in the folksy and the English bucolic, be my guest; just don’t wait around for praise on your originality.

This small CD (40′ 45″ long) contains four compositions: Bishops Spell, which is a musical portrait of musicians Ida (recorder) and Frank (mandola) Bishop; the title work Eclipse: Concerto for Mandola and Plucked Strings with soloist Darryl Barron; After the Fire, a rearrangement of an earlier construct expanded into two movements; and Jim Greer’s Jig. This recording was due for release in 2020 but universal infections got in the way; hence, its arrival now. So the family portrait was recorded at Move Studios in 2019, the concerto at the same venue in 2018, the two-movement new construct probably put down in 2022, and the jig recorded live during Concordia’s first post-lockdown concert at Christmas, 2021.

The Bishops’ family portrait begins with a jovial, folk-like tune (British Isles). Will Hardy‘s recorder answering the orchestra’s statements with variations, the whole featuring some extensions that seem to work against the four-bar phrase pattern that matters start off with. Still, the trend is to the non-adventurous, although the atmosphere is jaunty. That’s Ida dispatched. Frank begins more soberly – a slow 3/4 rather than Ida’s brisk 6/8, and the more meditative male enjoys a calm depiction from Darryl Barron’s mandola, even though it has to be observed that Ida is well-represented in this movement, having a definite melodic and descant function in turns. Furthermore, Ida has the last word.

The Family Life third movement has a percussive element as underpinning – just your normal hand-beaten drums (bongos?) supporting the two soloists as they work together through a four-square melody and its small-scale elaborations, It all sounds slightly medieval/Renaissance in character, as though the Bishops were early music enthusiasts; and, as I know from bitter experience, the interest in such complexes generally falls to the solitary woodwind line. Things move from the four-square 4/4 a little after the half-way point to a more meditative triple-beat interlude, before the drums return and we come together for a rousing estampie conclusion. As you’d assume Nelson’s language is eminently assimilable with nothing much to astonish anyone born before 1700.

The composer’s Eclipse concerto has three movements: Eclipse: Approach, Eclipse, and Eclipse: Release. I can’t argue for the shape of the first of these. It takes a firm stand at the start with some block chords, a strong melody based on an upward-rising arpeggio; the composer allows both soloist and orchestra to deal with both elements, then stops before moving into more lyrical territory. Nelson has an occasional habit of curtailing or extending her regular phrases but the working out of material is orthodox with a lot of pattern-work where the development section would be. A return to the opening second-inversion chord/arpeggio melody and we’re not long before the home stretch is in sight.

[As a completely oblique observation, I have to report that the strongest impression I have from what I’ve heard so far on this disc recalls nothing so much as Debbie Wiseman’s theme music to the BBC One production Shakespeare & Hathaway. It might be the suggestion of massed lutes that is produced by the Concordias, or the definite if unadventurous bass line, or the optimistic bent of both Wiseman and Nelson. But the aura is reminiscent of Stratford at its cleanest, as we see it in the series, despite the mandolin’s necessity to play tremolando much of the time.]

The middle slow movement starts out in the same key as its predecessor, the threnody melody articulated over a fixed bass note for the opening strophes. The soloist occupies a semi-prominent role before everything halts for a cadenza where the harmony stays pretty constant, apart from a chromatic frisson about the four-minute mark. The slow march recommences, working on three layers (eventually four when a sustained bass note is added) as the rhythmic level sees people playing with Beethoven’s ‘Fate’ motive. This leads to a climactic point, from which apogee the music dies out to an ambiguous conclusion – which is actually an imaginative depiction of the state in which an eclipse’s maturation leaves us.

The Release is very abrupt: we’re immediately back in clear skies with a slightly threatening march that, for much of its initial statement, follows an iambic metrical pattern. The first antistrophe appears to recapitulate a memory from the first movement, before we slow down for a more melancholy stretch that ends interrogatively before we revert to the march/strut. Another cadenza appears which owes something to Rodrigo although lacking that master’s quirkiness and timbral curiosity. Back to the iambic rhythm and a final reference to the first movement’s chord inversion, and this mainly-minor mode concerto ends with a unison/octave emphasis.

A minor quibble: Nelson entitles her first movement to After the Fire – Incinerat – as ‘burnt to ashes’. It’s a bit more specific than that as it means ‘he/she/it had burnt it (to ashes)’, the pluperfect of incinero. Not that it means anything to most people except those of us who sweated through six years of the language in secondary school, back in the days when they taught it. In fact, the afore-mentioned tremolando effect is atmospherically suggestive here, especially at the start where a free-standing flickering comes across very well. I’m not as enamoured of the guitar and bass solos that follow because they bring a touch of interruption, of unexpected voices in a bleak aural landscape.

Harmony Returns, the second movement, begins with a reversion to the expected. The ambience is TV soap comfort with a series of rising adjacent chords spreading the benignity until a tune arrives after a minute of preparation: an amiably swinging 6/8 melody which is well-established before a subsidiary figure enters for some more mercilessly predictable repetitions. Then it’s heigh-ho for the original lightly syncopated melody that has suggestions of something that could have been produced by/for Captain Corelli – a nostalgic Mediterranean travelogue, perhaps. As with much of Nelson’s output, it’s not so much a question of harmony returning but more an iteration of the fact that harmony never left.

It’s probable that the composer’s fire is one of the bush infernos that have swept across the country, but the post-crisis ambience that she has constructed is free from any signs of PTSD or shivers of reminiscence – at least, as far as I can tell. As for the CD’s finale, the jig in memory of Concordia member Jim Greer, it’s a pretty rough affair, compared to the preceding tracks. Attack is not as split-second as the group is capable of and the rhythm is heavy-handed; everyone sounds as though they’re not at ease with the work which, for some reason, ends on a chord inversion. Yes, it’s a live performance after a long epidemic-controlled cessation of activities, but the players’ assurance of address does not satisfy as much as in the three preceding scores.

 

 

DAVID JOSEPH: WORKS FOR STRING ORCHESTRA

Melbourne Chamber Orchestra, Zagreb Soloists, Ripieno Kammerorchester

Move Records MD 3460

This CD is a blast from the past; three blasts, in fact. Australian composer Joseph wrote two of the three works offered here in 1992, the other in 1999. Honourably aged, you may think, if not exactly ancien regime. But the recordings have not been available since their premieres, as I understand it. For instance, tracks 1 and 2 comprise the Chamber Concerto for Piano and Strings, , commissioned by the then-director (1992) of the Melbourne Chamber Orchestra, violinist Spiros Rantos. Originally conceived for Rantos’ wife, Brachi Tilles, the first soloist was Michael Kieran Harvey. So far, fine. The score was premiered at Melba Hall in Melbourne University’s Faculty of Music. What we hear on this CD is a performance recorded in the former ABC studios at Waverley, Harvey as soloist with Rantos conducting his MCO. This must have taken place between 1992 and 1995, after which the ABC moved to Southbank.

As for the second work, Scheherezade was written for the Zagreb Soloists, one of Europe’s premier chamber orchestras. I’m assuming that the composition date of 1999 was also the year of the work’s first performance (which is heard on this CD), but it’s hard to be sure. In Joseph’s catalogue, the work appears as Study for strings, ‘Also known as : Scheherezade’, and an undated presentation of this work by the late lamented Academy of Melbourne under Brett Kelly is also documented, as well as appearing on a previous Move Records collection of Joseph’s music which was released in 2006. The remaining composition, Dialogues of 1992, was written for violinist Urs Walker and the Ripieno Kammerorchester of Winterthur. Its first performance under conductor Howard Griffiths took place on September 5, 1993 and what we have here is a recording of that occasion.

Now, the Chamber Concerto is written in three movements, according to the disc booklet: Toccata, followed by Poem of Love/Meditation. In the original, there were no musing moments but you take what you’re given. In the Australian Music Centre documentation, this work was actually written for the Rantos Collegium, which disbanded in 1996 or thereabouts. Somehow, the Melbourne Chamber Orchestra was spun out of the Collegium – or did it really emerge from the dying throes of the Pro Arte group? Well, the orchestral group is strings, which could be sourced from any one of the three ensembles.

The Toccata is a hard piece to pin down. It follows an almost moto perpetuo chugging rhythmic pattern which is relieved for only a few seconds at two places. The harmonic language is dissonant, suggesting Bartok and Prokofiev, although the overall texture is reminiscent of Mosolov’s short-lived brutalism, or even the less sloppy moments of Messiaen’s Turangalila. For all that, the movement radiates energy, Harvey’s realization of the solo part both hard-edged and scintillating, the pianist addressing his work with unflappable authority and a determination of output that every so often leaves the strings in his wake.

I think I’ve found the separation between the second part’s two sections. For the Poem, we’re apparently in Messiaen-Land where the strings settle into an ascending or descending motif of two chords, Harvey’s keyboard offering a rhapsodic commentary. The impression is less firm in contour than the French master’s Chant d’amour excursions but much less populist, even if Harvey’s contributions suggest several of those Messiaenic modes of disposable musical income. And these pages are definitely proposing an emotionally benign state; if not the Turangalila garden of Sanskrit delights; rather, a calm and welcoming landscape in which the dissonances mutate with remarkable smoothness, a cleverly achieved absence of surface friction no matter what progressions are quietly taking place.

The Meditation, I suspect, begins when the piano sets off on a sequence of stately chords that pass up and down the keyboard from top to bottom against a shimmer of strings from which a solo violin emerges with a soothing if angular melodic line. The musing is carried out with something of a forced-march mentality behind it, as though the action itself rendered the mind active rather than flooding it with random impressions or metaphysical ephemera. You couldn’t call this section of the work vehement or threatening but the consciousness being exercised has a clear, if repetitive, path to follow. Yet again, the spectre of Messiaen rises up, mainly in the shape of the chord processional, but the uses that Joseph puts this sequence to is less aspirational, less grasping for the ideal.

Joseph’s Scheherezade is not the gorgeous panoply of Rimsky-Korsakov but seems more empathetically related to Ravel’s Asie, even if the colour is monochromatic. The work starts with a unison/octave melody that eventually takes on a mildly astringent harmonic coating, Joseph taking his theme (such as it is) from the slow movement (presumably the first Moderato of the two in the score) to Vaughan Williams’ Symphony No. 6 in E minor. The atmosphere remains fairly taut and menacing throughout with what seems like closely argued harmonic structures kept well-leashed; Joseph stays well away from sentiment and colour for its own sake.

You can find some Oriental flourishes, but they are pretty rare in a dour landscape. The composer insists on a hefty attack style (or perhaps that’s just the Croatian players’ reading) and the work’s progress enjoys a heavy-handed treatment with semi-tragic undertones; perhaps Joseph is less concerned with the narrator’s flights of fancy and more with the sad, if not downright tragic, extracts from the 1001 Nights. Just on a technical point, the writing is monolithic as far as string technique is concerned: the only pizzicati I heard came in the last minute; maybe there is a slight use of harmonics, although to me it simply sounded like high violin work; you won’t come across any behind-the-bridge or on-the-fingerboard work; the work’s progress is too slow to admit of anything as frivolous as saltando or staccato. In sum, this is a rather grim Oriental fantasy, more illustrative to me of the current situation in Syria, Gaza or Lebanon than in the head-in-the-sand images we have of life in Jordan or the smothering of gross cruelty in Saudi Arabia or the Emirates.

Finally, we come to the Dialogues, contemporary with the Chamber Concerto. This is the shortest work on the CD but not by much, coming in at 19′ 40″ minutes (not 9’04” as the CD booklet states), while Scheherazade stretches to 20′ 48″ and the concerto a few seconds less at 20′ 42″ in total. All one movement as a set of variations on ‘natural sounds – birds etc.’, this is an aggressively punchy work. driving and dramatic from the opening: its avian life is prehistoric, non-stop in its vehemence apart from a few short releases from about the 15 minute mark.

The performance is admirably committed, although you can hear a few discrepant moments that got away from conductor Howard Griffiths – the basses not quite in sync with an upper-string layer at a few dramatic passages. Further, the acoustic of the recording’s venue – St Peter Church, Zurich – is rich in resonance with a pronounced echo; this building’s high ceiling, tiled floor and richly wooded gallery contribute to a sound that can be overwhelmingly clear. Still, the memorable contribution in this reading comes from soloist Walker whose line is dazzling, vital, toweringly virtuosic. In all, Dialogues is the sort of score that should appeal to a body like the Australian Chamber Orchestra with its requirements for split-second discipline, an unyielding ferocity of attack, and a sustained convulsive power.

As matters present themselves on the web, Scheherezade is the most recent composition listed in Joseph’s output, if the Australian Music Centre information is any guide. This composer’s absence (of 24 years?!) from the lists is most regrettable, even if he has shifted his career path from music to law. These three works show a granite-hard assurance in their creative character, as well as a command of form and purpose that impresses mightily. Their re-discovery in the composer’s analogue recordings archives was a happy chance and we are the richer for their airing on this CD.

A BEETHOVEN ODYSSEY VOLUME 8

James Brawn

MSR Classics 1472

Here is the penultimate leg in this long voyage, Brawn has only two more works to release and the complete argosy comes home to Ithaca. For this CD, he has allocated four of the lesser-known elements in Beethoven’s output of 32 works, although each of them holds a world entire, even the F Major two-movement gem. It’s been a long time since I heard any of these in live performance; they’re usually the preserve of aspirants, as the big guns in the field go in search of more fleshy game. But each adds another facet or thirteen to this pianist’s insightful chain of interpretations.

None more so than the four-movement Sonata No. 13 in E flat Major, a quasi una fantasia companion to the more celebrated Moonlight Sonata No. 14. This particular work asks for an attaca between each segment, underlining the composer’s use of building-block inter-relationships, not to mention his looking backwards to the content of former pages, particularly obvious in the sonata rondo finale. Brawn opens his initial rondo with amiable expansiveness, giving full weight to those intrusive left-hand sforzandi at bars 6 and 7, then gently plucking out of the ether the C Major chords that surprise in the best Beethovenian style at bar 9, eventually attacking the central allegro with enthusiasm before taking us back to the four-square main theme and its gradual dissipation into three quiet bars of the home key.

It is hard to fault the following Allegro molto, either. This repeat-rich proto-scherzo enjoys an easy exposition, even when the arpeggios stop, and the syncopated version of the opening pages is persuasive if the whole passage is a tad blurred until the climax arrives at bar 132 where the off-the-beat right hand rings clear to the second-last bar. As in some previous sonatas, Brawn is free with his mini-pauses and phrase-pointing across the short Adagio, taking the rider con espressione with some interpretative amplitude, mainly in pausing before a bar’s first downbeat. Such an approach gives these 26 bars plenty of breathing space, if achieved at the expense of melodic fluency.

But the vivace finale runs past with an infectious head of steam; even the leaps at places like those between bars 31 to 35 are kept up to the mark and the handy treatment of this movement’s first (prime) subject are happily busy, rather than plodding as hefty semi-inventions. The performer maintains the light-footed humour and optimism by observing a style of attack that emphasizes Beethoven’s delight in movement, so that the episodes that touch on the minor (e.g. bars 131 to 138) come across with energy rather than weight. This is completely assured playing, a sunny conclusion to the sonata and in every way an atmospheric contrast with its opus number companion.

You might find the same in the following G Major Sonata No. 16 with its jaunty off-the-beat initial gambit that carries through the opening Allegro vivace‘s first subject. The exposition here is not all major-inflected, especially towards that section’s conclusion, but the development – as much of it as there is – definitely pursues a chain of minor modulations. Here you can enjoy Brawn’s unfaltering clarity, especially in those stages where the melodic operations transfer to the left hand, or those thinly textured but awkwardly placed pieces of mini-counterpoint (see bars 261-263). And this performer makes as much dynamic contrast as he can with the unexpectedly (or is it?) soft ending to the movement, as later he does in the sonata’s concluding rondo.

More of the contented Beethoven comes in the middle Adagio grazioso, Brawn following a fine vein of the adjective throughout with a clean observance of the left-hand’s initial arpeggio separated notes and allowing himself some metrical latitude at the end of elaborately decorated right-hand work (bars 10 and 12). He is not to be hurried in the two cadenza breaks, accounting for these brief rhythmic oases with quiet, measured placidity. Mind you, the composer is Romantically voluble throughout this Venetian arena, nowhere more so than in the plunging 6ths and 3rds of bar 107, but I admired the subtlety of Brawn’s restrained negotiation of some left-hand 7ths that are present but muffled, most obviously in bars 116 and 117. Small details like these send you back to pick up more occasions of delicate delivery.

The sonata’s conclusion is deceptive as it opens with a neatly balanced primary theme, then moves to play relentlessly with this tune’s opening mordent figure. Indeed, the composer occupies himself with subsidiary material, accompanying triplets and the like, before reviewing his amiable first idea, then moving into more hard three-part labour from bar 87 to bar 98: an instance of modulation working to little purpose. A lengthy period of footling leads to two brief adagio breaks before a presto coda that concerns itself almost exclusively with the afore-mentioned mordent shape. Compared to the preceding movements, this impresses as expanded beyond its dimensions, the working-out full of forward motion but lacking substance. Brawn treats it with an ease that recalls the first movement, following the triplet scale passages and left-hand melody announcements with a sympathetic response to each sequence-laced vagary.

Another four-movement sonata arrives with No. 18 in E flat Major, here distinguished by a musical sobriquet, ‘The Hunt’. This is an opus number companion of the preceding G Major work and shares its buoyancy of outlook, particularly in the even-numbered movements. You get the impression that its first movement is a stop-start operation, mainly because a ritardando is built into the opening gesture (see bars 3 to 6) and its reappearances. But these pages move forward with developmental purpose and the welcome presence – as in all the works on this CD – of whimsicality, here more contained than in its co-opus G Major’s opening allegro. Brawn keeps the pleasures coming smoothly, allowing only the smallest of independent gestures in the two irregular bars (54 and 177) and he negotiates his trills without cramming in extra oscillations (particularly the chain across bars 193 to 201), eventually opting for a piano final cadence.

He gives an individual transparence to the following 2/4 scherzo, one of the more infectiously pell-mell movements in Beethoven’s middle period sonatas. The initial theme and its restatements are not drowned in sustaining pedal melding but come across with excellent clarity. Some of the demi-semiquaver left-hand interjections from bar 42 to bar 49 are not as crisp as you’d like, although most of the later stretch (bars 147 to 154) are close to exemplary. Also, Brawn’s accounting for those abrupt fortissimo chords that punctuate passages of two-hand semiquaver work show a deft hand in supplying an apt dynamic level – just vehement enough not to drown out what follows.

Commentators speak of the Menuetto‘s standing as an unexpected throw-back to Mozart and Haydn – the sonata form’s courtly age. But this example seems integral to the work, standing as an easy break between two rapid-fire bursts of energy. The first third sets up a gentle, controlled environment through a simple series of splendidly interlocking four-bar phrases, before the gentle surprise of the Trio’s mildly vaulting chords, before the Menuetto‘s return and that touching calando conclusion. The whole is treated with clear sympathy and responsiveness: a model lesson in giving unassuming pages their proper respect.

As for the ‘hunt’ finale, Brawn maintains his presto pace convincingly, with just a hint of awkwardness in an odd spot like the left hand work in bars 135 to 138, and later, the preparatory pause before those 10-note chords at bars 307 and 317. But you find plenty of examples of exemplary skill, like the first over-the-hills-and-far-away burst from bar 64 to the end of the exposition, the relieving settle onto C Major at bar 120, and the ease of the crossed-hands single notes and main-motif statements between bars 280 and 299. This is a sustained example of rapid-fire playing but – as I’ve said before – articulated with admirable clarity and almost-unflagging impetus.

To end, Brawn gives us the shortest work on this CD in the F Major Sonata Op. 54. Compared to its predecessors on this CD, this score is decidedly odd. While the first movement opens easily enough, it soon (bar 24) takes a turn away from a slightly dour menuetto into aggressive contrary motion octaves in triplets for each hand; the two elements contrast and sort-of combine before the end. What presents as disparate in the first pages becomes more rational after the repetitions, yet the contrast is not really fused. I liked Brawn’s subtle force applied in the triplet-dominated pages, alongside a clipped approach to the opening material’s dotted-quaver-semiquaver repeated pattern. As across all four of these sonatas, you can rely on this pianist to give full measure to each note’s rhythmic value, even when the part-writing verges on the complex; everything is in its place and subsidiary elements are given as much care as dominant melodic lines.

Finishing this disc is a driving interpretation of the sonata’s Allegretto which many a pianist manages to turn into burbling. Not so here where the ceaseless semiquavers lead into a development of considerable tension across bars 23 to 99 – the movement’s core. Brawn keeps a cool head throughout the multiple modulations that Beethoven works on his one theme and carries us happily into a celebratory coda that keeps its head, despite a momentary indication of acceleration. An ending that borders on the over-wrought, if not as jubilant or as ferocious as the finales to its catalogue companions (the C Major Waldstein and the F minor Appassionata).

So what are we waiting for? Two late sonatas round out Brawn’s enterprise: the A Major Op. 101 and the B flat Major Hammerklavier Op. 106 – the first two in that late period sequence of five incomparable masterworks, setting the benchmark for Romantic (and beyond) pianism. It’s a consummation devoutly to be wished.

NEW WINE IN AN OLD BOTTLE

Mark Papworth and Amanda Millar

Move Records MCD 632

Here’s a perplexing product: a set of four sonatas (one is actually a sonatina) for natural horn with accompaniment for fortepiano or cello. I know Papworth’s ability from another Move Records issue of Wagner Ring chunks, Siegfried’s Story; Millar is an unknown quantity in my experience. They have devoted their talents to these works by Thomas McConochie, an Australian musician with an interest in the antique brass instrument who produces music to flesh out an almost non-existent contemporary repertoire. Of course, the horn in its valveless form continued in use up to (most notably) Brahms, who had a penchant for the older mysteries, but you’ll rarely come across readings of the C minor Symphony in which natural horns appear.

Now this CD’s title seems to refer to the horn with crooks as the old bottle. Fair, enough. But what is being poured in can hardly be classed as a new wine: it’s vintage, but undistinguished. McConochie’s formal patterns are predictable, as are his melodic shapes and harmonic structure. It had to be so, you’d think, given the natural instrument’s capabilities. For many of us, the natural horn is exemplified for these times by the Prologue and Epilogue in Britten’s Serenade Op. 31. Even given the limitations imposed on the English composer, you’ll hear nothing so advanced here. I can’t see how these compositions have added substantially to the repertoire; rather, they return to ground that was well-trodden by the time of Haydn and Mozart.

The CD doesn’t contain details about the four works’ lengths, so here goes. Like all of them, the Sonata No. 1 in F for Natural Horn and Fortepiano Op. 14 has three movements lasting 15′ 11″: Allegro (6′ 09″), Andante (4′ 58″), Sonata-Rondo (4′ 04″). Next comes the Horn Sonatina No. 5, Op. 16 No. 3 with a duration of 10′ 02″: Presto (3′ 09″), Adagio (2′ 31″), Presto (4′ 22″). A novel Sonata for Natural Horn and Cello in D Major, Op. 22 takes up 13′ 27″: Allegro (5′ 09″), Recitative and Aria (5′ 25″), Presto (2′ 53″). To finish, the Sonata No. 2 in E flat for Natural Horn and Fortepiano, Op. 15 lasts for 12′ 58″: Allegro (5′ 24″), Andante con moto (3’23”), Maestoso (4′ 11″). The whole CD takes 51′ 38″, which is a bit on the under-nourished side. But then, you have to take into consideration the quality of, and degree of difficulty involved in handling, these scores.

I’m probably wrong as far as the horn side of things is concerned, but the piano aspect is unassuming; quite a few of these movements a competent player could sight-read. Both instruments take up the simple first subject of the Sonata No. 1, the piano making most of the running as the movement moves forward, after an overused rhythmic motif that sounds like Mozart . . . no, more a contemporary whose imagination has dipped considerably. The phrases are four-square and nothing new is allowed to interrupt the Alberti bass-rich accompaniment. As for the melodies, these are well enough in their openings but fail of their promise with several awkwardnesses in their rounding-off. What of modulation and harmonic interest, you cry? Forget it. The second movement boasts an ‘Oom-Pah Section’ but this lasts about a minute; the segment sounds like desiccated klezmer, and goes nowhere but simply serves as a diversion from its calm, bland surroundings.

For his finale McConochie hits 6/8 and the suggestions of hunting horns with a few more stopped notes than we’ve heard so far. Still, this is a restrained hunt with an unhealthy penchant for repeated notes and chords. The piano’s solo ritornelli are rather frequent and the main subject of this Sonata-Rondo (rather more of the latter than the former) is yet another instance of the first half being let down by its consequent. You can take as an instance any of the Mozart horn concerto finales but their buoyancy and innate verve show that McConochie has so much to learn about sustaining interest.

Incidentally, the two outer sonatas are written for natural horn ‘and fortepiano’, but the keyboard instrument employed here in both is a normal pianoforte. Would the earlier piano’s use have made much difference? Possibly, mainly as a credible partner for Papworth’s muffled timbre.

For a bit of a giggle, the sonatina is subtitled ‘A Little Bit of Sturm and Drang’; and so it seems, right at the start, but the proposed aesthetic doesn’t last. The first movement is gifted with an opening that is arresting for about two bars, then moves into banality and more awkwardnesses, especially in the use of repeated notes. The horn part is secondary; for sure, Papworth gets to play the themes but the keyboard dominates in treatment and overall activity. As for a prevailing compositional period, it’s still uncooked Mozart. Matters are reversed in the slow movement where the horn gets dibs on the first mournful tune; the central B section moves in to the relative major before the A opening is repeated, This section has more going for it than its predecessor with the establishment of an Eroica-indebted funeral march rhythmic pattern and a definite arch to the main melody. The finale presents as an allegro rather than the prescribed presto and the piano sets most of the running as the horn is limited to finding a relevant note and sitting on it while the keyboard goes around an unarresting series of modulations in the various episodes of this rondo.

Next comes the horn and cello work. Its opening allegro improves in performance security on the exposition’s repeat but the modulations in the development cannot be regarded as much more than predictable and – every so often – clumsy. But the musicians themselves sound uncertain in their work here with very little colour invested in phrasing. The following Recitative is a short introduction with a metrical inevitability that persists until a short horn cadenza leads us into a 6/8 lyric during which the horn enjoys a good deal of exposure; Millar provides an arpeggiated support before taking on the central section’s melody-line herself.. The cellist’s articulation and production values are not always reliable with some obvious difficulties in her part’s upper reaches, so that it’s something of a relief when this movement draws to its end.

There is another trace of the Mozart horn concerto finales in this sonata’s concluding Rondo, but the opening section and its returns prove very welcome after some strained interludes (how many are there? One?). You can see how the work is meant to bounce past with infectious jollity, but this doesn’t come off. Perhaps the players take these pages too slowly; possibly the movement requires more determination in attack and dynamic variation. Whatever the case, music of this simplicity needs high expertise to give it any performance interest because there is not much to grab onto as far as content goes.

The composer believes he learned much from writing his first sonata and feels that this is reflected in the more equable partnership of his E flat Sonata. This may be so but you have to wonder at his idea of distributing the goods. For instance, the opening Allegro‘s second subject is announced by the piano, then the horn, at which point the keyboard’s accompaniment is both prosaic and intrusive. But by this stage of the CD you realize that not much is going to emerge that is strikingly original and the compositional methodology is far from sophisticated, as evidenced by the development pages which hold several instances of ungainly part-writing. Even the scale passages for both executants come across as laboured, hard work rather than imaginative flights.

Not much to take exception to in the Romanza, although McConochie can’t avoid odd strokes that a more aware hand would have struck out like the descending bass’s conclusion before the move into a minore variant, and a piano left hand of no little tedium. With the last movement, we hit the world of variations but not in a big way: there are only three of them and all are quite predictable, if vehicles for Papworth’s expertise more than anything else. McConochie’s theme is four-square and plain and nobody is really stretched – except the horn in the movement’s unexpectedly athletic coda.

Here again, as in so much of the whole CD, I sense a lack of character. You have to take into account the necessary limitations of the brass line; even so, nothing here grips the imagination – neither the content of the works themselves, nor the interpretations offered. I can imagine that the natural horn community might be pleased with these additions to their archives but nothing here advances the instrument’s expressive or technical horizons.