In
my recent list
of Doreen Carwithen’s music currently available on CD, I missed one very
important recording – the Piano Concerto on SOMM CD254. This was kindly brought
to my attention by one of the regular readers of my blog. Alas, I have not had the opportunity of
hearing this disc yet, so just a couple notes and quotes garnered from the
internet.
The
CD has three very important piano concertos played by Mark Bebbington. One of
them, the Piano Concerto No.1 by Gordon Jacob (1895-1984) is a premiere
recording. Malcolm Williamson’s (1930-2003) fine Concerto No. 2 for Piano and
Strings in F sharp minor (1960) is a welcome addition to the classical music
listings. Other versions of this work have included Piers Lane on Hyperion (Hyperion CDA 68011-2, 2014) as part of his survey of all Williamson’s
piano concertos and Gwenneth Pryor on an old EMI vinyl album (EMI
EMD 5520, 1975). As noted in my previous posting, Chandos issued Doreen
Carwithen’s Piano Concerto on CHAN9524 in 1997 with the pianist Howard Shelley
and with Richard Hickox conducting the London Symphony Orchestra.
In October 2014 Paul Corfield Godfrey reviewed
the SOMM CD for MusicWeb
International. After acknowledging that the concerto was one of the
composer’s major works, he suggests that ‘Hickox obtains a richer sonority from
his LSO strings at passages such as the big tune in the first movement…than the
players here can contrive’. On the other hand, he wonders if ‘Carwithen really
wanted the music here to sound quite as Rachmaninov-like as Hickox makes it’
but concludes that the Bebbington’s ‘smoothly emotional performance…has an
equal validity…’ Andrew Achenbach in ‘Classical
Ear’ suggests that Doreen
Carwithen’s contribution is on a rather more ambitious scale than its bedfellows
and can boast an especially satisfying finale’.
Mark Bebbington is accompanied by the
Innovation Chamber Ensemble conducted by Richard Jenkinson. The Ensemble are
drawn from the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra.
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