British Classical Music: The Land of Lost Content

Until the early seventies, I genuinely thought Engelbert Humperdinck was just one person - the singer behind “Release Me” and other swooning...

More than fifty years ago, when I fondly and mistakenly imagined that I might become a composer, I found a remarkable set of books by Ebenez...

Most readers of this journal will have played on a harmonium at some stage in their career. If, like me, you have not been overimpressed by ...

Advent Sunday is the “official” start of the Church Year. To be sure, Christmas merchandise has been available in the shops since mid-Septem...

In 1948, London’s Shaftesbury Avenue, was three years into peace. The war may have ended, but its legacy lingered in the soot-streaked façad...

Albion Records never cease to amaze me with their imaginative releases of music written or inspired by Ralph Vaughan Williams. The present r...

Completed by D.C. Parker in Glasgow, on 1 April 1922, the following word portrait was published in Musical America, 22 April 1922, p.5. Of ...

During the 1920s, the music writer D.C. Parker was known professionally as Douglas Charles Parker, a distinguished music critic for the Even...

Francis Edward Bache (1833-1858) was a pupil of William Sterndale Bennett. These two composers have quite different biographies but were sim...

In a recent post, I gave J.C. Squire’s account of a performance of Claude Debussy’s Nocturnes conducted by him on 27 February 1909. This rec...

For far too long it has been the lazy person’s view to assume that all early nineteenth century British music was influenced solely by Hande...

J.C. Squire was a spirited figure in early 20th-century British literary circles - part poet, part critic, part cricket enthusiast. Born in ...

This composer was an unknown quantity to me, and I imagine for many other listeners as well. However, the Piano Concertino in C Major is a f...

Ruddigore was the very first Gilbert and Sullivan opera I heard. That would be in 1968. It was the annual production of a Savoy Opera by the...

This review originally appeared on MusicWeb International on 5 June 2005. Considering my recent engagement with a recording of Wellesz’s St...

Masks were first performed at a concert on 2 Feb 1926, by the composer and pianist Arthur Benjamin, during a 'Concert Spirituel' at ...