Composer: William Turner Walton, William Alwyn, Gordon Jacob, Kenneth Leighton, Alan Rawsthorne, Lennox Berkeley
Performer: Clare Howick, Simon Callaghan
Format: FLAC (tracks)
Label: SOMM
Release: 2020
Size: 1.13 GB
Recovery: +3%
Scan: yes
William Turner Walton:
Violin Sonata
01. I. Allegro tranquillo
02. II. Variazioni
William Alwyn:
Sonatina for Violin and Piano
03. I. Allegro e grazioso
04. II. Adagio
05. III. Vivace
Gordon Jacob:
06. Elegy for Violin & Piano
07. Caprice
08. Little Dancer
Kenneth Leighton:
Violin Sonata No. 1
09. I. Allegro molto appassionato
10. II. Lento e liberamente
11. III. Presto energico
Alan Rawsthorne:
12. Pierette: Valse Caprice
Lennox Berkeley:
13. Elegy for Violin & Piano op.33 No.2
14. Toccata for Violin & Piano op.33 No.3
SOMM Recordings pays tribute to the remarkable flourishing of British Violin Sonatas in the 20th century with a collection of music for violin and piano by six key figures of the modern chamber music renaissance in Britain. Making her debut on SOMM, violinist Clare Howick’s championing of this repertoire prompted iclassical to declare ‘the record-buying public owe [her] a debt of gratitude’. She is accompanied by pianist Simon Callaghan. From the middle of the century, and commissioned for Yehudi Menuhin, William Walton’s Violin Sonata is unique in the composer’s oeuvre with its almost constant sense of nervous uncertainty. Composed the same year (1948), Kenneth Leighton’s youthful First Violin Sonata is the product, as Robert Matthew- Walker comments in his authoritative booklet notes, of “a deep-thinking musician of whom everything he was to write, from his earliest compositions onwards, is genuinely felt and unaffectedly original”. William Alwyn’s beautifully proportioned Sonatina (1933) receives only its second appearance on disc here. Composed the following year, Alan Rawsthorne’s Pierrette: Valse Caprice is best remembered from its quotation in the composer’s soundtrack for the 1947 film Uncle Silas. The contrasted Elegy and Toccata from Lennox Berkeley’s 1951 Op.33 reveal a master craftsman in miniature, while three pieces by Gordon Jacob – Little Dancer (1959), Caprice (1969) and Elegy (1972) – all make their first appearances on disc here.