Ferguson: Concerto for Piano and String Orchestra; Gerhard: Concerto for Piano and Strings [CD]

This is another in the admirable Naxos series devoted to British piano concertos. By way of variety, there is also a concerto by Roberto Gerhard this time, and in fact there are four works in total, of which the two mentioned on the frontispiece are the longest, although not by much. The concertos here deploy a string orchestra only (plus percussion in Rowley's concerto), the piano soloist is, as usual, the admirable Peter Donohoe, and no conductor other than the soloist himself has been thought necessary or advantageous. I say this every time, but I mean it every time - Naxos are doing a job for the music-loving public that is simply inestimable in providing us with music that is not well known and that ought to be better known, and all at modest cost.

None of the works here is long, the shortest taking only 15 minutes and the longest not quite 25. The three British pieces are all tonal in idiom, and while Gerhard's toys with atonality it is little more demanding on the listener and features a strongly national element in its themes, as seems to be more or less invariable with Spanish music. Of the four composers Darnton is the one completely new to me and will probably be so to most listeners if the liner note can be believed. Rowley and Ferguson will be familiar to those who have plodded through the examination system of the British Associate Board of musical examiners. This august body seemed to have a comprehensive knowledge of English composers otherwise unknown to the world at large, and it could actually be that they were ahead of their time - not only have I recently acquired and benefited from a disc of piano works by York Bowen played with obvious conviction and commitment by Hough, the concertos here by Alec Rowley, Christian Darnton and Howard Ferguson strike me as being music of genuine quality, originality, character and power. I see that Ferguson died as recently as 1999 in his tenth decade, and I reflect that it is slightly sad that he did not quite live to see the revival of interest in music of this type that seems to be taking place.

Donohoe performs splendidly as always, and at the end of the Gerhard concerto I heard from him again, as I had heard from him in his magnificent Turangalila with Rattle, some simply terrific martellato trills that make me want to hear him in the Brahms D minor. This is only one random detail. The performances from start to finish are exemplary in every way that I can tell, with technique, touch, tempi and expression doing the composers proud. Nobody who knows the Northern Sinfonia will be surprised either when I say that their strings and percussion are superb too, and the recording, from 2003, is just fine as well, with some striking piano sound at the very outset in particular. It's a slight pity that the liner note doesn't make the most of its opportunities. There is some useful background on the composers and some fairly bland comment on the music, but where it squanders its space is in telling us what we can perfectly well hear for ourselves - comment of the nature that the music does this and then that and then whatever else. I was interested in the opinion, for one thing, that Gerhard is the most significant Spanish composer in the generation following Falla. I would have liked to see the point developed, but there's no room to do that. Again, the author finds a Mozartian tutti at the start of Ferguson's concerto. I would have been interested in hearing him expatiate on this view, because I don't think I find that - it's a just a section for orchestra introducing the piano like at the beginning of Reger's concerto or of Ravel's left-hand concerto so far as I can tell, but the author hasn't given himself the chance to expand on his own opinion. Nevertheless what we have here is nearly 80 minutes of thoroughly worthwhile and interesting music beautifully performed and recorded. My own collection of this particular series is expanding steadily, and I can do nothing more constructive in this notice than to invite as many others as possible to join me in supporting the project and enjoying the results.