After Percy Hilder Miles Chamber Music Volume 1 received an excellent review on BBC Radio 3's Record Review, we are delighted that Volume 2 is now available pre-release on my website at www.mikepurtonrecording.com at £13.99 plus postage. It's wonderful music and totally fits within the UC brief. Ian Tindale plays his Piano Sonata, his Six Album Leaves (a tribute to Schumann) and his 'Sunshine Over the Avon' a rather amusing 'dig' at the Second Viennese School. Then we have his delightful 'Grand Solo for Viola' marked (with tongue in cheek) as being 'so difficult as to be absolutely impossible', played superbly and with great style by Peter Mallinson. To finish this selection, we have a huge find, his unknown four movement Clarinet Quintet in E flat of 1903/04, played by John Bradbury (Principal Clarinet with the BBC Philharmonic) and the Cirrus String Quartet who recorded that brilliant CD of WH Reed's String Quartets for MPR in 2022. If you like romantic music (which you should do!) you will absolutely love this and indeed the other tracks on both discs. All world premiere recordings. PS Tony Faulkner's beautiful recorded sound once more.
Please support us by buying a CD, we can't record the music of unsung composers unless people buy the recordings! Percy Volume 2 is available now - who will be the first to buy one?
Listening clips will be uploaded shortly.
I'm just about to order it Mike. Looking forward to hearing it!
Ditto!
Question for Mr Purton : you said in a post on this forum in December 2021 that a String Sextet and the Septet were being recorded. I was expecting to see these on Volume 2. So I guess we should expect a Volume 3, should we? Or were they discarded?
Thanks!
I only know of one Miles string sextet myself, the G minor published in 1920 and uploaded to imslp...
The Clarinet Quintet in E flat of 1903/4 is the major work on this CD. The first movement is predominantly gentle in mood - easeful, almost - and the same general mood extends into the brief second movement. Very beautiful music - undemonstrative, but purposeful; often mild in mood, but never bland. The slow third movement speaks of more serious things - not tragedy, but something solemn, as if recalled in tranquility. The finale is once again mostly gentle in mood - a perfect way to round off this lovely composition. Very satisfying.