EMR CD018 | DETAILS
  EMR CD018
   
  Bantock, Scott & Sacheverell Coke: VIOLIN & VIOLA SONATAS
  Rupert Marshall-Luck (vn & va) | Matthew Rickard (pf)
   
  Released 15 November 2013 | EAN 5 060263 500162
EMR CD011 features three vigorous, dramatic and colourful works by three unique, charismatic and colourful composers. Cyril Scott’s Viola Sonata of 1953 is a highly focused work, meticulously crafted and tautly unified; and the fluency, inventiveness and iridescence of the writing makes the Sonata compelling listening. An equal magnetism surrounds Granville Bantock’s Sonata no.3 in C major for Violin and Piano: composed at the end of its composer’s life, in 1946, it eschews the complex grandiloquence of some of his earlier works in favour of a conciseness of form and simplicity of structure, yet Bantock’s hallmarks of a richly appointed texture and sweeping melodic lines are still present.

Roger Sacheverell Coke’s Violin Sonata in D minor is perhaps the most emotionally involved of the three offerings on the disc. Composed during the Second World War, its first two movements alternate soaring melodic lines of searing beauty with dark, introverted musings; in the grim Scherzo, figures loom like nightmarish megoliths; and the fourth movement’s anguished outpourings are an elegy for a generation.

Rupert Marshall-Luck and Matthew Rickard have made several critically acclaimed recordings for EM Records and this disc is full of their signature commitment and energy.
TRACK LISTING AND AUDIO EXTRACTS
     
Granville Bantock (1868–1946)
SONATA NO.3 IN C MAJOR FOR VIOLIN AND PIANO (1946)
   
1. I. Allegro con spirito  
2. II. ‘THE DRYAD’: Lento sostenuto  
3. III. FINALE: Allegro con moto – Largamente molto lento  
     
Cyril Scott (1879–1970)
SONATA FOR VIOLA AND PIANO (1953)
(World Première recording)
 
4. I. Allegretto – Grave e molto espressivo – Con moto – Tempo I  
5. II. HUMORESQUE: Allegro – Poco sostenuto e poco maestoso –
Tempo primo
 
6. III. Adagio – Energico – Poco meno mosso – Maestoso –
Molto maestoso
 
       
Roger Sacheverell Coke (1912–1972)
SONATA NO.1 IN D MINOR FOR VIOLIN AND PIANO (1940–42)
(World Première recording)
 
7. I. Poco lento – Allegro ritmico  
8. II. Andante sostenuto – Poco più mosso, con moto, agitato –
Tempo I
 
9. III. SCHERZO: Allegro scherzando – TRIO: Lento assai – Tempo I  
10. IV. FINALE, QUASI UNA FANTASIA: Lento assai – EPILOGUE: Maestoso  
REVIEWS
Beautifully shaped by Benjamin Frith... Beguiling sounds, graced by the tawny richness and unexaggerated line of Richard Jenkinson’s cello playing... The sense of purpose and sureness of line of Ian Venables’ music is pure oxygen.
EMR CD31 | BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE
Exquisitely rewarding... Ravishing accounts.
EMR CD029 | CHOIR AND ORGAN
This is music of great beauty and integrity and the performances fully do it justice. It would be criminal to let it pass you by.

EMR CD028 | INTERNATIONAL
RECORD REVIEW

The Bridge Quartet approach these pieces with a sympathetic and insightful warmth, and confirm their ambassadorial credentials for British chamber music. A lovely, radiant disc.
EMR CD025 | Gramophone
Duncan Honeybourne’s playing is astonishingly affectionate, yet never saccharine... Honeybourne plays with suave confidence.
EMR CD024 | INTERNATIONAL PIANO
Rupert Marshall-Luck is an ideal interpreter: generously but not effusively lyrical; agile and athletic... The warm, folk-song like slow movement is at times almost painfully beautiful, with a shimmering pastoral central section... Marshall-Luck is, again, indefatigable and keenly picks up on the work’s melancholic strain.  Finely recorded and with comprehensive booklet notes, this is a must for fans of 20th-century English repertoire.
EMR CD023 | THE STRAD