EMR CD070–71 | DETAILS
  EMR CD070–71
   
 

DE PROFUNDIS CLAMAVI
   
  Duncan Honeybourne (pf.)
   
  EAN 5 060263 500667

‘De Profundis Clamavi’ is a two-disc recording of English piano music, contrasting three dramatic sonatas with a vibrant selection of shorter pieces ranging from the sublimely poetic to the darkly rhapsodic. Frank Bridge began writing his grandiose Piano Sonata in 1921, in the wake of the First World War, and it is suffused with a mood of desolation and torment. Contemporary composer Richard Pantcheff’s own sonata was completed in 2017 and evokes a similarly intense emotional landscape; hence the quotation from Psalm 130 that gives the album its name (“Out of the deep have I called unto Thee, O Lord”). Also here making its first recorded appearance, the 1938 Sonata by Christopher Edmunds bubbles over with vivid pianistic colours, melting tenderness and and irresistible romantic warmth.

 

The three sonatas are complemented and contextualised by Parry’s delicious ‘Shulbrede Tunes’ — affectionate portraits of the composer’s family and their Sussex home — plus the first recordings of two stunning romantic showpieces by a composer better known for his vocal writing, Cecil Armstrong Gibbs. Three unpublished — and previously unrecorded — gems by Edgar Bainton add further distinctiveness to the disc.

TRACK LISTING AND AUDIO EXTRACTS
     

CD1
 
Christopher Edmunds (1899–1990)
PIANO SONATA IN B MINOR (1938)
(World Première recording)
1. I. Allegro, fieramente e rubato  
2. II. Lento e mesto  
3. III. Allegro scherzoso (poco rubato)  
       
Edgar Bainton (1880–1956)
4. VARIATIONS AND FUGUE IN B MINOR, op.1 (1898)
(World Première recording)		  
       
Cecil Armstrong Gibbs (1889–1960)
5. ‘AN ESSEX RHAPSODY’, op.36 (1921) (World Première recording)  
6. ‘BALLADE IN D-FLAT’ (1940) (World Première recording)  
       
Richard Pantcheff (b. 1959)
7. NOCTURNUS V: ‘WIND OOR DIE BRANDERS’ (2015)
(World Première recording)		  
       
Sir Charles Hubert Hastings Parry (1848–1918)
‘SHULBREDE TUNES’ (1914)
8. I. ‘Shulbrede’  
9. II. ‘Elizabeth’  
10. III. ‘Dolly no. 1’  
11. IV. ‘Bogies and Sprites that gambol by Nights’  
12. V. ‘Matthew’  
13. VI. ‘Prior’s Chamber by Firelight’  
14. VII. ‘Children’s Pranks’  
15. VIII. ‘Dolly no. 2’  
16. IX. ‘In the Garden with the Dew on the Grass’  
17. X. ‘Father Playmate’  
       

CD2
       
Edgar Bainton (1880–1956)
1. ‘WILLOWS’ (1927) (World Première recording)  
2. ‘THE MAKING OF THE NIGHTINGALE’
(World Première recording)		  
       
Frank Bridge (1879–1941)
PIANO SONATA (1921–1924)
3. I. Lento ma non troppo – Andante ben moderato – Allegro energico  
4. II. Andante ben moderato  
5. III. Lento – Allegro non troppo  
       
Benjamin Britten (1913–1976)
6. ‘NIGHT PIECE (NOTTURNO)’ (1963)  
       
Richard Pantcheff
PIANO SONATA (2017)
(World Première recording)
7. I. Inquieto  
8. II. Elegia: Lento e tenebroso  
9. III. Alla vortice  
       

 

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