I first came across A Bach Book for Harriet Cohen in the late 1970's when Ronald Stevenson included a couple of items from it in his fascinating lecture recital on Bach transcriptions. I remember Ronald playing RVW's Bach piece from Harriet Cohen's book and I think one other. It was an evening which concluded with Ronald giving a towering performance of the Bach/Busoni Chaconne, having covered a great deal of ground in between, including Grainger's Sheep may safely graze and, if memory serves me correctly, Chopin's Revolutionary Etude. I was rather tantalised by the idea of the other pieces in the book and I even managed to acquire the book myself and played through a few items. An odd few pieces from the book have occasionally cropped up. But now Jonathan Plowright has recorded the entire book, which sounds fascinating.
In his Guardian Review, Andrew Clements is a little more guarded in his welcome suggesting that the standard of the pieces is a little variable. But as a fascinating side-light on English musical history in the 1930's, this is invaluable. It would, of course, be interesting to learn how many of the contributors Cohen had had affairs with!
Friday, 3 September 2010
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Popular Posts this month
-
Wagner: Das Rheingold - Ingeborg Børch as Fricka, Keel Watson as Wotan - Regents Opera 2022 (Photo Steve Gregson) On Sunday 21st May 2023, R...
-
Halevy: La Tempesta - conducted by Francesco Cilluffo at Wexford Festival Opera 2022 (Photo: Clive Barda ArenaPAL) Conductor Francesco Cill...
-
Jataneel Banerjee's Gaṅgā at Tete-a-Tete Opera Festival in 2022 (Photo Claire Shovelton) Composer Jataneel Banerjee's new chamber o...
-
Donizetti: L'esule di Roma - Nicola Alaimo, Albina Shagimuratova, Carlo Rizzi, Britten Sinfonia - Opera Rara at Cadogan Hall (Photo Ru...
-
Wagner: Die Walküre - Keel Watson (Wotan) - Regents Opera 2023 (Photo: Steve Gregson Regents Opera's new production of Wagner's Die...
-
Cautionary Tales - National Opera Studio with Opera North at Wilton's Music Hall (Photo Malcolm I Johnson) Cautionary Tales : Judith We...
-
Paul Verlaine and Arthur Rimbaud A Dangerous Obsession: The Relationship of Paul Verlaine and Arthur Rimbaud ; Ben Vonberg-Clark, Julien...
-
Dragon Voices: The giant Celtic horns of Ancient Europe; John Kenny; Delphian Reviewed by Robert Hugill on Nov 22 2016 Star r...
-
Carys Davies, a previous member of WNO Youth Opera and current RWCMD student, in WNO’s main scale production of The Magic Flute . The step b...
-
Middle Temple Hall in its wisteria (Photo courtesy of Julius Drake ) Brahms: Zigeunerlieder , duets by Brahms and Schumann, songs by Kurt We...
No comments:
Post a Comment