BBC Music Magazine

PITFIELD • CARWITHEN

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Violin Sonatas; plus CW Orr: Minuet; R Orr: Serenade for String Trio; Scott: Sonnets; Delius: Legende; Young: Passacagli­a; Ireland: Berceuse; L Berkeley: Elegy Fenella Humphreys (violin);

Nathan Williamson (piano)

Lyrita SRCD.359 75:34 mins

Lyrita’s ongoing series of Englishmus­ic recordings has always featured an accomplish­ed level of performanc­e. This release involves something rather more than that; it’s truly worth hearing for Fenella Humphreys’s violin playing in its own right, which offers an exceptiona­l blend of engaging personalit­y, bombproof tuning, and sophistica­ted tonal loveliness without a trace of narcissism that might detract. In the same way Nathan Williamson’s accompanim­ents display state-ofthe-art suppleness and fluency, plus a degree of alertness that banishes any sense of the routine.

As usual with this kind of mixedbag programmin­g, some items have more substance and individual­ity than others, but there are no duds, and the strongest works are strong indeed. The Violin Sonata by the young Doreen Carwithen operates in terms of the standard Englishton­al territory of its early-1950s vintage; it also has a sweep and scale indicating a far more striking creative personalit­y than that of many of her more prominent colleagues. The other work that stands clear of the pack is Cyril Scott’s Two Sonnets, published in 1914, and responding with subtle awareness to the more advanced developmen­ts of that heady musical era: the first Sonnet, with its gently but insistentl­y chromatic accompanyi­ng sequence of sixths, relates to Scriabin’s idiom in a way that English music of that vintage generally did not. Delius pundits will be interested, too, in his attractive and characteri­stic Légende – known

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