Christopher Guild - Stevenson: Piano Music, Vol. 7 – Folksong with Grainger - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Christopher Guild - Piano Music [COMPACT DISCS] date 01/28/2014

He reputation of the Anglo-Scottish composer William Wordsworth (1908-88), great-great-grandnephew of the poet, has recently been restored by a series of Toccata Classics albums of his orchestral music. His piano music, too, was poorly known before now, none of it recorded since a handful of pieces appeared on LP 60 years ago - though his epic Piano Sonata is a work of major importance. This first ever complete recording reveals an honest, unfussy approach to the keyboard akin to that of two other major symphonists, Sibelius and Rubbra like them, Wordsworth's primary concern seems to have been the expression of deep feeling - which makes the gentle story-telling of his miniatures for children all the more surprising.

Among the few who know his music, Francis George Scott (1880-1958), a son of the Scottish Borders, is admired for having written some of the best art-songs by any British composer. In this first recording of any of his piano music, a handful of lyrical early pieces contrast with the 58 Bartokian miniatures that constitute Scott's Intuitions - brief but atmospheric distillations of Scottish song, dance and landscape - and a set of virtuoso transcriptions of eight Scott songs by Ronald Stevenson (1928-2015), the major Scottish pianist-composer of the past century.