Venables (arr. composer) Violin Sonata Op.23a (1989 arr. 2018)
Finzi Elegy Op.22 (1940)
Gurney ed. Venables Eight Pieces (1908-09)
Bliss Violin Sonata B12 (c1914)
Venables Three Pieces Op.11 (1986)

Chu-Yu Yang (violin), Eric McElroy (piano)

Somm Recordings SOMMCD0700 [75’45”]
Producer Siva Oke Engineer Adaq Khan

Recorded 13-14 April 2024 at St Mary’s Church, St Marylebone, London

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse

What’s the story?

Although the Taiwanese violinist Chu-Yu Yang and the American pianist Eric McElroy have found success independently, their appearances as a duo have firmly established them before the public across a wide repertoire, not least the music which is featured on this new release.

What’s the music like?

The title of this album might be thought to speak for itself, yet An English Pastoral amounts to more than an exercise in wanton nostalgia. Alongside early if not wholly uncharacteristic music by Ivor Gurney and Arthur Bliss – contemporaries whose outlooks were transformed through war service – it takes in one of Gerald Finzi’s most affectingly realized instrumental pieces and works by Ian Venables whose 70th birthday is just weeks away at time of writing. A programme, moreover, as cohesive in recorded terms as it would be heard as a live recital.

The centrepiece here is a sequence of pieces by the teenage Gurney such as demonstrates no mean assurance in this testing medium. Hence the Elgarian wistfulness of Chanson Triste or respectively poetic and bittersweet evocations as are In September and In August. A winsome Romance is the most elegantly proportioned of these eight pieces, with the elaborate Legende more discursive in its (over-) ambition. The poignant A Folk Tale and an engaging Humoreske have a succinctness to confirm that, with Gurney as with most composers, less is often more.

The players seem as emotionally attuned to this music as they are when mining the expressive subtleties of Finzi’s Elegy which, composed barely a year into the Second World War, offsets its yielding nostalgia with passages of simmering anxiety. Nor do they disappoint in the single movement that was all Bliss completed – if, indeed, he ever envisaged any successors – of his wartime Violin Sonata; its cautious if never inhibited handling of ‘phantasy’ form implying a transition from his earlier Pastoralism to the innovation of those pieces which came afterward.

Venables proves no less adept combining violin and piano, not least when adapting what was previously his Flute Sonata as to emphasize the pensive raptness of the first movement or its alternately playful and plaintive successor. Witness, moreover, the astutely judged trajectory of his Three Pieces as it moves from the blithe lyricism of its initial Pastorale, through the unforced eloquence of its central Romance, to the incisive energy of its final Dance – thus making for a sequence that could have been a ‘sonatina’ had the composer designated it thus.

Does it all work?

Pretty much always. Nothing here sounds less than idiomatic in terms of being conceived for this medium, a tribute to the skill of these players in realizing the intentions of the composers in question. For those listeners who still (rightly) attach importance to such things, the layout is viable but it might have been improved by interpolating the Gurney pieces – most of which are what might be termed ‘medium slow’ – across the release as a whole rather than grouping them all together at its centre, but this is relatively less of a consideration in streaming terms.

Is it recommended?

Indeed it is. The recorded ambience could hardly be bettered in terms of this medium, while Yang contributes detailed and informative annotations. Hopefully he and McElroy will have a chance to record further such collections, whether or not in the ‘English Pastoral’ tradition.

Listen / Buy

You can read more about this release and explore purchase options at the Somm Recordings website

Published post no.2,578 – Saturday 28 June 2025