Tag Archives: Duncan Honeybourne

On Record – Duncan Honeybourne: Thomas Pitfield Piano Music (Heritage Records)

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Thomas Pitfield
Toccata (1953)
Solemn Pavane in F minor (1940)
Circle Suite (1938)
Capriccio (1932)
Diversions on a Russian Air (1959)
Novelette no.1 in F major (1953)
Bagatelles – no.1 in E flat major (1950); no.2 in C major (1952); no.3 in F major (c1995)
Impromptu on a Tyrolean Tune (1957)
Two Russian Tunes (1948)
Sonatina no.2 (c1990)
Five Short Pieces (1932)
Prelude, Minuet and Reel (1932)
Little Nocturne (c1985)
Humoresque (1957)
Homage to Percy Grainger (1978)
Cameo and Variant (1993)

Duncan Honeybourne

Heritage Records HTGCD132 [68’40”]
Producer / Engineer Paul Arden-Taylor

Recorded 7-8 September 2024 at Wyastone Concert Hall, Wyastone Leys, Monmouth

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse

What’s the story?

Heritage continues its coverage of Thomas Pitfield (1903-99), following a reissued volume of chamber music (HTGCD210)) with this well-rounded and representative overview of his piano output, performed with his customary flair and conviction by Duncan Honeybourne.

What’s the music like?

The programme launches in fine style with a Toccata whose sheer rhythmic incisiveness and unforced joie de vivre makes it an ideal encore, and to which the pensive understatement of Solemn Pavan affords pertinent contrast. Written as homages to (and likely evocations of) a close-knit group of musical colleagues, The Circle Suite draws on Baroque dance forms in characterful and always personable terms; while the Capriccio underlines that, throughout his composing, Pitfield allied a deft pianistic technique to a highly appealing musical voice.

Centred on a Russian folksong ‘The Blacksmith’, no doubt conveyed to the composer by his Russian wife, Diversions on a Russian Air packs a diverse range of variants into its modest duration, while the Novelette (at 4’36’’ the longest single item here) unfolds as a rumination audibly in the English ‘pastoral’ tradition. Although they were not written concurrently, the Three Bagatelles amount to an effective sequence – their respectively nonchalant, capering then genial demeanours evoking more than a touch of early 20th century French influence.

The Central European-ness of Impromptu on a Tyrolean Tune makes it surprising this lively tune was encountered in a collection housed at a stately home in Chesire, while Two Russian Tunes comprise a playful ‘Nursery Song’ and plaintive ‘Cossack Cradle Song’. Actually, the third of three such works, the Second Sonatina separates its lively Allegro and rumbustious Finale with a ‘Threnody’ as finds the composer at his most confiding, whereas the engaging Five Short Pieces are pithy miniatures whose pedagogical function is anything but didactic.

Prelude, Minuet and Reel was Pitfield’s earliest success and has (rightly) retained a degree of popularity through its melodic insouciance and rhythmic verve. From among the remaining four pieces, Little Nocturne is most likely an intimate reflection from its composer’s old age, while Humoresque contrasts its expected levity with a surprisingly plangent middle section. Homage to Percy Grainger is a ‘take off’ idiomatic and engaging, while the alternate poise then suavity of Cameo and Variant rounds off this collection in the most disarming fashion.

Does it all work?

It does, accepting those formal and expressive limits within which Pitfield operated. For all that his performers comprised a significant roster of pianists (among them John Ogdon and John McCabe), this is music written for the composer’s pleasure and it eschews profundity without thereby lacking in depth. That he was invited to record this selection by the Pitfield Trust and researched the manuscripts at Manchester’s RNCM says much for Honeybourne’s dedication to the Pitfield cause, reinforced with playing of unfailing perception and finesse.

Is it recommended?

It is and not least as these pieces, few of them previously recorded, offer much of interest to performers and listeners alike. John Turner contributes extensive notes while Honeybourne adds his own observations, enhancing a release that warrants the warmest recommendation.

Listen / Buy

You can read more about this release and explore purchase options at the Heritage Records website

Published post no.2,577 – Friday 27 June 2025

On Record: Rupert Marshall-Luck & Duncan Honeybourne – Elgar & Gurney: A New Light (EM Records)

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Elgar
Violin Sonata in E minor Op.82 (1918)
Salut d’Amour Op.12 (1888)
Chanson de Nuit Op.15/1 (c1889)
Chanson de Matin Op.15/2 (c1890)
Gurney ed. Marshall Luck
Violin Sonata in D major (c1918-19)

Rupert Marshall-Luck (violin), Duncan Honeybourne (piano)

EM Records EMRCD075 [73’39″]

Producer Rupert Marshall-Luck Engineer Oscar Torres

Recorded 29-30 March 2021, Wyastone Concert Hall, Wyastone Leys, Monmouth

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse

What’s the story?

Rupert Marshall-Luck here continues his exploration of British music for violin and piano with this coupling of sonatas by Elgar and Gurney, the former performed in a new critical edition as prepared by the violinist and the latter receiving its first commercial recording.

What’s the music like?

The Violin Sonata was the first of a series of ‘chamber’ pieces Elgar wrote near the close and in the aftermath of the First World War, distilling his musical language while accentuating a pathos seldom far beneath the surface during his maturity. Outwardly traditional in overall design, none of its three movements is yet beholden to formal precedent. Thus, the opening Allegro alternates its subtly differentiated themes to halting and even uncertain effect; the Romance contrasts the flowing eloquence of its middle section with the restrained poignancy of those either side, while the final Allegro centres on an ardently expressive melody as this unfolds with increasing purposefulness toward a tersely decisive close. Marshall-Luck’s edition was published by the Munich firm of Henle in 1919, a century after the work’s first performance.

His Violin Sonata in D marks another stage in the reclamation of Ivor Gurney’s voluminous output. Composed near the start of that period between his discharge from the army and his admittance to a psychiatric hospital, it is less overt in its emotional intensity than the later E flat Sonata but more cohesive formally – due, in part, to Gurney’s advocate Marion Scott in having preserved a near-complete score as has subsequently been realized by Ian Venables. Despite its Allegro marking, the first movement is often understated in its expressive range and motivated more by tonal fluidity than by its rhythmic animation. The Scherzo exudes a capering humour complemented by the winsome poise of its trio, then the largely literal ‘da capo’ ends in teasing ambivalence. The Lento builds from its initial reticence to a climax of acute plangency before subsiding into regretful calm; after which, the Finale sets out with a renewed determination, offset by its elegant second theme and energized by its development, on the way to a coda whose resolution is the greater for its almost offhand sense of closure.

Placed between these sonatas are several of Elgar’s duo miniatures – Salut d’Amour with its effortlessly ingratiating charm, then the Chansons which make for an ideal diptych in terms of their respective pathos and ardency. Marshall-Luck plays all three with unfailing artistry.

Does it all work?

Pretty much. Comparison with his earlier recording of the Elgar (EM Records EMRCD011) finds Marshall-Luck more expansive in each movement, notably a finale that now has greater depth and insight. Here and in the Gurney, Duncan Honeybourne (most recently heard in a deeply impressive account of Frank Bridge’s Sonata on EMRCD070-71) contributes pianism as sensitive yet impulsive as this music requires and which adds much to the persuasiveness of these accounts. Hopefully the Gurney will go on to receive the public hearings it deserves.

Is it recommended?

Yes. The sound has the focus and clarity needed for this difficult medium, while Marshall-Luck contributes detailed overviews on each piece within the extensive booklet notes. As a programme it adds considerably to one’s appreciation of the music – ‘A New Light’ indeed.

Listen & Buy

For buying options, and to listen to clips from the album, visit the EM Records website. For more information on the composers, click on the names Sir Edward Elgar and Ivor Gurney – and on the performers, Rupert Marshall-Luck and Duncan Honeybourne

On record – Peter Cigleris: Dedication – The Clarinet Chamber Music of Ruth Gipps (Somm Recordings)

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gipps

Ruth Gipps
The Kelpie of Corrievreckan Op.5b (1939)
Quintet Op.16 (1941)
Rhapsody in E flat major Op.23 (1942)
Clarinet Sonata Op.45 (1955)
Prelude, Op.51 (1958)

Peter Cigleris (clarinet) with Gareth Hulse (oboe); Duncan Honeybourne (piano); Tippett Quartet [John Mills and Jeremy Isaac (violins), Lydia Lowndes-Norcott (viola) Bozidar Vukotic (cello)]

SOMM Recordings SOMMCD0641 [67’37”]

Producer Siva Oke
Engineer Michael Wright

Recorded 1 and 2 November 2020 at Menuhin Hall, Stoke d’Abernon, Surrey

Written by Richard Whitehouse

What’s the story?

SOMM Recordings marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of Ruth Gipps (1921-99) with this collection of her chamber music featuring clarinet, all of which was written with Robert Baker (her husband for 57 years) in mind and all of which here receives its first recordings.

What’s the music like?

A gifted oboist, pianist and conductor, Gipps was an all-round artist whose accomplishment was matched by a feisty temperament (as this writer recalls) laced with bitterness at the lack of recognition latterly accorded her, though nothing of this is audible in the music heard here.

The Rhapsody in E flat for clarinet and string quartet is one of this composer’s most lyrical pieces – its single movement twice alternating ruminative content and trenchant interplay, if without losing sight of the music’s essential poise, for all that a deeper and more ambivalent vein of expression comes to the fore – to be encapsulated by the clarinet cadenza at its close. Inspired by a poem from Charles Mackay’s 1851 collection, The Kelpie of Corrievreckan for clarinet and piano evokes its source in lively and often wryly humorous terms – its capering progress evidently not intent on taking this tale of the ill-fated protagonist unduly seriously.

Most substantial here is the Quintet for oboe, clarinet and string trio. Its four movements open with an Allegro of elegant restraint, whose modally inflected writing denotes allegiance to an English pastoralism prevalent over its deftly wrought and self-effacing course. There follows an Adagio whose calmly methodical progress admits of appealingly wistful emotion, then the Energico injects a welcome degree of wit into proceedings; before the final Allegro returns to more serious matters as it steers this work to a close the more affecting for its understatement.

British music for solo bass clarinet is not abundant, but Gipps’s Prelude is a notable addition to a mainly radical repertoire; its stealthy unfolding informed by an acute sense of continuity across this instrument’s timbral and registral extent, so it unfolds as an unbroken melodic arc. Finally, the Sonata for clarinet and piano – its initial Allegro starting with a Maestoso gesture which has a pervasive influence over what follows. If this opening movement feels relatively impersonal, the Andante must rank among Gipps’s most eloquent in its unforced pensiveness, then the Scherzando abounds in a quizzical humour continued by the final Allegro – its stern Maestoso prefacing music whose limpid asides do not offset the carousing energy at its close.

Does it all work?

Yes, on its own terms. As with many composers who took against the more radical aspects of British cultural policy after 1960, Gipps was inherently a conservative whose music is often less reactionary than often supposed. It certainly provides a stern test of musicianship which the present artists – not least clarinetist Peter Cigleris – meet head-on, in performances that bring out the idiomatic feel of Gipps’s writing for the instrument(s) at hand while conveying the reticent, yet discernible and often appealing personality that comes through in her music.

Is it recommended?

Indeed, not least given detailed and realistic sound, along with informative notes from Robert Matthew-Walker. Hopefully the cycle of Gipps’s symphonies will be completed by Chandos – but, for now, the present release marks her centenary as she would doubtless have wished.

Listen & Buy

You can discover more about this release and listen to clips at the SOMM Recordings website, where you can also purchase the recording. For more information on Ruth Gipps, click here – and for more on Peter Cigerlis, click here. More information on the Gipps symphonies, as recorded by Chandos, can be found here

On record – Duncan Honeybourne: De Profundis Clamavi (EM Records)

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de-profundis-clamavi

Armstrong Gibbs An Essex Rhapsody Op.36 (1921); Ballade in D flat (1940)
Bainton Variations and Fugue in B minor Op.1 (1898); The Making of the Nightingale (1921); Willows (1927)
Bridge Piano Sonata H160 (1921-4)
Britten Night Piece ‘Notturno’ (1963)
Edmunds Piano Sonata in B minor (1938)
Pantscheff Nocturnus V: Wing oor die Branders (2015); Piano Sonata (2017)
Parry Shulbrede Tunes (1914)

Duncan Honeybourne (piano)

EM Records EMRCD070-71 [two discs, 156’46”]

Producer Oscar Torres & Richard Pantcheff
Engineer Oscar Torres

Recorded 20 & 21 August 2020 at Potton Hall, Westleton, Suffolk

Written by Richard Whitehouse

What’s the story?

Never a pianist to pull his punches, Duncan Honeybourne adds to his expanding discography with this extensive survey of British piano music which, written across almost 120 years and evincing a range of styles, more than reinforces the descriptive heading of the overall project.

What’s the music like?

The first disc begins with the Piano Sonata by Christopher Edmunds. Birmingham-born and long active at the School of Music there, he left a sizable output from which the present work impresses through its wide expressive range within modest formal dimensions. The opening Allegro recalls Medtner in its pivoting between fervency and repose, then the Lento strikes a note of heartfelt emotion underlined by its ‘mesto’ marking. Utilizing aspects of scherzo and finale, the closing Allegro returns to more extrovert concerns as it arrives at a virtuosic close.

Edgar Bainton was still in his teens when composing the Variations and Fugue which became his first acknowledged work. Brahms is a key influence, but the music’s motivic and textural discipline ensures a formal focus throughout the nine deftly contrasted variations then into a tensile and vividly cumulative fugue. Remembered primarily for his songs, Cecil Armstrong Gibbs wrote idiomatically for the piano as is demonstrated by the intricate passagework and often bravura writing of An Essex Rhapsody, while the later Ballade exudes deeper emotion – not least an ominous central section with undeniable overtones of war. Part of a compendious sequence exploring different aspects of night, Richard Pantcheff’s Nocturnus V: Wind on the Waves follows a trajectory of impending marine turbulence that duly regains its earlier calm.

Written at the home of his daughter’s family, Shulbrede Tunes finds Hubert Parry reflecting on domestic environs in a methodically constructed cycle – the 10 pieces taking in evocations of the priory and people within. A lively humour informs Bogies and Sprites that Gambol by Nights, with a ruminative pathos to the fore in Prior’s Chamber by Firelight. Here, as in the exuberant Father Playmate, the aging composer’s devotion to Austro-German romanticism results in music which is as affecting as Parry’s orchestral and choral works from this period.

The second disc opens with two further pieces by Bainton. From among his many miniatures, Willow is a limpidly impressionist album-leaf of no mean poignancy, then The Making of the Nightingale evokes this bird’s creation in imaginative terms that are appealingly realized here. Written for the first Leeds International Piano Competition, Benjamin Britten’s Night Piece is the only acknowledged piano work from his maturity – a study in dynamic and timbral nuance of a finesse as to make one regret his stated antipathy for the modern piano on its own terms.

It is the Piano Sonata by Frank Bridge (placed before the Britten) which inevitably dominates this collection, not least as this recording is among the finest from recent years. Testimony to the composer’s response to the carnage of war as well as its impact on his evolving idiom, the three movements unfold as a single cumulative entity – the sizable opening Allegro preceded by a slow introduction whose main motivic elements are gradually elaborated for the ensuing opposition between anguish and eloquence. The savage rhetoric of its close makes the contrast with the Andante’s consoling rumination more acute, the music as if surveying a landscape of memories which elides straight into the final Allegro with its renewed confrontation of earlier motifs – on the way to a stark denouement then a resigned and almost confessional epilogue.

Pantcheff’s almost contemporary Piano Sonata rounds off this collection. Its three movements each carries an inscription from the epic poem The Axion Esti by Odysseus Elytis that sets the tone for a restive and increasingly tumultuous Inquieto, followed by an Elegia whose sombre imagery might feel almost nihilistic were it not for the plaintive expression that emerges in its latter stages, then a finale whose Alla Vortice marking aptly indicates the gradual intensifying of mood which carries this movement – and the work as a whole – towards its explosive close.

Does it all work?

Undoubtedly, when heard as a collection. Honeybourne has been astute in his planning so that each disc can be appreciated as a stand-alone recital in its own right, or as independent halves of an ‘uber-recital’ which even he would be unlikely to undertake in a live context. All except the Bridge, Britten and Parry are receiving their first recordings, and it would be surprising if some pieces did not enjoy greater exposure in future. For his dedication in championing them, and for putting together such an ambitious anthology, Honeybourne can only be commended.

Is it recommended?

Very much so. The piano sound is a shade hard at climaxes, while spacious and wide-ranging elsewhere, with detailed notes on each work and composer from various sources including the pianist. It adds up to an impressive release and a highlight of the EM Records catalogue so far.

Listen & Buy

You can discover more about this release and listen to clips at the EM Records website, where you can also purchase the recording. For more on Duncan Honeybourne, visit his website – and for more on Richard Pantcheff click here

In concert – English Music Festival Christmas Concerts

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Em Marshall-Luck (narrator), Heather Wrighton (harp), Rupert Marshall-Luck (violin), Duncan Honeybourne (piano)

Parish Alvars Romance in F (1842)
Lewis Four Anticke Dances (2015)
Rutter Dancing Day – Interlude (1974)
Britten A Ceremony of Carols – Interlude (1942)
Adie Festive Fantasy (2018)
Thomas Cambria (1863)
Parry Freundschaftslieder (1872)
Various A Christmas Garland (2020) [World Premiere Performance]

St. Mary’s Church, Horsham, 17 December 2020

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse

Christmas events have inevitably been few and far between this season, thereby making these concerts by the English Music Festival especially welcome – the more so given that St Mary’s Horsham proved to be an ideal location for music-making of such intimacy and inwardness.

A tale of two contrasted halves saw the first devoted to music for the harp – opening with the doyen of 19th-century practitioners, Elias Parish Alvars, whose Romance eloquently spanned the gamut of possibilities from winsome introspection to dextrous virtuosity. Paul Lewis has done much to enrich the modern repertoire, his Four Anticke Dances evoking various dance-measures of the late Renaissance and early Baroque eras through melodies entirely original yet wholly avoiding pastiche. Two interludes from well-known larger collections followed, the ethereal remoteness of that from John Rutter’s Dancing Day contrasting with the delicate playfulness of that from Britten’s A Ceremony of Carols, then Harriet Adie’s Festive Fantasy combined 12 carols in various moods and styles for what is a gift to this instrument. Heather Wrighton rendered this and all those preceding pieces with unfailing assurance; joining with Duncan Honeybourne for Cambria by John Thomas, whose pioneering work in dissemination of Welsh music amply demonstrated in elaborate arrangements of three traditional melodies.

The second half commenced with Freundschaftslieder, four (from a likely total of six) pieces in which the young Parry confirmed growing assurance as a composer. If not overly cohesive, these make for a diverting sequence – whether in the harmonic and rhythmic ambivalence of a Nocturne in G minor, listless agitation of an Allegro in C minor, speculative unfolding of a Ballade in D minor, or confiding wistfulness of an Andante in E major whose subtitle The Confidence of Love underlines Parry’s adherence to an earlier era of musical Romanticism.

Rupert Marshall-Luck rendered these pieces with no mean virtuosity; then he, Honeybourne and narrator Em Marshall-Luck came together for the first hearing of A Christmas Garland – an anthology centred upon the theme of Christmas. It opened with John Pickard’s idiomatic arrangement of his choral piece O Magnum Mysterium, continuing with Richard Pantcheff’s luminous setting of Rilke’s The Annunciation to Mary then restrained fervency of Graham Keitch’s Intrada; prior to Cecilia McDowell’s ruminative take on Christina Rosetti’s Before the paling of Stars. EMF regular Richard Blackford contributed the atmospheric piano piece Christmas Dawn, leading to the elegiac tones of Paul Lewis’s setting of his poem Will There be Snow? and Paul Carr’s appealing take on Rosetti’s evergreen In the Bleak Midwinter. The piano miniatures of Roderick Williams’s Winterscapes provided a pertinent interlude before David Matthews’s entrancing (if unfinished?) setting of Anne Brontë’s Music on Christmas Morning, then James MacMillan’s paraphrase on his setting of John Donne’s poem Nativity.

Paul Lewis re-emerged with an elegant song-and-dance Christmas Twosome in the guise of Fireside Carol and Christmas Waltz, then came Thomas Hewitt Jones’s Sleigh ride with a tired reindeer: as humorous yet speculative a conclusion as one written in 2020 needed to be.

Further information can be found at the English Music Festival website