Tag Archives: Heritage Records

On Record – Francesco Celata, Roger Benedict & Daniel Herscovitch – Peripheral Visions: Australian Clarinet Trios (Heritage Records)

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Francesco Celata (clarinet); Roger Benedict (viola); Daniel Herscovitch (piano)

Margaret Sutherland Trio in C major (1935)
Peter Dart Peripheral Visions (2021-22)
Roger Smalley Clarinet Trio (1992-99, rev. 2001)
Andrew Schultz Stick Dance no.2 Op.22b (1989)
Richard Vella Tango (1990)
Brett Dean Night Window (1993)

Heritage Records HTGCD119 [71’25”]English texts included
Producer David Kim-Boyle Engineer David Kinney

Recorded 27 & 29 November 2023, 14 & 15 April 2025 at Verbrugghen Hall, Conservatorium of Music, University of Sydney

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse

What’s the story?

Heritage releases an enterprising anthology of pieces for clarinet trio from three generations of Australian composers that, in the process, demonstrates a stylistically varied while always imaginative approach at the forefront of these consistently assured and committed recordings.

What’s the music like?

Thanks to recent revivals (not least her tone poem Haunted Hills at last year’s Prom season), the importance of Margaret Sutherland in the context of Australian music is well established. Unheard for eight decades, her Clarinet Trio typifies the unforced Classicism of her maturity – whether in that modal tinge of its restrained opening Allegro, winsome poise of its central Adagio or the amiable impetus of its closing Allegro giocoso. It certainly provides a telling contrast with Stick Dance by Andrew Schultz which, as reworked from his earlier piece for larger ensemble, leaves a distinctive impression through often disjunctive contrasts and an ominously visual quality doubtless emanating from its inspiration in Indonesian puppetry.

At the forefront of new music in the UK and subsequently Australia, Roger Smalley latterly found a productive rapprochement with the musical past as demonstrated by his Piano Trio. Its concise sonata-form design is overlaid with that of variations in what becomes a process of continual development away from then back to that melodic fragment from the finale of Brahms’ Clarinet/Viola Sonata in E flat. From the intrinsically musical to the overtly visual – Peripheral Visions finds Peter Dart referencing poems by W. G. Sebald or drawings by Jan Peter Tripp as it unfolds from stealthy dialogue in ‘Reflections and Shadows’, via contrasts of darkness and light in ‘Above the Somme’, to emotive effects of colour in ‘After Cézanne’. The no less visual (and theatrically derived) immediacy of Richard Vella’s Tango makes for an ideal upbeat to Night Window, Brett Dean’s engagingly oblique take on the piano trio as genre or medium. Here an ‘Introduction’ of cadenzas for bass clarinet and viola leads into a ‘Fast, vigorous’ movement, with piano making its presence felt in music incisive and agile. There follows ‘Variations’, on a chorale-like theme whose otherness is as pervasive on the brief first four of these as on a more extended fifth variation that crystallizes the expressive essence overall. It only remains for ‘Return’ to bring about closure, its capricious progress drawing salient motivic facets from across the work into purposeful and inevitable accord.

Does it all work?

Very much so. What comes across most tellingly throughout this recital is a lack of inhibition, shared by these composers, when it comes to writing for a medium already much favoured by those in France and Germany during the previous century. The highly distinct nature of these three instruments is inevitably exploited; so too their timbral or textural similarities for what can equally become an ensemble unified as to its overall sound and conception. In touching on both premises, these three musicians convey the potential of all six pieces in full measure.

Is it recommended?

It is. Sound could hardly be improved on for clarity or definition, without sacrificing warmth, while the booklet note features succinctly informative commentaries by five of the composers as part of an overview that in itself segues unobtrusively between description and biography.

Listen / Buy

You can explore purchase options at the Heritage Records website

Published post no.2,902 – Saturday 30 May 2026

On Record – Naresh Sohal: Vocal & Instrumental Music (Heritage Records)

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cfJane Manning (soprano); hMargaret Cable, jElizabeth Turnball, hSarah Walker (mezzo-sopranos); fAlan Hacker, fEdward Pillinger (clarinets); hkRohan de Saram (cello); fPeter Seymour (perc); kAnanda Surkalan (piano); aLondon Sinfonietta, dAmbrosian Singers, gEnglish Chamber Orchestra / Sir Andrew Davis; iSingcircle / Gregory Rose; eLondon Contemporary Players / Elgar Howarth; cNash Ensemble / Justin Connolly; jNew Music Concerts / Robert Aitken; bNorthern Brass Ensemble / Lionel Friend

Naresh Sohal
Aalaykhyam Ia; Chiaroscuro Ib; Kavita Ic; Surya (all 1970)d; Hexade; Night’s Poet (both 1971)f; Aalaykhyam II (1972)g; Poems of Tagore II (1976)h; Inscape (1979)I; The Unsung Song (1993)j; Foray (2006)k

Heritage Records HTGCD122-3 [2 discs, 151’36”] English texts included
Remastering Engineer Paul Arden-Taylor

Live performances and broadcasts (London unless stated): d20 April 1971, St John’s Smith Square e13 July 1971, Goldsmiths College; c1 February 1972, Queen’s College, Birmingham; g 1 May 1973 and a 25 September 1974, Queen Elizabeth Hall, b 5 January 1977, BBC Studios, Manchester; h 22 August 1977, Purcell Room; f 8 February 1978, Wigmore Hall; i 18 November 1979, The Round House; j 28 November 1993, Du Maurier Theatre, Toronto; k 16 June 2006, Wilton’s Music Hall

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse

What’s the story?

Heritage continues the extensive series of archival recordings of Naresh Sohal (1939-2018) with this double album featuring vocal and instrumental works, most heard in their premiere performances by a roster of artists synonymous with contemporary music during this period.

What’s the music like?

Although previous issues on this label have tended to focus on those large-scale pieces which established or consolidated Sohal’s reputation, his output abounds in works with more modest dimensions or forces. This release collates various of these in parallel vocal and instrumental sequences as amount to a representative overview of their composer’s career. These underline the continual evolution of his idiom, whatever its stylistic changes, while also making the case – if such were needed – for their revival in what has now become a very different music scene.

To a poem from Tagore’s The Gardner (set a half-century before by Zemlinsky as the opening movement of his Lyric Symphony), Kavita I allows Sohal’s aural imagination free-rein with its fraught instrumental movements leading into the eloquent vocal setting. Surya sets texts from the Shakuntalam and Rig Veda in music dense and evocative, charged and incantatory. Night’s Poet draws on Tagore’s The Fugitive as it veers from the speculative to the ecstatic before an alluring close; Poems of Tagore II also draws on that collection in sensuous music with cello as much a vocal element as the two mezzos. Inscape has recourse to Tagore’s Lover’s Gifts in its hieratic aura with fastidiously variegated choral textures, then The Unsung Song draws on Tagore’s Gitanjali in an ethereal exploration of the beyond necessarily remaining unresolved.

As to the instrumental selection, Aalaykhyam I proceeds in starkly contrasted episodes and a disjunction eschewed in Aalaykhyam II with its subtle but never anodyne evolution of motifs that evoke a more inviting ‘abode’. Coming between these chronologically, Hexad favours a methodical yet cumulative unfolding across six movements such that the furtive anticipation of the first meets the assertive fulfilment of the sixth; while Chiaroscuro I turns brass quintet into a succession of overlapping, often conflicting gestures that merge into a vibrant if short-lived recessional. From here to Foray is to jump ahead some 35 years with music of greater expressive focus, distilled into an Adagio then Allegro as might equate to ‘song’ and ‘dance’ were it not for a shifting of ideas and moods across what amounts to a most unlikely diptych.

Does it all work?

Pretty much throughout. Part of the fascination with Sohal’s output are the ways he tackles – and almost always solves – different considerations in successive works, taking the solutions through to the next project so that a consistency of method becomes evident alongside those of form or expression. The performances lack for little in conviction and have been expertly remastered to make them sound more than adequate. More than this, however, it extends the discography of musicians whose contributions to the cause of new music cannot be gainsaid.

Is it recommended?

Indeed it is. The booklet features insightful (if occasionally contentious) notes on each piece by Utsyo Chakraborty along with a detailed biographical overview by Janet Swinney. What has already proved an invaluable series hopefully has several further instalments still to run.

Listen / Buy

You can explore purchase options at the Heritage Records website. Click on the name to read more about composer Naresh Sohal

Published post no.2,898 – Tuesday 26 May 2026

On Record – Duncan Honeybourne: Mist on the Moors: The Piano Music of Reginald Redman (Heritage Records)

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Duncan Honeybourne (piano)

Reginald Redman

Mist on the Moors (1926); A Cornish Legend (1922); Arabesque (1923); La Nuit; Lyric Piece; The Mystic Garden; Graceful Dance; Cradle Song; On the Cornish Coast (all 1924), The Lonely Faun (1926); Gossamer (1922); Lullaby for a Kitten; Deep in the Woods (c1923); Children at Play; In Changing Moods; In a Gondola; Venetian Barcarolle (all 1924); Prelude I Vent a travers les Roseaux (Wind through the Reeds), Prelude II Dans la Clairiere des Esprits Follets (In the Glade of the Will-o’-the-Wisps), Prelude III Le Desert au Point du Jour (The Desert at Dawn) (1918); Song of the Fountain (1924); Humoreske (1927); All Through the Night (earlier version, c1927); All Through the Night (later version, c1970)

Heritage Records HTGCD121 [78’24”]
Producer / Engineer Paul Arden-Taylor

Recorded 24 September 2025 at Wyastone Concert Hall, Wyastone Leys, Monmouth

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse

What’s the story?

Heritage continues its coverage of unfamiliar British music with an album of piano music by Reginald Redman (1892-1972), fastidiously realized by Duncan Honeybourne who himself has been a doughty champion of composers from the UK throughout his professional career.

What’s the music like?

Although active as a musician from his early years, composition frequently took a back seat in Redman’s activities; particularly during 1926-52 when he worked for the BBC in Cardiff then Bristol – eventually becoming its Director of West of England music. A skilled organist and pianist, he was latterly in demand as a conductor of amateur or professional orchestras. His own output comprises operas and ballets, chamber music, and songs including over 60 settings (albeit in translation) of Chinese poetry, on which subject he was a noted authority.

The highlight of this piano collection is the set of Three Preludes written near the end of the First World War and languishing in the archive at Bristol University until the present pianist rediscovered them in 2024. Complementary as a set, their sound-world is brought into focus by the descriptive titles (in French) appended to each one. Hence the simmering agitation of Vent à travers les Rousseaux, capricious agility of Dans la Clairière des Espirits or spatial immensity of Le Désert au Pont du Jour – which latter piece leaves a powerful impression.

If the miniatures that Redman wrote in the early 1920s, mainly for his wife Evelyn Amey, fail to recapture the individuality of those earlier pieces, they are never less than expertly written and evocative of their actual titles. Whether in the disarming whimsy of Lullaby for a Kitten, restrained poignancy of The Lonely Faun, the ominous aura of Mist on the Moor or harmonic subtlety of The Mystic Garden, these are consistently attractive items such as make for ideal encores and they would be worth taking up by other pianists for inclusion in their own recitals.

One of the latest pieces from this time is an appealing arrangement of the Welsh folksong Ar Hyd y Nos, duly heard in counterpoint with the West Country song Admiral Benbow for what became the signature-tune for the BBC’s Western station when it served both regions up until 1936. How revealing Redman should have revisited the Welsh melody in an arrangement just two years before his death; more austere yet no less affecting, while enhanced with a prelude and postlude in music that lingers in the memory long after these three minutes have ceased.

Does it all work?

Pretty much always. Redman was first and foremost one for whom practicality was the key as composer as much as a musician though, that said, the finest of these pieces inhabit a domain never less than personal and which should readily be appreciated as such. Those who respond to their charm can enjoy more of this music via digital downloads available from the Heritage website: the entertaining vignettes of At the Opera and poetic evocations of In Amberley Vale, both of which find the composer writing educational music that feels not in the least didactic.

Is it recommended?

It is. These recordings are as attentive to the letter and spirit of this music as expected from a musician of Honeybourne’s calibre, enhanced by spacious and well-defined Wyastone sound, along with typically informed and informative notes by the pianist. Well worth investigating.

Listen / Buy

You can explore purchase options at the Heritage Records website. Click on the name to read more about composer Reginald Redman and pianist Duncan Honeybourne

Published post no.2,893 – Thursday 21 May 2026

On Record – The Peter Jacobs Anthology: Twentieth Century British Piano Music (Heritage Records)

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Peter Jacobs (piano)

Bax Winter Waters (1915)
Baines Preludes nos.1,3 & 6 (1919)
Benjamin Scherzino (1936)
Bliss Suite: Polonaise (1926)
Britten Sonatina Romantica: Moderato (1940)
Hold Tango (1975)
Howells Procession (1920)
Leigh Eclogue (1940)
Mayer Three Pieces from Calcutta-Nagar (1993)
Parry Scherzo in F major (pub 1922)
Quilter Summer Evening (1916)
Scott Egyptian Boat Song (1913)
Searle Vigil: France 1940-1944 (1944)
Seiber Scherzando Capriccioso (1953)
Shaw Roundabouts (1925)
Sterndale Bennett Presto agitato in F# minor Op.24/5
Stevenson A Wheen Tunes for Bairns Tae Spiel (1967)
Warren Second Sonata: Monody (1977)
Woodferne-Finden Kashmiri Song (1903)

Heritage Records HTGCD159 [76’40”]
Producer / Engineer Paul Arden-Taylor

Recorded 25 May 2021 at Wyastone Concert Hall, Wyastone Leys, Monmouth

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse

What’s the story?

Besides reissuing his already extensive catalogue for other labels, Heritage has also made a number of new recordings by Peter Jacobs, with this album the first in what so far amounts to three volumes of miniatures and standalone pieces as drawn from his extensive repertoire.

Regular readers of Arcana will have come across reviews of the second and third volumes in this series, to which is now added this first instalment that ranges across the extent of Jacobs’ interest in and inclination towards unfamiliar though rewarding music by British composers.

What’s the music like?

Launched by Martin Shaw’s ebullient encore alighting on all two-dozen keys, this anthology continues with the harmonically acerbic second movement (of four) from Arthur Bliss’ early Suite, followed by music of elegant poignancy by Walter Leigh. John Mayer is heard in three from his 18 vignettes evoking sights and sounds of Calcutta (sic), with that by Roger Quilter a minor masterpiece of serenity infused with regret.

Màtyás Seiber contributes music whose liveliness and recalcitrance are entirely characteristic, with something ‘completely different’ in Amy Woodforde-Finden’s appealingly descriptive and once-ubiquitous number. Few are likely to recognize Herbert Howells as composer of a rhythmically combative piece that is (relatively) better known in its orchestral guise, while that from Arthur Benjamin could be no-one else given its playful insouciance. Dedicated ‘‘To my friends of the Fighting French Forces’’, Humphrey Searle’s evocation of war is the more powerful for its overall restraint and could well be considered the single-most impressive piece featured on this collection.

Hubert Parry is heard at his most vivacious and uninhibited; an ideal foil to Cyril Scott who, though he associated Egypt with (his own) past existences, focusses on melody of the most poetic. Much the earliest piece here, that by William Sterndale Bennett is the fifth in a six-movement suite – its deftness and agility in telling contrast to the incremental display of the opening movement from Raymond Warren’s Second Sonata. Three out of a larger sequence of preludes by William Baines constitute an object-lesson in making more out of less, while the first movement of Benjamin Britten’s never-quite-completed Sonata Romantica evinces ingenuity and didacticism in equal measure. Ronald Stevenson often aspired to the lofty or profound in his music, but the four pieces in the suite recorded here are epigrams as laconic as they are engaging. The longest single item here, Arnold Bax’s piece is at once a visceral seascape, revealing psychological study or resourceful passacaglia – the climax of an album that ends in a disarming item by Trevor Hold such as ought to win its composer new friends.

Does it all work?

As an overall sequence, undoubtedly. Jacobs is as inclusive in his interpretative acumen as   in the breadth of his musical sympathies – thereby making for a collection that plays to his strengths as convincingly as it does to those of the 19 composers who are featured herein.

Is it recommended?

Very much so, not least in the knowledge this release was merely the first in an ongoing and most valuable series bringing unfamiliar music to the attention of inquiring listeners. Sound of clarity and definition, along with Jacobs’ detailed booklet notes, are further enhancements.

Listen / Buy

You can explore purchase options at the Heritage Records website. Click on the name to read more about pianist Peter Jacobs

Published post no.2,889 – Saturday 16 May 2026

On Record – The Peter Jacobs Anthology Volume 3 (Heritage Records)

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Peter Jacobs (piano)

Allum Nocturne in C sharp minor; Prelude No. 24 in D minor (both c.1950)
Bantock (arr. composer) Omar Khayam (1906-09) – Prelude and March
Fenney Au Printemps (pub. 1915)
MacDonald Waste of Seas (1976)
Purcell arr. Stevenson The Queen’s Dollour (pub. 1710, arr. 1958)
Simpson Variations and Finale on a Theme of Haydn (1948)
Truscott Prelude and Fugue in E flat minor; Prelude and Fugue in C major (1957)

Heritage Records HTGCD127 (67’25”)
Recorded live at London College of Music, April 1979

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse

What’s the story?

Heritage continues adds to its extensive Peter Jacobs discography with this recital focussing on music by British composers mainly of the early and mid-twentieth century, each rendered with that combination of fluency and insight which this pianist brings to all his performances.

What’s the music like?

According to his booklet note, Jacobs gave this recital at an Annual General Meeting for the Havergal Brian Society in 1979, though the present writer remembers a pretty much identical programme being given at this event in 1982. The seeming unavailability of works by Brian (Four Miniatures then Prelude and Fugue in C minor) played on this occasion is regrettable, but these are easily available elsewhere while the recital’s purpose in drawing together music by various of Brian’s contemporaries, colleagues or advocates remains essentially unchanged.

Granville Bantock’s choral epic Omar Khayam has numerous excerpts worthy of autonomous status – not least its evocative Prelude and quizzical March. Apparently written in a weekend, Harold Truscott’s brace of Preludes and Fugues – that in E flat minor as methodical as that in C is impetuous – makes one regret he did not attempt a complete cycle. An amateur composer in the most professional sense, Walter Allum’s piano music wears its indebtedness to Chopin but deftly – witness his intricately designed Nocturne or Prelude in D minor which brings to a vividly decisive end a cycle likely worth hearing in its entirety. William J. Fenney enjoyed a modest reputation just after the First World War with Au Printemps (also known as ‘In Early Spring’) a trilogy the more affecting in its emotional restraint – ‘light’ music but never facile.

Forward to what was then the present, Malcolm MacDonald’s Waste of Seas (also known as Hebridean Prelude) sustaining a plangent atmosphere and of a pianistic resourcefulness to suggest his modest output as worth further investigation. A relatively early work, Variations and Finale on a Theme of Haydn has Robert Simpson drawing a wide but integrated range of moods from the innocuous Minuet of Haydn’s 47th Symphony (its palindromic aspect more intensively mined in Simpson’s Ninth Quartet), prior to an extended final section more akin to the iconoclastic fugal writing in late Beethoven. Such exhilaration needs a brief touchdown such as Jacobs supplies in Ronald Stevenson’s lucid take on one of Purcell’s most poignant inspirations; a reminder the former is often at his most creative in the realm of transcription.

Does it all work?

Indeed so, not least when those pieces by Bantock, Allum, Fenney and MacDonald have yet to receive commercial recordings. Jacobs himself has recorded the Truscott (Heritage) while there are studio accounts of the Simpson by Raymond Clarke (Hyperion) and of the Purcell/ Stevenson transcription from Murray McLachlan (Divine Art) or Christopher Guild (Toccata Classics). To hear these works in close proximity and so perceptively realized is, of course, its own justification and no one interested in this music need hesitate to acquire this release.

Is it recommended? Very much so. Whatever its provenance, the recording sounds entirely satisfactory thanks to Heritage’s expert remastering and one only hopes further such releases from Peter Jacobs’s doubtless extensive archive will be possible. This latest anthology is warmly recommended.

Listen / Buy

You can hear excerpts from the anthology at the Presto Music website, and explore purchase options at the Heritage Records website. Click on the composer names to read more about Robert Simpson, Ronald Stevenson and Harold Truscott

Published post no.2,761 – Thursday 8 January 2026