A Cello Galaxy of British Women Composers
Catherine Wilmers (cello)
Jill Morton (piano)
rec. 2024, Ayriel Studios, UK
Divine Art DDX21134 [81]

One of the important features of this disc is that most of the pieces are heard in world premiere recordings. That applies equally to the large-scale Sonata of Amy Elsie Horrocks as it does to the small-scaled character pieces by Peggy Spencer Palmer. In other words, there’s something for everyone who likes British cello music and you’ll find that cellist Catherine Wilmers’ programme notes contain a wealth of detail about the composers, especially the lesser-known ones. 

First, then, to that Amy Horrocks Sonata of 1899. The material is fluently distributed within traditional ways and means and though the compositional date may suggest Brahms as an influence, in fact one would have to track back earlier into the nineteenth century. The most memorable writing, though, isn’t the outer movements, efficient though these are, it’s in the central Theme with variations which may evoke the warmth of a parlour song but presents a disparate though intriguing chain of variations, some athletic, others plangent, one section fugal, that show both the efficiency of her training and her skilful deployment of material. This is a useful addition to the British cello sonata of the period and could be performed alongside, or in preference to, Ethel Smyth’s 1887 Sonata.

Sarah Rodgers wrote Mountain Airs for Catherine Wilmers in 1999, who gets the chance to record it here. In four concise panels it charts the course of a day, from dawn to fiesta. Dawn – ‘Alba’ – is the most evocative though Noon’s stasis and the sun’s heat are vividly conveyed. Dusk is followed by the liveliness of Fiesta frolics. Peggy Spencer Palmer’s three pleasant genre pieces were all published in 1924. Ethel Barns is a much better-remembered composer, not least for her violin trinkets of which Swing Song is the best known, though here, valuably, it’s heard in Herbert Withers’s transcription for cello. Idylle is associated with pioneering cellist May Mukle but there’s also the previously unrecorded Capricieuse.

Joan Trimble’s lovely The Coolin’ is here, though its pizzicato episode could have been more expressively shaped, whilst Dora Bright – increasingly recognised these days – is represented by her transcription of a Meyerbeer song. Another increasingly recorded composer is Susan Spain-Dunk, whose innocuously titled Winter Song of 1935 is one of the best pieces here – powerfully terse as well as increasingly lyric and yielding. There are two post-war Elizabeth Poston transcriptions of old French chansons as well as a pre-war Serenade, an arrangement of the last of Poulenc’s Chansons Gaillardes.

I found the performance of Rebecca Clarke’s Epilogue lacking in nuance and shape – contrast with Paul Watkins and John York who play with much more colour. Though she does lighten her tone, Wilmers is generally too dour and her intonation suffers. The last item is Alice Verne Bredt’s Wiegenlied (Lullaby), a salon piece, recorded during the First World War on Victor by May Mukle.

The high percentage of first recordings, as indicated, will be an attractive element of this enterprising disc. Only the Clarke, two of the Barns and the Bredt pieces have been recorded before. The booklet notes are splendid. The recording, though, is rather flat and lacking in warmth for my tastes and Wilmers’s intonation sometimes comes under siege whilst her tonal resources are now much more limited than of old. Jill Morton plays with real efficiency and there’s more than enough here to satisfy those curious about British cellistic highways and byways.

Jonathan Woolf  

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Contents
Amy Elsie Horrocks (1867-1919)
Cello Sonata, Op.7 (1899)
Rebecca Clarke (1886-1979)
Epilogue (1921)
Peggy Spencer Palmer (1900-1987)
Legend (pub.1924)
Sarabande (pub.1924)
Bagatelle (pub.1924)
Sarah Rodgers (b.1953)
Mountain Airs (1999)
Joan Trimble (1915-2000)
The Coolin’ (1939)
Dora Bright (1862-1951)
Das Fischermädchen (1934)
Susan Spain-Dunk (1880-1962)
Winter Song (1935)
Elizabeth Poston (1905-1987)
Mignonne, allons voir si la Rose (pub.1947)
L’Amour de moi (pub.1947)
Serenade (1926)
Ethel Barns (1873-1948)
L’Escarpolette (Swing Song) (1908) arr H Withers, for cello
Idylle (1913)
Capricieuse
Alice Verne Bredt (1864-1958)
Wiegenlied (Lullaby) (1911)