Freda Swain (1902–1985)
Music for Violin and Piano
Lorraine McAslan (violin), Timon Altwegg (piano)
rec. 2022-2024, St George’s Headstone, Harrow, London, UK
Dutton Epoch CDLX7419 SACD [76]

This is the second volume in Dutton’s Freda Swain series. The first was dedicated to her Piano Quartet, Cello Sonata and smaller works (review) and the disc under review focuses on her large-scale Violin Sonata and a host of other, smaller-scaled works for violin and piano. It makes for a rather odd programmatic experience, I have to say, but the works are all programmed chronologically, and date from 1919 to 1957, so they do reflect this aspect of her compositional life fairly.

The Sonata was written in 1947 when she was in her mid-40s, is in three movements and was premiered by Henry Holst. It opens in an untroubled, lyrical way, rather old-fashioned in fact but soon encounters a more acerbic edge, hurtling through a succession of vivid mood scenes of some turbulence. Nevertheless, it remains tethered to its essential lyricism and the music reasserts its core warmth to come to a gentle close. The central movement is full of edgy dissonance, cloaked and brooding, though warmly textured. The finale is harmonically rather ambiguous and has a strong rhythmic charge, with a sequence of episodes that imply changes of colour and texture. This is music of assertion and sinewy direction, and increasingly confident. I find it an ambiguous work but a strong statement and acknowledge the splendid and perceptive performance of Lorraine McAslan and Timon Altwegg.

Much of the rest of the programme falls into one of several categories, the earliest works falling into the ‘genre’ category. There are youthful effusions (Berceuse from 1919), romantic expressions of temperament, such as Lento con espressione, which exists only in manuscript, and pieces that also adopt a more showy, virtuoso profile, like Lento e teneramente.

All these little pieces pre-date the Sonata by many years. Everything else in the disc post-dates it, so it’s quite a jolt after the Sonata to encounter the pastoral postcard Highland Hills. Even the sourer-than-the-title suggests Pastoral Reflection of 1953 has a gentle lyric charge whilst Hornpipe, Air, Jig and Finale offers a study that is, in turn, extrovert, warmly aerated, full of fertile joy and finally, saturated in wrong-footing playfulness. From the same year comes Imitation and Reversion, a brief but potent Toccata and from the following year we find Ballade (Hommage à Chopin), an oddly strenuous and acerbic piece, given the title, that at times exudes a weirdly hallucinatory quality. The final piece is the brief and clement Nocturne.

These are all world premiere recordings.

The Sonata is certainly reflective of Swain’s more questing aspirations and one or two of the other small pieces show enough ambiguity to detain the listener. Whilst it’s good to have her violin works collected in this way, I have to be honest and say that a few of the early pieces, in particular, as well as a couple of the later ones, are very small beer.

Jonathan Woolf

Contents
Berceuse (1919)
Lento con espressione
Lento e teneramente
Vielle Chanson Triste
Sonata in G minor (1947)
Highland Hills (1951)
Pastoral Reflection (1953)
Hornpipe, Air, Jig and Finale (Movements) (1955)
Imitation and Reversion (1955)
Ballade (Hommage à Chopin) (1956)
Nocturne (1957)