Works for Solo Piano by British Women Composers
Hiroaki Takenouchi (piano)
rec. 2024, Paris
Details of contents beneath review
Reviewed from digital download
Artalinna ATL-A046 [87]

Japanese born pianist Hiroaki Takenouchi has a wide-ranging repertoire from the Viennese classics to post 1945 modernism and everything in between. He has recorded a number of works by neglected British composers, including concertos by Sterndale Bennett and Percy Sherwood. This disc fits in nicely with his well-received Lyrita disc with Simon Callagahan of two piano works by British female composers (review). This collection covering just over one hundred years of music is as wide ranging as it is welcome. The tracks move between composers quite a lot, so I am listing them chronologically. 

Caroline Reinagle is a British composer who I have never heard of. Apparently, she came from a cultured family and had a number of works performed of which very few have survived. The four-movement sonata recorded here is very fine indeed and reminiscent of some Fanny Mendelsohn. Takenouchi plays it with tremendous aplomb especially in the fast second and fourth movements which require great dexterity. The two salon pieces, Tarantella and Volunteers Rifle March (1860) are amusing. 

Dorthy Howell had great success in 1919 when her orchestral work Lamia was performed at the Proms. Further success came but the energy required to promote herself as a ’lady composer’ was too time-consuming and she settled mainly into a life of teaching at the Royal Academy of Music and privately. This is a great pity, as she was clearly a hugely talented musician as the recordings of her music which have a appeared on recent years have shown (review). Even in these mostly short piano works, there is a skilled, inventive composer controlling the materials. 

Puppy Dogs’ Tales were written for children or educational purposes and are great fun. No 2, a lugubrious Blood Hound reminded me of Mussorgsky. No 3, a Pekinese, is happily unmarked by faux Chinoiserie. May (The Cuckoo Calls), and August come from an album of months of the year by different composers published by O.U.P.  The cuckoo is ever present in the very brief May, while the almost three-times-longer August, subtitled Harvest Field, seems to portray in its languidness the field after harvesting. Takenouchi treats them all with care. 

Spindrift and Boat Song come from just after her orchestral success with Lamia and were included in the ‘Mortimer Edition’ of Repertoire Series of Pianoforte Music by Modern British Composers published by Ashberg, Hopwood and Crew. She was in good company, as other composers in the series included Stanford, Bowen, Bax and Howells. Spindrift is a spiky, toccata-like work requiring some dazzling finger-work. More impressive is the nocturnal Boat Song, which at seven minutes is one of the longer works on the album. The harmonies that accompany the winding melody keep us thinking, “What next?”

Her Three Preludes for Piano were published by OUP in 1929 as part of the Clarendon Piano Series (edited by John Ireland). This was a series of publications described as ‘attempts to provide solo pieces of high musical value and varying difficulty, for recital, festival and practical purposes.’ The three works in F minor, C major and A flat minor certainly fulfil their brief. They make a diverting triptych especially when played as well as they are here. Inhabiting the sound world of, say, York Bowen, they demonstrate a consummate compositional skill. With an advanced sense of harmony, though nothing to shock, and a playful sense of rhythm, they never outstay their welcome. 

What would Doreen Carwithen’s career have been like had she not put her composing on the back burner to look after William Alwyn her one-time teacher and later husband? There are not many works but what there are show a composer of great talent (review; review). These Four Preludes have languished over the years, so kudos to Takenouchi, who has championed them recently. No 2 is dark and brooding but with a lighter middle section where Takenouchi colours each line impeccably.  Prelude 4 marked allegro con energia, could have been quicker and a bit gutsier, the performance here being a tad too mannered for the material. All four are impeccably constructed.

Madeleine Dring was a supremely gifted musician who died far too young. Gifted, or maybe cursed, with perfect pitch and synaesthesia, she composed from a young age. The Fantasy Sonata recorded here, I believe for the first time, was written, according to her biographer Ro Hancock Child, when she was fifteen; the liner notes at one point say 1938 and at another 1939. Ms Hancock Child is quite scathing about it in her biography of the composer, as was one Edward Lockspier in a review in Music and Letters. Well, ignoring them both, I have loved it since I started playing it in my teens and am very happy that it has been recorded so well here. Yes, it is very Romantic and yes, there are many ideas – but what ideas, and how many fifteen-year-olds could come up with such a satisfying and enjoyable work?  This is a very fine performance which I wish more pianists would take up. I also wish the disc had included her Prelude and Toccata, which was premiered in 1948, the year Lengnick published the Fantasy Sonata, and is a real gem.

As we see more and more music by female composers appearing in concerts and recordings, it is easy to forget how different the expectations of male and female composers have been. All the women on this disc juggled expected family duties in ways that were never expected of men. That they continued to produce music of such quality is testament to their tenacity and determination in the face of such societal challenges.

Paul RW Jackson

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Contents:
Dorothy Howell (1898-1982)
May (The Cuckoo Calls) from All Year Round (1934)
Puppy dogs’ Tales (1925)
Boat Song (1920)
Madeline Dring (1923-1977)
Fantasy Sonata (1938)
Doreen Carwithen (1922-2003)
Four Preludes 91950)
Caroline Reinagle (1817-1892)
Tarantella Op. 4 (1846)
Volunteers Rifle March (1860)
Sonata for the Piano Forte in A Major, Op. 6 (c1840s)
Dorothy Howell
Three Preludes (1929)
Spindrift (1920)
August (Harvest Field)  from All Year Round (1934)