A Musical Soirée
Shirley Turner (violin), Peter Mallinson (viola)
Richard Horsford (clarinet), Joanna Baillie Stark (bassoon)
Lynn Arnold (piano)
Joanna David (speaker)
rec. 2025, St Peter’s Church, Boughton Monchelsea, UK
Meridian CDE84686 [74]

Meridian’s soirée has an inviting look. It ranges across the chronology, is not afraid to survey the continent as well as Britain, and contains world premiere recordings. York Bowen’s Trios begin the recital. They’re undated, though a rival disc on Dutton, cites Bowen expert John White who believed, on stylistic grounds, that they were from the late 1940s.  Be that as it may, the Meridian duo of violinist Shirley Turner and violist Peter Mallinson perform them in a different order to Dutton’s Lorraine McAslan and Sarah-Jane Bradley, starting with the fast movement (Allegro vigoroso) whereas the Dutton pair open with the slow movement. However you programme them little will hinder the sense of spruce contrapuntal energy they embody or the overlapping expressive lines in the Poco lento, or indeed the fanciful virtuosity of the finale.

Harry Waldo Warner was a founding member of the London String Quartet and a Cobbett Prize winner. I wish a group would record his Quartets. Warner’s Divertimento in which the string players are joined by pianist Lynn Arnold, was composed after his retirement and is a charming suite based on Baroque dance forms. It opens with a genial Fugue, flecked with drollery, moves on to a lovely Aria and there’s a deft, languid Sarabande though its central panel disrupts the idyll for a while. A piano-led Pastorale laced with ripe Romanticism is followed by a light-hearted and charming Rigaudon to end this delicious work, one that pays homage to Grieg’s Holberg Suite rather more than to Peter Warlock’s Capriol. A tiny correction to the booklet note: Warner left the Quartet in 1929 but he wasn’t replaced by William Primrose, he was replaced by Philip Sainton, though Sainton certainly didn’t stay long – a matter of months.

We move into rather different stylistic waters with Anna Amalia’s own Divertimento, written around 1780 and heard here in Pater Mallinson’s arrangement. It’s in two brief movements and was originally composed for clarinet, viola, cello and piano but Mallinson adds violin and bassoon to site the work in the string and wind divertimento tradition. It all works splendidly well – the bassoon burbles away, the strings are lithe, and the clarinet articulately virtuosic.

With August Klughardt we move to the shrouded world of the German elegy. Each of his five Schilflieder of 1872 is prefaced by Joanna David reading an English translation of Nikolaus Lenau’s turbulent poems. Klughardt wrote them for oboe, viola and piano but his alternative scoring of violin instead of oboe is followed in this recording. These portraits are veiled in melancholy reflecting Lenau’s separation from his beloved so it’s hardly surprising that the ‘howling winds’ of No.2 generate a remorseless Scherzo-like drive or that when, in No.3, ‘the reeds murmur in a mysterious lament’ the piano gauntly intones, the viola joining her warily. Or when in the next poem, so well read by David, ‘lightning streaks across the sky’ the music becomes immediately terse and storm-tossed. The final panel, ‘Sehr ruhig’, closes the cycle in piety, quietude, and reflective intimacy, ruefully.

After these high-Romantic agonies, one yearns for something light. Fortunately, Susan Spain-Dunk, increasingly recorded of late, comes to the rescue with The Lonely Moor, a folkloric exploration for violin and viola that generates a resonant head of steam which is followed by a quick enticing Jig.  As a bonne bouche the recital ends with Monti’s Czardas in an arrangement by Bel Comeau for violin, viola and piano and nearly ten minutes of corny but irresistible fun.

This is more than a congenial recital, it’s a cleverly selected one, full of contrast – in texture, styles, composition of the ensemble – and jam packed with worthwhile music. The booklet is excellent and the recording splendidly judged.

Jonathan Woolf

Contents
York Bowen (1884-1961)
Three Duos (undated)
Harry Waldo Warner (1874-1945)
Divertimento in D (Olden Style), Op.45 (1933)
Anna Amalia (1739-1807)
Divertimento (c.1780) arr Peter Mallinson
August Klughardt (1847-1902)
Schilflieder (1872)
Susan Spain-Dunk (1880-1962)
Two Pieces
Vittorio Monti (1868-1922)
Czardas (1904, arr. Bel Comeau)