EMR CD031 | DETAILS
  EMR CD031
   
  THE MOON SAILS OUT
  Richard Jenkinson (vc) | Benjamin Frith (pf)
   
  EAN 5 060263 500285

This EM Records release of British cello music performed by the Jenkinson Frith Duo presents World Première recordings by Cyril Scott, Ivor Gurney and Ian Venables: Cyril Scott’s monumental Cello Sonata is recorded here for the first time alongside Ivor Gurney’s unpublished one-movement Cello Sonata in E minor.

 

Cyril Scott’s Cello Sonata was composed in 1958 when the composer had just turned seventy; despite being a late work it is in no way autumnal, but is instead a dramatic four-movement piece that displays all the composer's mature fingerprints. Gurney’s mantle as one of England's finest composers of art songs is now extending to his orchestral and chamber music, of which this sonata is a fine example. Ian Venables, like Gurney, has not only made song a central part of his output but has also composed chamber works of equal beauty and intensity. As well as the early ‘Elegy’ and the later ‘Poem’ the other three works featured on this disc are transcriptions of two of his most evocative songs and a rhapsodic paraphrase of the song, ‘The Moon Sails Out’.

TRACK LISTING AND AUDIO EXTRACTS
     

Cyril Scott (1879–1970)
SONATA FOR CELLO AND PIANO (World Première recording)

   
1. I. Andante, rubato  
2. II. Allegretto scherzando  
3. III. Grave  
4. IV. Rondo gioviàle animato  
       
Ian Venables (b.1955)    
5. ‘AT MALVERN’, op.24a (World Première recording)  
6. ‘ELEGY’, op.2  
7. ‘THE MOON SAILS OUT’, op.42 (World Première recording)  
8. ‘IT RAINS’, op.33a (World Première recording)  
9. ‘POEM’, op.29  
       
Ivor Gurney (1890–1937)
10. SONATA IN E MINOR FOR CELLO AND PIANO
(World Première recording)
 
       
Cyril Scott    
11. ‘LULLABY’, op.57 no.2  
REVIEWS
Beautifully shaped by Benjamin Frith... Beguiling sounds, graced by the tawny richness and unexaggerated line of Richard Jenkinson’s cello playing... The sense of purpose and sureness of line of Ian Venables’ music is pure oxygen.
EMR CD31 | BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE
Exquisitely rewarding... Ravishing accounts.
EMR CD029 | CHOIR AND ORGAN
This is music of great beauty and integrity and the performances fully do it justice. It would be criminal to let it pass you by.

EMR CD028 | INTERNATIONAL
RECORD REVIEW

The Bridge Quartet approach these pieces with a sympathetic and insightful warmth, and confirm their ambassadorial credentials for British chamber music. A lovely, radiant disc.
EMR CD025 | Gramophone
Duncan Honeybourne’s playing is astonishingly affectionate, yet never saccharine... Honeybourne plays with suave confidence.
EMR CD024 | INTERNATIONAL PIANO
Rupert Marshall-Luck is an ideal interpreter: generously but not effusively lyrical; agile and athletic... The warm, folk-song like slow movement is at times almost painfully beautiful, with a shimmering pastoral central section... Marshall-Luck is, again, indefatigable and keenly picks up on the work’s melancholic strain.  Finely recorded and with comprehensive booklet notes, this is a must for fans of 20th-century English repertoire.
EMR CD023 | THE STRAD