Nathan Williamson - Colour & Light: 20th-Century British Piano Music '2019

Tracks list

Tracklist
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01. 12 Preludes: No. 1 in E-Flat
02. 12 Preludes: No. 2 in A
03. 12 Preludes: No. 3 in A
04. 12 Preludes: No. 4 in F
05. 12 Preludes: No. 5 in D (In memoriam R.F.)
06. 12 Preludes: No. 6 in G & F-Sharp
07. 12 Preludes: No. 7 in B
08. 12 Preludes: No. 8 in E-Flat
09. 12 Preludes: No. 9 in C
10. 12 Preludes: No. 10 in D
11. 12 Preludes: No. 11 in D-Flat
12. 12 Preludes: No. 12 in D
13. Paraphrase II (Mark): Theme
14. Paraphrase II (Mark): Var. 1
15. Paraphrase II (Mark): Var. 2
16. Paraphrase II (Mark): Var. 3
17. Paraphrase II (Mark): Var. 4
18. Paraphrase II (Mark): Var. 5
19. Paraphrase II (Mark): Var. 6
20. Suite for Orchestra, RT VI/1 Florida: IV. At Night (Arr. R. Threlfall for
Piano)
21. Margot la rouge, RT I/7 (Arr. M. Ravel for Piano): Prelude
22. Margot la rouge, RT I/7 (Arr. M. Ravel for Piano): Duet
23. The Ring of Bone, Op. 106
24. Litany
25. Toccata

Following Great American Sonatas, his admired debut on SOMM RECORDINGS, pianist
Nathan Williamson turns to British piano music of the 20th century in Colour and
Light, a revealing exploration of how the past influences the present and the
new. 

A century-spanning programme from Delius’s quixotic 1887 Nocturne (more
familiar as An Nacht, the Florida Suite’s finale, here in Robert
Threlfall’s 1986 transcription) to Anthony Herschel Hill’s
combustible Toccata of 1985 also lights on three other distinctive but highly
contrasted composers. 

Modernity makes itself felt in Elisabeth Lutyens’ The Ring of Bone (1975)
which strikingly employs the use of spoken text in what Williamson describes in
his booklet notes as “a bold and heartfelt gesture”. William
Alwyn’s Twelve Preludes (1958) pay a glancing nod to Lutyens’
serialist techniques even while displaying “a peculiarly English
combination of both tonality and modality” characteristically his own. 

Peter Dickinson’s “postmodern, poly-stylistic” Paraphrase II
(1967) is the work of a composer open to the broadest influences, its seven
sections inventively re-working an earlier three-part motet and receiving here
their first studio recordings. 

Slowly emerging into the light (his Nocturne featured on Julian Jacobson and
Mariko Brown’s 2017 release – SOMMCD 0178) Anthony Herschel
Hill’s Litany (1992) and Toccata (1985) – heard here in first
recordings – are the product of a wholly individual compositional voice,
boasting, says Williamson, “some of the most gorgeously idiomatic and
exhilarating piano writing of any late-20th century composer”. 

Delius’s Prelude and Duet from his one-act opera Margot la Rouge,
composed in 1902 yet un-performed until 1983, are distinctive for their delicate
harmonic textures and colours, masterfully transcribed for piano by Maurice
Ravel. 

Featuring music by Bernstein, Copland, Charles Ives and Lou Harrison, Great
American Sonatas, Nathan Williamson’s 2017 SOMM Recordings (SOMMCD 0163)
debut was hailed by Gramophone as “a release of distinction”.

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