The serious rival

PATRIC STANDFORD examines music
appealing to the listener with more time and patience

<< Continued from page 1

For the other CD from ASV, The Fibonacci Sequence present five chamber works covering over 30 years, and these spread a wider instrumental span, reflecting the challenge Rawsthorne was always delighted to undertake in mixing colours. The earliest piece is the Sonatina for flute, oboe and piano of 1936, wistful and classical, its three movements barely occupying 9 minutes. [Listen - ASV CD DCA 1061 track 7, 01:08-02:00.] The Concerto for Ten Instruments was commissioned for the 1961 Cheltenham Festival (in the days when it was very much a 'Festival of British Music') and contains some of his most spicy sonorities and inventive melodic ideas. Even finer is the Quintet for four wind instruments and piano, written a couple of years later for the BBC, and ranking among the strongest British chamber works of the century. If a brief sample of such a substantial work can be taken, it would have to be from the mysteriously brief third movement. [Listen - ASV CD DCA 1061 track 14, 01:30-02:25.] This CD also contains an attractive Suite for flute, viola and harp, written in 1968 for Marisa Robles, and a Quintet for clarinet, horn, violin, cello and piano, a lighter and endearing piece written in the last year of his life.

Both CDs have been produced with support from the Rawsthorne Trust (how grateful we should be that composers have active private support, for left to the world we should hear little if anything of them!) and the Naxos cover reproduces a painting by the composer's widow, Isabel Rawsthorne. Both are essential listening for any serious collector of 20th century British chamber music.

NAXOS 8.554352 INFORMATION PURCHASE FROM CROTCHET

ASV CD DCA 1061 INFORMATION PURCHASE FROM AMAZON PURCHASE FROM CROTCHET

To listen to the aural illustrations in this review, you may need to download RealNetworks' realplayer G2.