British Music Society, Andrew Plant

“This issue is a showcase for some of the richly rewarding results of Robert Plane’s promotion of British music.”

It begins in fine style with Bingham’s Elsewhere, for clarinet and string quartet. These six short vignettes, inspired by four paintings by Botticelli, focus not on the main images but on very small details within them…

Here the clarinet’s lowest note evokes a satyr quietly blowing a seashell, while its upper register is later deployed as chiming bells from a distant cathedral. We have a disturbingly vivid portrayal of a wasps’ nest… and a glorious meditation Mystic Nativity, in which Bingham includes a few snatches of the thirteenth-century melody, Angelus ad virginem.

Bingham’s 2022 Concerto for clarinet and 11 strings ruminates on much darker territory… this is a reflection on the tragic war in Ukraine filtered through landscape… The tune ‘Epping Forest’ is the work’s foundation, and appears fully in the rather Max Davies-influenced third movement.

In complete contrast, this composer’s Hodge, Dr Johnson’s Cat, is a charming quartet of tiny songs for tenor/speaker and clarinet. Its uproarious mewings, sneezes, and depiction of scuttling rodents has no doubt brought the house down more than once…

Sally Beamish’s canonic Tom’s Turn, was originally conceived for saxophone… and here revisited yet again at Plane’s suggestion for solo clarinet, double-tracked…

Piers Hellawell’s scores are like finely-wrought lapidary work… Woodsmoke juggles with the registers of the clarinet in microtonal gestures. The Rising of Sirius, for clarinet and piano trio, draws its lifeblood from church architecture. Optionally – as here – the audience is invited to intone short phases ‘as an act of communal music making’, which reverberating affirmation of faith and praise gradually fades into the stones.

Finally, David Matthews’ A Song for Barrie, a moving memorial to the documentary maker Barrie Gavin, proceeds logically and reverently to an entirely tonal conclusion.

“With a lively recording, fine presentation, and Plane’s scorching virtuosity evident throughout, this CD is unreservedly recommended.”