Hyperion CDA67751/2 (2 CDs: DDD: 119 minutes)

Notes and translations included

This excellently recorded, two-disc set of the Bowen sonatas, which includes premiere recordings of the first three sonatas, comes as a timely reminder of English composers who fell out of regular concert programming and emphasizes the need to reconsider not just the music of Bowen, but also his contemporaries. In recent years, admittedly, there has been a flurry of activity involving recordings of Bowen's piano and chamber works and even a CD release of Bowen's own recordings (including the first commercial recording of Beethoven's Concerto no. 4) and with this recording we are now able to grasp some insight into the way Bowen crafted his compositions over a period of almost 60 years. Francis Pott has provided splendid and detailed sleeve notes covering all the recognized comparisons with not only the music, but the technical demands and harmonic language. However I would persuade listeners to put this aside, at least for the initial hearing, and listen to these works with an innocent ear. There is much fine music and piano writing that really needs no support from external agents and should be taken on its own merits. Bowen was very definitely a composer–pianist, but he did not confine his composing to the piano alone and wrote for large and small forces. In fact his The Lament of Tasso, a symphonic tone-poem, was chosen by Henry Wood for inclusion in a Queen's Hall Promenade concert as early as 1903.

However, it is the piano music we are concerned with here and in particular the six highly inventive sonatas. The majority of the music is of a virtuoso standard which reflects Bowen's natural facility at the keyboard. He found playing the piano naturally technically easy and had no fear of the demands of such composers as Rachmaninoff and Chopin; he also championed the huge sonata of Benjamin Dale (which is dedicated to Bowen). However, he did not use his technical prowess to merely dazzle; technique was used purely to enhance whatever work he was involved with and, in this way, he certainly resembled Rachmaninoff. The writing in these works encompasses almost every pianistic possibility – the filigree inner voices, rhythmic devices (the beginning of the fifth sonata), toccata-like episodes and simple but haunting melodic writing. There is much to explore but space here prevents a detailed examination. However, Mr Pott has again supplied a thorough and useful insight into the constructional details of each work.

There can be no doubt that Danny Driver has the requisite technical ability to present these sonatas and, more than that, he gives us a carefully controlled and expressive interpretation of each work – finding the nuances of colour and harmony and using them to illuminate the music. His dedication to these sonatas is highly commendable and will, I'm sure, assist in the much needed reinstatement of Bowen as a composer to be again taken seriously. The recording quality is excellent, as one has come to expect from Hyperion and gives the performances great depth and clarity.

Although there are undoubtedly flavours of Rachmaninoff, Chopin and other foreign composers, it is important to remember that Bowen was also a champion of English music and would devote whole concerts to native works. A 1922 recital included works by Felix Swinstead, Paul Corder, Arnold Bax and John Ireland, as well as other contemporaries. Perhaps, if it is necessary to find influences, we should also consider the huge amount of diversity there was in the native music being written at the beginning of the twentieth century, particularly piano music. Hopefully, these recordings will provide encouragement for further exploration and a well-overdue reassessment of much neglected, but worthy, music.