Lyrita: SRCD320

"My first impression of William Busch the composer was of sinewy toughness, the piece I heard at Morley College in wartime was his NicholasVariations for piano (1942) named after his infant son - his likeness was not mirrored in the craggy, spare music.The next music I heard of Busch’s counterbalanced this first impression - songs that were gentle and tender although the music was still sinewy and avoiding rich harmony, settings with the voice and words predominant, with easy intervals for the listener to grasp the sense of the music ..." John Amis

“The Cello Concerto… proves a beautifully wrought, enviably terse yet warm-hearted score, its modal lyricism and appealingly ruminative manner strikingly prescient of Finzi's gorgeous Cello Concerto… the Piano Concerto wears a knottier, more harmonically adventurous demeanour... its meaty opening Allegro and finale (a resourceful theme and 32 variations) framing a bittersweet central Allegretto tranquillo. As one might expect from the calibre of the artists involved, the performances are all one could wish for.” Gramophone Magazine, February 2008