Davies, Maxwell: Five Piano Pieces, Op. 2

Richard Casey performs virtually the entire solo piano repertoire of Peter Maxwell Davies, ranging over six decades, several of the compositions in world premiere recordings. The composer himself has described Richard Casey’s performances of this music as “magnificent”. The virtuosic Piano Sonata of 1981 is easily the most significant work, lasting some 30 minutes, while many of the short pieces were written for children.

The collection includes premiere recordings of pieces such as the early “Parade”, written as a 15-year-old, “Sub Tuam Protectioinem”, and “Ut Re Mi”, and many of the works are heard in definitive versions endorsed by Peter Maxwell Davies. The 2-CD set ends with a substantial discussion between Richard Casey and the composer.

One of the foremost composers of our time, Master of the Queen’s Music Sir Peter Maxwell Davies has made a significant contribution to musical history through his wide-ranging and prolific output. He lives in the Orkney Islands off the north coast of Scotland, where he writes most of his music. In a worklist that spans more than five decades, he has written across a broad range of styles, yet his music always communicates directly and powerfully, whether in his profoundly argued symphonic works, his music-theatre or witty light orchestral works.

John Ogdon was born on 27th January, 1937 in Mansfield Woodhouse in Nottinghamshire and died on 1st August, 1989 in London. His first serious study of the piano was at the Royal Manchester College of Music where his contemporaries were Alexander Goehr, Harrison Birtwistle and Peter Maxwell Davies; he also studied composition with Richard Hall, all of whom have music recorded in this collection. His prowess was noticed when he replaced an indisposed soloist in Brahms’s Second Piano Concerto in Liverpool and played almost at sight. At the age of 21 he made his London debut at the Proms in 1958 with Busoni’s Concerto (which he recorded in 1967).

In 1961 he was awarded the Liszt Prize in Budapest and the following year shared the coveted first prize at the Moscow Tchaikovsky competition with Vladimir Ashkenazy; this achievement launched his international career. His recordings from this time not only attest to his remarkable virtuosity and intense musicianship but also his determination to explore both rarer and modern repertoire and give them the performances that show them to their best advantage.

This collection therefore contains not merely the classics – concertos by Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninov, Schumann and Grieg and solos by Liszt and Chopin – but rarer concertos by Mendelssohn, Glazunov Bartók as well as the aforementioned Busoni. The major contribution to the catalogue of recorded music must be the solo piano works by the 20th century composers: Sir Michael Tippett, Alan Rawsthorne, Alun Hoddinott, Christopher Headington, David Blake, Robert Sherlaw Johnson and his teacher and colleagues from his days in Mancheser: Richard Hall and the previously mentioned Goehr, Birtwistle and Maxwell Davies as well as works by himself. One further work requires especial mention: Ronald Stevenson’s Passacaglia on DSCH, the composer’s tribute to Dmitri Shostakovich.

At over 85 minutes duration it has to be split across two CDs and the work together with Ogdon’s support of it yielded the highest praise.