Description
Clarinettist Peter Cigleris is adding another gem to the SOMM catalogue less than a year after the release of his Clarinet Concertos (with symphonic band) [SOMMCD 0705, October 2025], which featured two world-premiere recordings and was roundly praised by Gramophone's Guy Rickards: "Cigleris is possessed of a beautifully mellifluous tone... A hugely varied, enjoyable programme, then, superbly played and recorded; enjoy!" For this release, Cigleris again offers concertante works, and again two first-ever recordings, but here the tutti forces, rather than winds, are the luminous strings of the London Mozart Players led by John Andrews. The trio of composers is British, and along with Gerald Finzi, whose Clarinet Concerto is justly beloved, come two others keenly deserving of the light this recording sheds on their music. The three works, all composed in the late 40s, are bound together by the common thread of the eminent English clarinettist Frederick Thurston (1901-1953). Denis ApIvor (1916-2004), born in Ireland to Welsh parents, was a chorister at Christ Church, Oxford and then at Hereford Cathedral, where he also studied clarinet, piano and organ. As a teenaged medical student he heard the English premiere of Wozzeck under Sir Adrian Boult and his musical inspiration was renewed, leading to private composition lessons with Patrick Hadley and Alan Rawsthorne. While there is a later version of his Concertante for clarinet orchestrated for an ensemble featuring full strings, harp and celesta, Peter Cigleris opens this album with ApIvor's original chamber version for piano and two percussionists (one on timpani). This early work was conceived during the composer's wartime posting to India, and the premiere (with Frederick Thurston) was given in London after two years of peace, a repeat performance going out live on the BBC Third Programme on 27 January 1948. This recording, the work's first, shows an already impressive thread of musical argument and masterly writing from a 30-year old ApIvor, who would reach the peak of his success some eight years later with his score for the Royal Ballet's Lorca-inspired Blood Wedding. Many who know the name Freda Swain (1902-1985) will think of pedagogical piano solos and be surprised to learn of the Portsmouth native's catalogue of 450 or so serious works including large-scale operatic, orchestral and concertante music as well as varied chamber pieces, all regrettably neglected for too long. Presented here in its premiere recording, Swain's "Lumine naturi" Concertino for Clarinet is an expressive work in language that draws on tonality yet is highly individual and sweepingly melodic. The genre-title's Italian diminutive belies concerto-worthy length (24 mins) and thematic substance. Each movement bears an epigraph by Algernon Blackwood evoking an ultra-vivid natural scene, hence the Latin epithet: "By the Light of Nature". Though Swain never published the work, it is likely that the tutti of string orchestra anchored by a lone horn accompanies a clarinet part intended for Frederick Thurston, a frequent collaborator and the dedicatee of her Rhapsody for clarinet and piano. Thurston did play the premiere of Gerald Finzi's (1901-1956) Concerto for Clarinet and Strings at the Hereford Three Choirs Festival on 9September 1949, and the masterpiece has deservedly become the composer's most frequently heard concert work.
