Bantock Rediscovered

Description

Somm Recordings is proud to announce a landmark recording for lovers of British music featuring 23 first recordings of piano pieces by Sir Granville Bantock, one of the most influential British composers of his age. Performed by Maria Marchant, 'Bantock Rediscovered' is being issued to celebrate the 150th anniversary of Bantock's birth in 1868. Composed between 1894 and 1938, these immensely varied, beautifully crafted works – never before heard on disc – illustrate fascinating aspects of Bantock's artistry and music. The carefully chosen, exquisitely played programme reveals the breadth, delicacy and deliberateness of what Robert Matthew-Walker describes in his booklet notes as Bantock’s 'always clever structuring and drily eloquent style'. Among the gems to be discovered here are Memories of Sapphire, three beautiful lyrical tone poems recalling a visit to North Carolina and dedicated to the composer's mother; the richly impressionistic Barcarolle showing Bantock's piano writing at its finest; the late, lively Parade March and the striking piano transcription of the symphonic overture Saul, with its early hints of the orientalism that would later prove so significant to Bantock's music. Demonstrating Bantock's deft ability to borrow from traditional music, the Two Scottish Pieces offer up a vivacious quickstep and reel.