Search - Leighton, Mcaslan, Fuller :: Piano Trio / Partita / Metamorphoses / Elegy

A beautifully played disc of some fine chamber music

Rodney Gavin Bullock | Winchester, Hampshire Angleterre | 12/04/2002

(5 out of 5 stars)

"The English composer, Kenneth Leighton, is still not as well known as he should be. His idiom is essentially tonal, though occasionally there are serial elements. If, like me, this word fills you with foreboding, fear not as it is difficult to hear it. After all, composers like Britten, Rawsthorne and even Walton did the same. On this disc, the music ranges from gentle pastoralism -Elegy, a really lovely piece, to the more austere Partita and Metamorphoses. The Trio lies in the middle and is a very fine piece indeed - memorable, crystalline and often beautiful.The recording is full and has great presence. The only niggle is an occasional buzzy haze around some cello notes . The notes are informative but the section on the composer reads a bit like a resume, listing academic appointments etc, with little about the man. He died too early in his late fifties.A distinguished disc."