Release Date: 2004

Duration: 01:04:34

Genre: Classical

Styles: Keyboard

Neither Roger Quilter nor Cyril Scott achieved the worldwide celebrity of their colleague Percy Grainger; though their names may be familiar to specialists in early twentieth century British music, little of their piano music has been heard for many decades. The taste for fin de siècle reveries changed dramatically after World War I, and Quilter's poetic parlor pieces were eclipsed in the advent of modernism. Such perfumed pleasantries as the Studies (3), the Pieces (3), and the Impressions (2) could not be taken seriously by the avant-garde, and even Quilter's Impressionism in the Country Pieces, Op. 27, seemed passé by 1923. Cyril Scott, however, employed modernist techniques in many of his works, and his mystical explorations for piano were more attuned to the growing European trend for harmonic ambiguity and atonality. Yet the Scriabin-esque flavor of Rainbow Trout and the Sonata No. 2 plainly dated his music, and Scott's reputation as the boldest of English composers dwindled over time. Pianist Clipper Erickson has performed a valuable service in reviving these forgotten pieces, and his performances are atmospheric and energetic, giving Scott and Quilter the benefit of sympathetic interpretations after too many years of neglect. Direct-to-Tape's recording is decent, though it sounds closer to a live recital tape than a studio production.