Piano Music by Arnold Bax on Usk Recordings  Hot on the heels of Mark Bebbington’s ‘Private Passions’ comes another splendid CD that also contains works that have never been recorded before. Natalia Williams-Wandoch has been playing the pieces included here at recitals over the past few years, and it was good news when we learned that she had decided to record them for the Usk label in January 2018. With a ...

Piano music by Arnold Bax and Harriet Cohen. Private Passions is well named, not only because of the amorous bond between the album’s two composers, but also because so much of Bax’s music was inspired by his lover, muse, champion and later Guardian of the Flame, the pianist Harriet Cohen. As Graham Parlett’s illuminating notes reveal, much of the programme reflects this special relationship; and from the arresting, combative ...

John Pickard is among today’s most accomplished and performed 21st Century British composers. He was born in Burnley, Lancashire, England in 1963 and at an early age decided to become a composer. He studied music and composition at the University of Wales, with the Welsh composer William Mathias, and later in The Netherlands with Louis Andriessen and in 1989 was awarded a PhD in composition from the University of Wales. Since 1993 ...

With this disc, Lionel Handy completes his survey of Bax’s cello music including the much-maligned Cello Concerto that appeared on an earlier Lyrita disc. Here he performs Bax’s Cello Sonata from 1923 and couples it with the cello sonata of his close friend John Ireland from the same year. The third item on this disc is Handy’s brilliant transcription for cello of Delius’ Third Violin Sonata. Admirers of British chamber ...

Dr Clifford Wilfred Gillam, the founder of the original Arnold Bax Society, died peacefully on 2 June, seven weeks short of his 90th birthday. I first came across his name when I read an article by him in the Bax Society Bulletin of October 1968, p. 40. It was called ‘A Lost Work by Bax’ and began: ‘In 1953, when I was doing some research on Keats, I came across ...