Review by Christopher Webber: Private Passions
Piano music by Arnold Bax and Harriet Cohen. Strangely, the only pieces here to be published in their own time were Cohen’s four, brief Russian Impressions, and I wish I could report that they were better than pleasant makeweights. I’m glad to have heard this first recording, but nothing in these derivative, oddly directionless miniatures made me eager to revisit Cohen the composer. As Germaine Greer puts it, mediocrity is mediocrity, even where its creator is female. Let’s be grateful that Harriet Cohen’s magnetic artistry and personality gave birth to Bax’s remarkable musical world, and that Mark Bebbington has brought some of their obscurer riches into the light of day. This is truly a disc to treasure.
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