William Alwyn: Piano Music, Vol. 2

William Alwyn (Composer), Ashley Wass (Performer) | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Performer: Ashley Wass
• Composer: William Alwyn
• Audio CD (September 30, 2008)
• SPARS Code: DDD
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Naxos
• ASIN: B001DELX8U
• In-Print Editions: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #308,527 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars ALWYN BEAUTIES, December 27, 2008

By 

Brian Murphy (Rochester Hills, MI) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: William Alwyn: Piano Music, Vol. 2 (Audio CD)

Both of ALwyn's CDs of piano music reveal a little-known but GREATLY beautiful music by a composer whose music ought to be much more widely known. Listen!

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Alwyn piano music - volume two..., January 19, 2011

By 

jsa (San Diego, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

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This review is from: William Alwyn: Piano Music, Vol. 2 (Audio CD)

This is the second of two Ashley Wass discs surveying the piano music of William Alwyn. If you liked the first volume, William Alwyn: Piano Music 1, and I did, then this follow-up would be well worth acquiring. The centerpiece here is Alwyn's set of twelve preludes which date from 1958, the same period which produced the superb Fantasy Waltzes (1956) included in the first Alwyn-Wass disc. The composer who comes to mind when listening to Alwyn's preludes is Debussy, especially his etudes; however, unlike Debussy's preludes or etudes which often seem to answer each other, there's no thematic link between Alwyn's individual pieces, which are essentially a random collection under one heading even though they were apparently composed with the idea that they be performed together. Some of the preludes are reflective in nature, others are more energetic; a couple (nos. four and six) are technical exercises. You can detect hints of Scriabin, Liszt and Debussy in some of the note patterns, however, as I've pointed out in my review of the first volume of Alwyn's piano music, none of this seems at all derivative. While some of the preludes are inconclusive, as if Alwyn couldn't quite make up his mind about where to go with the music, on the whole they make for rewarding listening.

The pleasant surprise of this set is "Contes Barbares" or Homage to Paul Gaugin, a group of seven pieces that Alwyn began writing after seeing the Gaugin painting "Manao Tupapau" at a London gallery (and which adorns the cover of this release), and completed after a South Pacific voyage in 1933. These pieces are highly impressionistic in nature, lush if not lavish in places, clearly reflecting Alwyn's preoccupation with the expression of beauty. The same can be said for the shorter pieces in this collection, including Two Irish Pieces (1926), Hunter's Moon (1932), Water Lilies and Cinderalla (both 1952), which are pastoral and/or pleasantly imagistic. That all of these works are appearing on record for the first time is by no means an affirmation of Alwyn's decision to disown everything he'd written prior to 1939 - in fact, quite the contrary. His dissatisfaction with his early compositional style is hard to fathom; and while it led him to embrace, to some extent, neo-classicism, his body of pre-1939 chamber and solo works hold up very well.

This disc closes, fittingly enough, with "Movements," Alwyn's last major work for piano (1961). This three movement suite is unsettled in places, but also hauntingly evocative. Some of the writing in the first movement verges on the atonal; and none of it sounds like the neo-classicsm that Alwyn embraced after 1939. It's a strong work, skillfully written, and while perhaps not as memorable as some of the more impressionistic pieces in this collection, still a fine conclusion to an outstanding anthology.