Duncan Honeybourne - De Profundis Clamavi (2021)

De Profundis Clamavi is a two-disc recording of English piano music, contrasting three dramatic sonatas with a vibrant selection of shorter pieces ranging from the sublimely poetic to the darkly rhapsodic. Frank Bridge began writing his grandiose Piano Sonata exactly a century ago, in the wake of the First World War, and it is suffused with a mood of desolation and torment. Contemporary composer Richard Pantcheff's own sonata was completed in 2017 and evokes a similarly intense emotional landscape; hence the quote from Psalm 130 that gives the album it's name ("Out of the deep have I called unto Thee, O Lord"). Also here making it's first recorded appearance, the 1938 Sonata by Christopher Edmunds bubbles over with vivid pianistic colours, melting tenderness and an irresistible romantic warmth. The three sonatas are complemented and contextualised by Parry's delicious Shulbrede Tunes - affectionate portraits of the composer's family and their Sussex home - plus the first recordings of two stunning romantic showpieces by a composer better known for his vocal writing, Cecil Armstrong Gibbs. Three unpublished - and previously unrecorded - gems by Edgar Bainton add further distinctiveness to the disc. Many links of friendship and association underpin the selection of composers represented on the discs, and a special pedagogical thread connects the sonatas of Bridge and Pantcheff. The young Richard Pantcheff was mentored by Benjamin Britten, Bridge's most celebrated student, and Britten is represented by his captivating Night Piece, composed for the first Leeds International Piano Competition. Duncan Honeybourne studied the work with the competition's founder, Dame Fanny Waterman, who commissioned it in 1963 and died recently at the age of one hundred. Honeybourne says: "It was a joy to devise this programme, featuring some masterpieces I've known for a long time and love dearly, alongside the stunning Pantcheff Sonata, which I premiered in 2019 in London at an English Music Festival concert. It is a special privilege to present the recorded premieres of some terrific pieces that have languished in manuscript for many decades, and I hope listeners will get as much pleasure from hearing these wonderful gems as I have from all the excavation and preparation. It's a great honour to bring them all together on this release."

Tracklist
CD1
01. Piano Sonata in B Minor: I. Allegro, fieramente e rubato
02. Piano Sonata in B Minor: II. Lento e mesto
03. Piano Sonata in B Minor: III. Allegro scherzoso (Poco rubato)
04. Variations & Fugue in B Minor, Op. 1
05. An Essex Rhapsody, Op. 36
06. Ballade for Piano in D-Flat Major
07. Nocturnus, Op. 90: No. 5, Wind oor die Branders
08. Shulbrede Tunes: No. 1, Shulbrede
09. Shulbrede Tunes: No. 2, Elizabeth
10. Shulbrede Tunes: No. 3, Dolly No. 1
11. Shulbrede Tunes: No. 4, Bogies and Sprites That Gambol by Nights
12. Shulbrede Tunes: No. 5, Matthew
13. Shulbrede Tunes: No. 6, Prior's Chamber by Firelight
14. Shulbrede Tunes: No. 7, Children's Pranks
15. Shulbrede Tunes: No. 8, Dolly No. 2
16. Shulbrede Tunes: No. 9, In the Garden with the Dew on the Grass
17. Shulbrede Tunes: No. 10, Father Playmate

CD2
01. Willows
02. The Making of the Nightingale
03. Piano Sonata, H. 160: I. Lento ma non troppo - Andante ben moderato - Allegro energico
04. Piano Sonata, H. 160: II. Andante ben moderato
05. Piano Sonata, H. 160: III. Lento - Allegro non troppo
06. Night-Piece for Piano
07. Piano Sonata, Op. 99: I. Inquieto
08. Piano Sonata, Op. 99: II. Elegia. Lento e tenebroso
09. Piano Sonata, Op. 99: III. Alla vortice