Martin Jones’ complete Lutyens piano music – volume 2 released
Resonus Classics has released the second volume of Martin Jones’s landmark survey of the piano works of Elisabeth Lutyens. Reviewed in Gramophone: “The music of Elisabeth Lutyens never had it easy, being too radical for a mainstream audience but not experimental enough for the modern-music clique, and new releases are comparatively rare – making this second volume in Martin Jones’s survey of her piano output the more welcome. As on the previous volume (11/21), to which Guy Rickards gave a cordial welcome, Jones renders this music with assurance and keen insight. Warmly recommended…”
The disc features further world premiere recordings including pieces from her early maturity such as The Check Book, twelve miniatures for children; Piano e Forte that recalls Lutyens’s lifelong enthusiasm for the music of Debussy and explores the possibilities of the instrument in a way she had never attempted before; and Maybe–Encore Op. 159, her final work for piano composed in 1982. Also included is an early unpublished sonata movement (Allegro molto) possibly written as early as the 1930s.