It may come as a surprise to some that there is enough English music composed for the combination of flute, oboe, and piano to fill an entire CD, but, as this collection demonstrates, there is and a lot of it is quite good. And while some of the composers here will be unfamiliar except to fans of English music --
Eugene Goossens,
Richard Rodney Bennett,
Malcolm Arnold -- and others will be unknown except the hardest of hardcore fans of English music -- Madeleine Dring, Edward McGuire, Rhian Samuel -- the music here is likely to appeal to all but the hardest hearted Anglophobes. As superbly played by flutist
Nancy Ruffer, oboist John Anderson, and pianist
Helen Crayford, some of the music is charming --
Goossens' ebullient Pastorale et Arlequinade, Dring's bouncy Trio, and
Arnold's tongue-in-cheek Suite Bourgeoisie -- some is more challenging -- McGuire's Three Dialogues and Samuel's Shadow Dance -- and some of it is somewhere in-between --
Bennett's sly Sounds and Sweet Aires and Thea Musgrave's insouciant Impromptu. But with the effervescent
Ruffer, the penetrating Anderson, and the accommodating
Crayford performing, all of it is persuasively played. The performances were clearly yet warmly recorded in 2005 and 2006 by Dutton.