This is a reissue from Divine Art's Diversions imprint of a disc originally released in 1998 on the Athene label. Pianist
Raymond Clarke -- associated with finger busters such as
Ronald Stevenson's Passacaglia on DSCH and Havergal Brian's orchestrally conceived piano music -- turns his attention to two Welsh composers: William Mathias and John Pickard. Mathias, one of the greatest figures in twentieth century Welsh music, needs little introduction; Pickard was once a student of Mathias and also of
Louis Andriessen. Among Pickard's works are a critically acclaimed cycle of four string quartets and the Gaia Symphony for brass, which, at the running time of about an hour, is one of the longest works ever composed for band.
Mathias was a prolific composer and by all accounts a formidable pianist, but his original works for solo piano make up nearly the smallest part of his catalog; these two sonatas account for everything Mathias produced in the medium apart from some short character pieces. They are as different as night and day; the sunny, fast-moving Sonata No. 1 (1963) brims with a cheerful, neo-Classical spirit that is dazzling and effervescent, whereas the dark and intense Sonata No. 2 (1969) is almost as grim and resolute as one of Sorabji's early creations; both sonatas run right about 15 minutes.
The music of Pickard here, at least in a sense, both picks up where Mathias left off and radically departs from him. A Starlit Dome (1995) bears some commonality with Mathias' Sonata No. 2, but is more sweeping, grandiloquently romantic, and not quite as terse. Pickard's earlier Piano Sonata (1987) has a little bit of a punk rock attitude about it; it is very punchy, angry, and dissonant, though it maintains a thoroughgoing thematic development; imagine a
Charles Ives' "Piano Sonata No. 1" written by a Welsh "angry young man." It was spurred on by Pickard's disgust at Margaret Thatcher being re-elected to a third term with a 101 majority in 1987, and it has the same feeling of intense unrest felt in Janácek's Sonata "From the Street 1.X.1905." Indeed, the then 23-year-old Pickard had some measure of clairvoyance, as riots did break out because of Thatcher's policies just three years later, the first installment in a series of events that led to her eventual resignation.
Clarke's pianism is impressive on all counts, though particularly in Mathias' Sonata No. 1, where
Clarke's staccato is crisp and even and his whirlwind speed is dynamic and invigorating. The recording is transparent, steely, and crystal clear; this disc is an excellent candidate for reissue and required listening for those interested in late twentieth century keyboard music from the British Isles. Thanks be to Divine Art for bringing it back.