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International Record Review

As a showcase for modern British music for flute and piano, this recital could hardly be bettered. The considerable stylistic diversity of the pieces recorded here by Susan Milan and Andrew Ball probably make it unlikely that they’ll appeal to all listeners in equal measure, but one can hardly imagine any being better performed.

The first two works, Richard Rodney Bennett’s Winter Music ( a three-movement suite written in 1960) and Robert Saxton’s Krystallen (1973) are examples of the modernism current in those days – neither strikes me as particularly memorable, although their sheer elegance and clarity still stimulate admiration. The three movements of Cecilia McDowell’s The Moon Dances (2003) offer quite a contrast: a catchy dance, a rather more Expressionist atmospheric night-piece and a second, spikier dance. Arthur Butterworth’s Aubade (1973) is a lyrical outpouring of melody with a more tightly argued central section. Richard Rodney Bennett’s Summer Music (also a three-movement suite) is a good deal warmer than his Winter Music and not only because of the title; in the intervening 23 years the composer has more than reconciled himself to tonality – the first movement is a gently jazzy pastorale, the second a bluesy love-song and the third a jolly dance.

Dave Heath’s Out of the Cool (1986), which you’ll also find on EMI as a saxophone concerto played by John Harle, is another jazz-inspired piece, unraveling in six generally relaxed and good-tempered minutes. I was looking forward to hearing the Flute Sonata by Brian Lock, born in 1967 and thus the youngest composer on the disc, since as far as I recall I hadn’t come across his music before; at not quite 17 minutes it’s also the most substantial piece in this recital. It turns out to be busy and effective but a shade anonymous. The first movement has a Poulenc-like brightness, offset with a knockabout rhythmic brusqueness; the inflected notes in the melismatic flute part of the second movement point to the Middle and Far East, with the abstracted flute ignoring occasionally mutinous rumblings in the piano; and the Furioso finale rattles forward in abrupt and brittle phrases.

The Saxton, Butterworth and Lock works receive the first recordings here; the first and third of them are dedicated to Milan, who with her duo partner dispatches them in sparkling performances. Excellent recorded sound, and there are informative notes from our very own Richard Whitehouse and the composers themselves.