International Piano

Bernard Hughes (born 1974), currently composer-in-residence at St Paul’s Girls School in London (where Holst famously taught), is probably best known for his music for children – at least in my house, thanks to his hugely enjoyable setting of David McKee’s story Not Now, Bernard (Orchid Classics ORC 100115). The present collection of his complete piano music shows that music for or inspired by children runs deeper through his output, whether in the pair of miniatures Song of the Walnut and Song of the Button, titled from the pet names he and his wife gave their then as yet unborn children (Cradle Song, perhaps, speaks for itself), or the Miniatures and Studies, both intended for young players to get their hands on a wide diversity of musical styles as they strive for Grade 5.

The Bagatelles and Miniatures were written over a wide period, the earliest pieces dating back to the 1990s; the Bagatelles took their final form in 2004, the Miniatures only in 2020. Unsurprisingly, both sets feel like fairly arbitrary collections rather than cycles, whereas the Partita contrafacta (2022) is more coherent, a set of seven reworkings of Baroque composers – including Bach, Handel and Purcell, framed by the Couperins – that collectively recast Baroque sources in wholly 21st-century postmodernist terms. Written specially for this recording and long-term collaborator Matthew Mills, this is the high point of the programme.

While broadly tonal in design, Hughes’s music is not averse to more aggressive or hostile styles: listen to the vibrant third and fifth Bagatelles, for example. The composer’s chameleon-like stylistic diversity can make for an impression of anonymity, even in the larger- scale Strettos and Striations (2021), Hughes’s biggest piano work at some 10 minutes.

Matthew Mills performs throughout with virtuosity and undeniable understanding of the idiom, and Divine Art’s sound is first-rate.

—Guy Rickards