The Times
A composer in need of promotion features in Pictures of Light, a centenary tribute to William Baines, a Yorkshireman who died of tuberculosis in 1922, aged 23. He left behind a large body of piano music whose titles (Paradise Gardens, Water-Pearls) might suggest the palely loitering school of British piano writing. But that would be misleading. Duncan Honeybourne’s gripping performances reveal a composer of genuine fibre, who absorbed Scriabin, Debussy and earlier influences, but still became his own self. Layered textures move in conflict; key tonalities become unstable; climaxes are both ecstatic and unsettling. Meanwhile, the Yorkshire landscape and North Sea are never far away.
Five songs follow, sung certainly with love by the veteran tenor Gordon Pullin. Then comes Robin Walker’s piano piece At the Grave of William Baines, imbued with the same regard for nature and belief in inspiration’s flow that makes Baines’s own music so special. Small-scale it may be, but this is still a precious album.
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