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British Music Society

This double CD containing the complete piano music to date by the Scottish composer John McLeod is hugely generous. The second of the two CDs contains all five of McLeod’s Piano Sonatas, composed over a period of thirty-five years from Piano Sonata No.1 (1978) to No.5 (2013). The original score of Sonata No.2 was lost and the piece reconstructed in 2017 using music from an early Harpsichord Sonatina, so this in one sense is the latest of the Sonatas.

The First Sonata is “loosely based” on Liszt’s famous b minor Sonata. McLeod’s music has a similar demonic power, although the harmonic language is very much 20th Century. A fascinating development in expressiveness and clarity takes place across the years but the stylistic power of McLeod’s music remains firmly grounded. The Sonatas are a series of musical landscapes reflecting something like the wildness of our magnificent remote Scottish landscapes, especially in the Highlands. We are very much in safe hands (quite literally) in our journey across these landscapes when our guide is the marvellous Murray McLachlan. He leads us through the most complex and exciting percussive passages with a ferocious virtuosity and startling precision, then through quieter music bringing out all the varied depths of feeling that McLeod has imprinted in these full colour compositions. The final work on this second CD is McLachlan’s own transcription for piano of Fantasy on Themes from Britten’s Opera “Gloriana” composed originally for guitar. Watch out for the surprising percussive interludes on the body of the piano.

The first CD is more varied. It includes the very early Four Impromptus (1960) along with Twelve Preludes (1984), which are amazingly varied and colourful. In addition to these largely ‘abstract’ compositions, the Three Protest Pieces (1992) are expressions of ecological concern while Three Interludes from “Another Time, Another Place” (1997) are piano versions of McLeod’s incidental music for a television drama.

Best of all, for me, are the twelve very colourful pieces inspired by pictures created by fellow composer Hafliði Hallgrimsson – Haflidi’s Pictures (2008). For these, McLeod has written and narrates short humorous poems with a delightful surrealist touch – as they say in Scotland, ‘pure dead brilliant’.

The second item on the first CD are the Hebridean Dances (1981) played here by McLachlan’s young and talented daughter, Rose – an absolute delight.