Search - Rawsthorne, Menges, Sargent :: Alan Rawsthorne: Concerto for Piano No.2/ Practical Cats (featuring Robert Donat)

A great introduction

08/24/2000

(5 out of 5 stars)

"A few decades ago, Rawsthorne's piano concertos were more widely known than today. Fortunately, EMI gives us the possibility to rediscover these charming works at a fair price and with historical interpreters : Lympany and Menges in the first one are close to excellent, Denis Matthews is spectacular in the second. Add to this 'Practical Cats', that may well be one of the most humorous works I've ever heard, superbly interpreted by Rawsthorne himself and Robert Donat as speaker. Most of the recordings here date back to the 1950s except for 'Bagatelles' (1941, but very good recording). For those who don't know Rawsthorne's music yet, this is an excellent introduction."

30 Years Before Lloyd-Webber...There Was Rawsthorne

J. A. Retzer | Phoenix, AZ | 06/09/2007

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Nearly 30 years before Andrew Lloydd Webber changed the face of feline poetry with his take on CATS, equally British composer Alan Rawsthorne took a handful of the same TS Eliot poems and fashioned PRACTICAL CATS, which he titled "an entertainment for orchestra and narrator."



This is a delightful, fresh and absoultely worthwhile alternative to the familiar interpretation. Rawsthorne's setting of Old Deuteronomy alone is heartbreaking in it's elegaic approach.



The other Rawsthorne orchestral and piano pieces are equally fine, but his setting of Eliot's poems are alone worth buying this excellently remastered CD."