Search - Cyril Scott, Leslie De'Ath :: Cyril Scott: Complete Piano Music, Vol. 1

Scott at his most delectable

Dr. Richard M. Price | London, UK | 07/07/2005

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Dutton are doing marvels for the dissemination of the music of Cyril Scott. Three CDs of chamber music have appeared, and we are now in the middle of a complete recording by the Canadian pianist Leslie De'Ath of the piano music, which extends to 215 pieces, mostly short, but a few of substantial length. Most of them were written for amateurs (between 1900 and 1925) and are unpretentious; Scott came to think in later life that the reputation they won him as a composer of pleasing trifles had made it harder for his more ambitious works to be taken seriously. We now, in 2008, have recent recordings of many of these major works, and we must judge Scott by his First Piano Concerto or Second String Quartet rather than by `Lotus Land' or `Danse Negre'. Yet the short pieces still deserve a hearing. They were not only hugely popular throughout Europe and North America in the early decades of the last century, but introduced many musicians, both professionals and amateurs, to the new non-functional harmony of Debussy and Ravel. But above all, they remain delightful listening, expressive as they are of Scott's artistic personality - exotic, buoyant, sensuous on the surface, yet with a philosophic detachment within.

A hugely welcome bonus in this generous issue (you get two CDs for the price of one) is the inclusion of 20 minutes of Scott's own recording of some his shorter pieces, made in the 1930s. His touch is infinitely varied, and there are miracles of subtle peddling; above all, his constant but never exaggerated rubato gives buoyancy to every page. He had the gift of making the slightest of his pieces sound electrifying. People who heard Scott play said that no one could approach him in his interpretation of his own works.

How do the performances of Leslie De'Ath fare in comparison? The answer is, most of the time, surprisingly well. I cannot imagine a more vital or fresh performance of `Vistas' or of the Pastoral Suite (two of the best of Scott's sets of pieces). Particularly impressive is De'Ath's performance of the one major work in this set, the substantial Deuxieme Suite of 1910, which represents (together with the First Piano Concerto and the Poems for piano) the peak of Scott's early maturity. Written for virtuosi, the writing is bolder and more varied than in the vast majority of Scott's shorter pieces, and the pace of harmonic change is better judged than in the amazing but rather too hectic First Sonata, written a year or two previously.

With the recordings of Scott's major orchestral works by Chandos and of the chamber music by Dutton there is no danger nowadays of Scott's shorter pieces queering the pitch for his major works. They still have much pleasure to give, and this issue could not be bettered as an introduction to them.

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