Recordings

With Clíodna Shanahan (piano)

Born in Halifax in 1883, George Dyson studied with Charles Villiers Stanford and Hubert Parry before becoming one of the most prominent British composers and distinguished teachers of his generation. He is remembered for his choral music, but he wrote for the piano across his whole working life, and heard in sequence those pieces trace his development more clearly than anything else he left. This two-disc set is the first complete survey of it, and includes five premiere recordings: the Untitled Piano Piece written when Dyson was seven, the exam-board commission Twelve Easy Pieces, and the character pieces of The Open Window and Six Lyrics. Alongside them are the Debussy-accented Primrose Mount, the dazzling set of fugues Bach's Birthday, and the ‘War Epigrams' drawn from Dyson's experience on the Western Front before he was invalided home. Clíodna Shanahan joins Simon Callaghan for the first recording of the two-piano version of the Concerto Leggiero, a mature work originally written for piano and string orchestra and, in this form, almost classical in its economy. Dyson's biographer Paul Spicer provides the booklet notes.

Gramophone Critic's Choice, 2020