ARNOLD COOKE (1906-2005) : Piano Trio (1941–44), Piano Quartet (1948-49), Piano Quintet (1969). Sarah Ewins (violin), Susie Mészáros (viola), Heather Bills (cello) and Harvey Davies (piano)

Description: Cooke is one of those composers of music of unimpeachable quality and - potentially - wide appeal who fell into almost total neglect for no better reason than that he was perfectly comfortable writing in a style that he summed up when he said: "I was never ‘in the race for modernity’. It has never seemed to me to be worthwhile to write in the latest style merely in order to be modern or in the fashion." He studied with Hindemith, which undoubtedly honed his impeccable craftsmanship and nurtured his gifts as a born contrapuntist, but which also burdened him with the lazy descriptor "the English Hindemith", which ignores the full-blooded romanticism of his natural idiom, downplays the essential Englishness of his often modally tinged language, and neglects his abilities as a lyrical melodist. These three splendid and substantial (all in the 25-minute range) works for the most popular chamber ensembles with piano epitomise his style and amply demonstrate why he is a composer well worth getting to know. The Trio was a wartime work (1941-44), which probably explains its prevailing mood of seriousness, especially that of the slow movement, which has a strained, pained quality reminiscent of Shostakovich to its long, lyrical melodic lines. The Hindemith influence is not much in evidence; here and in the Piano Quartet of a few years later, that of Brahms is much more audible. The Quartet is in four movements, beginning with a strong sonata-form movement followed by an effervescent scherzo, a melodically lovely, melancholy slow movement, and a sprightly rondo-finale. Cooke’s idiom remained notably consistent throughout his career, but it is possible to recognise a tendency toward a tougher, more sinewy, less lushly romantic language in the 1969 Quintet. The relationship with Shostakovich is a good deal more evident than in the earlier works - Cooke’s scherzo has some definite points of contact with that of the Russian's own Quintet - and there are some similarities to Hoddinott, who commissioned the work and who was closely involved in this stage of Cooke’s career. The eloquent slow movement is, again, the heart of the work, with its mood of sombre, elegiac reflection. The quintet as a whole is a powerful, emotionally compelling work, and even the energetic finale, contrapuntally ingenious and exuberantly virtuosic (and like all Cooke’s chamber music giving equally prominent rôles to all the instruments) has a hectic, unsettled quality to its ostensible gaiety. Sarah Ewins (violin), Susie Mészáros (viola), Heather Bills (cello) and Harvey Davies (piano)