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GRAMOPHONE (09/2016)
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Chandos 
CHAN0814



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Reviewer: Lindsay Kemp

Eighteenth-century harpsichord music by British composers seldom gets much attention compared to German and French ones and Scarlatti, so although several of the composers here have occasionally been the subjects of dedicated recordings, it is nice to have a selection sampling across the range. Moreover, while most of them are relatively familiar names for one reason or another, none is really remembered primarily for his keyboard music, so there really are some discoveries to be made.

Sophie Yates (who has shown a liking for such programmes as this) has compiled a more or less chronologically arranged showcase, revealing along the way a move from French influence in Blow, Clarke and Croft to Italianate in Greene, Jones and Arne (Scarlatti was especially popular in England around mid-century) and finally to the pre-Classical style of JC Bach. Blow’s Chacone in Faut and Morlake Ground both bowl along with bubbling imagination, and there is a cheerful English robustness to Clarke’s suite too, compared to which Croft’s edges towards a more Handelian expansiveness. The atmosphere changes in a suite by Greene, tuneful and bustling with broken-chord patterns and bass octaves, characteristics which are then offered with more ‘orchestral’ weight and impact in a suite by Richard Jones, a barely known composer of much interest (as Mitzi Meyerson’s excellent Glossa recordings have shown). Arne’s sonata shows his usual melodic charm and elegance, before JC Bach changes everything with his mix of Mozartian grace and Sturm und Drang drive.

 As usual, Yates plays with precision and a winning sense of enjoyment and bounce. She makes less use of spread chords and rhythmic dislocation than many other harpsichordists do these days, which can affect the sheer beauty of tone emerging from her two not hugely dissimilar Frenchstyle harpsichords, while providing crisp gains in clarity and presence, and perhaps too in the music’s forthright English feel.

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