For Dutton Epoch we record three premieres for CD - a coup for the Fibonaccis. Three pieces by Elgar for piano trio, an early piano quartet by Frank Bridge and the Adela Maddison Quintet for piano and strings that we played at the Wigmore Hall last year. Bridge and Elgar with guest leader Benjamin Nabarro, Maddison with guest violist Louise Williams.
Geoff Brown wrote in The Times: 'The excellent Fibonacci Sequence promised us an "Adela Maddison rarity", though all her works are rarities.....The Fibs' major retrieval from the dust was Maddison's 1916 Piano Quintet, big, awkward and riveting.........the quintet, modern by the lights of its time, proved the real adventure. The harmonic orientation kept changing. Sections seemed to be stuck together not with logic but with a rubber band. From second to second you rarely know where this music was heading. Had Maddison's music been crabbed and confined, the result could have sent us crazy. But a generous heart and lyric gift always shone through, and the performers basked in the surprises.
Given its premiere in 1920, then forgotten, this music fully deserves to live again. A recording, please.'
Players
Jack Liebeck
violin
violin
violin
viola
Yuko Inoue
viola
Kathron Sturrock
piano
Benjamin Hughes
cello