Bainton lived until 1956 and was a leading figure in British musical life for the first half of the 20th century. This is my first acquaintance with his lovely music, and it’s probably because he emigrated to Australia in 1934, which removed him from the UK musical mainstream. Brainton studied composition with Stanford and later taught piano and composition himself in the northeast of England. He was a very modest and self-effacing artists who was content to put his music aside for a future time. Perhaps now is the time – this is lovely stuff, redolent of Delius to my ears. Conductor Daniel attended the same school in Coventry which Bainton had attended earlier.
Bainton’s piano concerto was completed in l920 and won a Carnegie Prize. Since he was a fine pianist, Bainton performed the 32-minute work frequently during the 1920s. Its Scherzo second movement sounds like part of an English version of Till Eulenspiegel’s Merry Pranks. In the finale the harmonies constantly shift between the piano and the orchestra. The Golden River is a suite based on a short story by John Ruskin, and is the first time the work has been heard in over 90 years. The Three Pieces for Orchestra came from incidental music the composer had written for the production of two Shakespearean plays at a German prison camp where he was incarcerated for four years after he attempted to travel to the Bayreuth Festival in 1914. The 1924 work for string orchestra is a delight with its delicate first two movements and its vivid Bacchanal dance in 5/4 time. Let’s hope this disc succeeds in making Bainton a less obscure composer – his memory deserves it.
– John Sunier
