This winter I performed a recital of Canadian piano music in Kingston, Toronto, and Windsor. The programme opened with Jens Hanson’s Conflux. In early March I adjudicated senior piano classes for the Brandon Music Festival and in the spring, for the Académie Ste Cécile. In May came the launch of my second CD, featuring music of Frank Bridge, Arnold Bax, and Humphrey Searle entitled Music by Bax, Bridge and Searle .
Cover Painting: JMW Turner: The Burning of the Houses of Lords and Commons, 16th October, 1834 (1834-1835). CD recorded May 24 and 25, 2008 at Von Kuster Hall, Lonfon, Ontario; August 30, 2009, Walter Hall, Toronto. Produced by Keith Horner. Engineered by David Burnham. Piano: Steinway D.
(excerpt from "Brave new world" article by Ted Shaw, Windsor Star, Saturday, April 16, 2011)
Getting radio play isn't even on the radar for Philip Adamson, a University of Windsor music professor who will release his second CD of solo piano music on May 2.
He knows Music by Bax, Bridge and Searle (centaurrecords.com), released by the U.S.-based label Centaur, will go largely unnoticed in the marketplace. It's a fate most classical CDs suffer.
But part of his motivation was academic.
"The idea for the album started when I had a rather grand plan of doing a series of recitals that focused on each decade of the 20th century," Adamson said. "I decided to start with the second decade and did a recital that revolved around the period of the First World War." He was pleasantly surprised to discover the rich and rewarding piano works of British composers of the time. "I kind of got stuck in that period and since then I've done two or three programs of just music from the time of the Great War."
The CD contains four works by Frank Bridge (1879-1941), one by Arnold Bax (1883-1953), and one by Humphrey Searle (1915-82).
All the works, except for the Searle, were written between 1915 and 1925; Searle's was written during the Second World War, but is similar in emotional content.
"I found the music represented the war and the tremendous cultural upheaval it caused," Adamson said, although he denied the album can be viewed as anit-war or pacifist. "That reading a little too much into it. It's not a personal stance on my part, but more of a reflection of the works themselves, what may have given life to them."
Adamson's first CD came out seven years ago, so he's neither prolific nor commercially ambitious. He did regard his recording of pieces that are scant in the catalogue -Bax's Sonata No. 2 and Frank Bridge's Piano Sonata, especially -as something of a breakthrough. Unfortunately, in the years of preparation and recording -the first session for the album was taped nearly three years ago -two British pianists have come out with Bridge CDs.
"It's a case of famine and now feast," Adamson said.
Dr. Philip Adamson
adamson@uwindsor.ca
(519)253-3000 ext.2784
