Nicholas Daniel Oboe
Adam Walker Flute
Amy Harman Bassoon
Antonio Oyarzábal Piano
CHANDOS 20344
By a happy accident just a few days before this CD plopped on my doormat, I had heard an excellent performance of Dring’s Trio for Flute, Oboe and Piano in Hereford. It had been composed in 1968 and consists of three movements. Afterwards I told the performers what a joy it was to hear this work, and it was pointed out that I would probably never hear it again. How wrong that proved! It really is a little masterpiece, so idiomatic and memorable. I suspect that that comment can also apply to all the music on this well-filled disc.
I will pick out a few especially happy examples, one of which, again by coincidence, I heard this time when it was first performed. That was at the Wigmore Hall in 1972, a Trio for Oboe, Bassoon and Keyboard, originally a harpsichord. My student diary did not rate it very highly but that was a period when music like this was easily dismissed, especially by students.
It lasts almost 18 minutes and now works perfectly well in this version with piano, in fact I cannot imagine the atmospheric middle movement Dialogues would work with the harpsichord. Madeleine Dring had aspirations towards the theatre, indeed the photographs in the booklet show her to be glamorous and confident. Interestingly, this Trio begins Drammatico and its 5/8 finale ends Furioso.
It’s amazing that Three Piece Suite was originally for harmonica and piano, Dring’s husband, the oboist Roger Lord, who is so much associated with all of these pieces arranged it for himself as he did many of the others. It has a dreamy ‘Romance’ in the middle, an exciting often 7/8 opening Allegro entitled Showpiece, and a perky finale which has a surprisingly reflective ending.
Amongst the more surprising pieces is a transcription Dring made of Cole Porter’s In the Still of the Night, possibly illustrating her fascination for cabaret songs. It is I feel, though only of moderate interest.
One can hear how the performers making their acquaintance with this music very possibly for the first time, seem to revel in it. And that applies to the remaining nine miniatures they have recorded which sometimes can be quite technically demanding but never impossible, and always idiomatic, the style of each can be rather similar however, but always fun, such as Dring’s evocation of various foot-tapping dances, for example, the Tango and the Italian Dance.
Review by Gary Higginson