Output details

The Piano Music of York Bowen

The neglected piano repertoire of York Bowen has been an ongoing research project for many years, drawing initially on the composer’s own collection, now in the RAM library. While much of his output was published in his lifetime, research by arrangement with the York Bowen Estate revealed numerous unpublished works of outstanding quality.

The Hyperion concerto disc (with financial assistance from the RVW Trust) includes the first commercial recording of the Fourth Piano Concerto, involving research into manuscript sources and performance history. The performance drew upon two autograph manuscripts (full score and two-piano reduction) at the RAM. Bowen’s own 1937 studio recording (BBCSO/Boult), preserved in the BL Sound Archive, yielded useful insights into performance style. It was necessary to resolve numerous textual divergences between the two manuscript sources, including variants in the solo piano figuration, and to make decisions regarding cuts made by Bowen ahead of a 1959 Promenade Concert performance, variously indicated in the two sources. Preparing the Third Piano Concerto (‘Fantasia’) involved a similar process, based again on two manuscripts at the RAM (full score and piano reduction).

The two-disc set of piano sonatas (the subject of a 2010 Gramophone Award Nomination) includes first recordings of three early sonatas in the RAM library. No.1 had supposedly been published by ‘Dinham Blythe and Co’ and was prepared from that edition (although no evidence regarding this possible publisher has ever been discovered); Nos.2 and 3 were prepared from Bowen’s autograph manuscripts. Research at the RAM led to a complete recording of the Piano and Violin works, including first recordings of the early unpublished Sonata in D and the Phantasy Op.34.

These recordings have given rise to performances and broadcasts around the world, for example the North American première of the Third Piano Concerto and a BBC Radio 3 series entitled ‘York Bowen and his World’ (2011).