3 Hyde Park Gardens,W2

 

29 March 1935

 

Dear Dr Boult

Mr Sammons has told me that you have expressed a wish to see my violin concerto, with a view to including it in one of your programmes.

I have not had time to finish the phrasing and expression marks in the last movement, but I think you will see that it is quite straightforward. The free part is quite slow until the coda. As for the parts I would have them done as soon as I know a performance was in view.

Mr Sammons has been most enthusiastic about the work and I certainly think it is by far the best thing I have so far written.

Hoping you will like it

Yours sincerely

 

Guirne Creith

Mr Sammons has promised to play the concerto at any performance you may arrange.

 

BBC Music Magazine/ June 2009

Dutton here resurrects three long-buried British violin concertos, in the process disinterring the remarkable figure of Guirne Creith (a made-up pseudonym: she was born Gladys Cohen), composer, pianist, singer, teacher (her pupils include David Fanshawe) and authority on food and wine.

She studied at the RAM and was reasonably successful between the Wars. Her G minor concerto, which she reckoned her best work was written for Albert Sammons, who gave the BBC broadcast premier in 1936. Situated somewhere on a line between Ernest Bloch and E J Moeran, the Concerto’s first movement tends to over-work its material by phrase-repetition, but the slow movement is a gorgeous invention whose delicate lyricism goes straight to the heart, and the irrepressible dance-like finale makes a rousing conclusion.

International Record Review/ June Extract

If the Dutton Epoch label now inhabits what was once rather unkindly referred to as Lyrita Land - that of neglected British music - those responsible for the public performance of music (being therefore the cause of such neglect ) should pause and ask themselves just what is it in these largely forgotten scores that has caused copies of recordings of such music to sell in their thousands. In the first analysis, record companies are not branches of Arts Council (even if some may think they are) wherein the word profit is not mentioned at all. Yet - as man manifestly does not live by bread alone - profit can take many forms, not all of them monetary, and, as in the case of the disc under discussion, the resurrection of unjustly neglected music, seemingly come upon by accident, as it were (as if we’ve just found a £50 note in a deserted street), places us once again in the debt of those record company entrepreneurs who risk their own money to facilitate the performing of music which others may deem financially reckless.....

One of the more admirable characteristics which all three composers share (on this disc) is their thoroughly idiomatic writing for the solo instrument, when not one was a violinist (but then, neither was Bartok nor Barber - both contemporary composers of such concertos). The rarest of all in this collection is the Concerto by Guirne Creith, a work that received its premiere in 1936 by Albert Sammonds in a BBC broadcast under Constant Lambert. Creith was born in 1907 (the same year as Elizabeth Maconchy and Imogen Holst) and her very varied career (briefly outlined in Kathy Copisarow’s excellent notes) would seem to be well worth investigating by a sympathetic writer. Her musical language, recognisably English, may be described as an admixture of Dyson, Ireland and Boughton, unified by an impressive underlying strength - notably in the superb finale.

The performances are uniformly excellent, as are the recordings. The booklet is a kind of mini-variorum . . . . . . making this an issue of uncommon interest, restoring these very worthwhile works for our profit and the composers’ posthumous honour not only in their own land but also (if Dutton’s earlier releases are anything to go by) across the world.

Robert Matthew-Walker/June 2009

ALL MUSIC review by James Leonard

Surely no country produced as many composers per capita as did England during the 20th century. Indeed, one passes many George Lloyds and Havergal Brians on the way to Richard Arnell, Guirne Creith and Thomas Pitfield, the composers highlighted here. Yet as the enterprising English label Dutton has amply demonstrated, Arnell, Creith and Pitfield are perhaps more worthy of attention than the magniloquent Lloyd or the malevolent Brian.

Following premiere recordings of Arnell stirring symphonies, Dutton here releases a disc which includes his Violin Concerto along with similar works by the even less well known composers Creith and Pitfield. All three works are written in a romantic style and a conservative harmonic idiom, but all three are convincing works imbued with the character of their composers. Pitfield's 1958 Concerto Lirico is modally inflected, while Creith's 1934 Concerto in G minor is lush and sensuous. Arnell's Violin Concerto in One Movement from 1948 is sweet, original and possibly as fine a work in the form as anything by an English composer since Elgar.

Soloist Lorraine McAslan sounds wholly under the skin of the music, and with the committed support of the Royal Scottish National Orchestra under the redoubtable Martin Yates, she turns in persuasive accounts of all three works. Captured in rich, clear digital sound, these performances deserve to be heard by anyone who likes twentieth century English music.