We continue our voyage of discovery with the music of this extraordinary English composer (1878-1922), who lived in Erith in North Kent, South East England, who was a child prodigy violinist, then a Professor at the Royal Academy of Music, London who taught Rebecca Clarke for some time and was also an Associated Board Examiner who travelled the world in the days long before passenger flights.

Percy was a remarkably gifted composer, whose harmonies, melodies and sense of structure were simply superb. On this CD we hear his Piano Sonata of 1920, a delightful melodic work in three movements, beautifully performed by Ian Tindale, who also plays the charmingly inventive ‘Six Album Leaves’ of 1894, something of a tribute to Schumann. Although a wonderfully inventive composer, Percy was musically a tad conservative in his tastes and did not like the musical direction of the Second Viennese School where composers such as Berg, Schoenberg and Webern moved away from traditional tonality. He wrote his own brief and to be truthful quite entertaining parody in 1917 one day before dinner penning the rather ironic title ‘Sunshine Over the Avon’.

Then we have the ‘Grand Solo for Viola’ marked ‘so difficult as to be absolutely impossible’. It turns out of course to be quite delightful and perfectly playable, in this performance with great style and sensitivity and with a smile on his face by violist Peter Mallinson.

The final work, his Quintet for Clarinet and Strings in E flat is another real find and musically is a work of great stature, deserving to be played again and again, it is a remarkable and very fine addition to the Clarinet Quintet repertoire, played here by John Bradbury, Principal Clarinet with the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra and the Cirrus String Quartet who recorded WH Reed’s String Quartets so well for us in 2022.