Michael Waye - Geoffrey Allen: Music for Woodwinds (2020)

Geoffrey Allen was born in the UK in 1927 and after studying at Oxford moved to Australia where he set up a music publishing imprint and facilitated recordings of Australian music. He is still very active and is busy with several projects and compositions. His chamber music is widely neo-Romantic and rhapsodic, repeating motifs indifferent ways, constantly evading fixed tonality but retaining a soft and mellifluous melodic flow. Thus: his music is distinctive and strongly constructed but very attractive - post-modernist in the best sense. This collection of woodwind works begins with the 1964 Bassoon Sonata - more edgy, redolent of Prokofiev or Hindemith - through to the 2007 Fantasy Trio, polytonal, rhapsodic with beautiful textures. All works are receiving their first commercial recording. The four musicians are among Australian's finest - among many other activities, Waye and Meyer are principals with the West Australian Symphony; Walpole is an internationally-known freelance and Wickham is acknowledged to be among Australia's most pre-eminent accompanists.