Mark Tanner - York Bowen: Piano Music (2007)

The career of English composer and pianist (and organist, violist and horn player !) Edwin York Bowen (1884–1961) spanned more than fifty years during which time he wrote over 160 works. Despite achieving considerable success during his lifetime, many of his works remained unpublished and unperformed until after his death. Bowen’s compositional style is widely considered as “Romantic” and his works are often characterised by their lush harmonic language, molten in the crucible containing influences from Rachmaninov, Debussy, Chopin, Wagner, Liszt, Strauss, Scriabine sometimes, and an occasional dash of very early jazz.

Bowen was one of the most notable English composers of piano music of his time. The present album offers a large overview Bowen’s pianistic œuvre, works crafted between around 1905 – the adorable and quite Fauréan Miniature Suite as well as the jolly (and still Fauréan) Piano Suite – and 1948 with the Fantasia in G minor, of a rather darker and highly chromatic mood. British pianist Mark Tanner, himself an artist with a “portfolio existence” as performer, writer, editor, composer, teacher and researcher, has somewhat specialised in rare British repertoires such as the present York Bowen, but also Peter Wishart or John McLeod. Enjoy these exquisite pearls!