RONALD STEVENSON (1928-2015): Peter Grimes Fantasy, 3 Scottish Ballads, Beltane Bonfire, Heroic Song for Hugh MacDiarmid, Symphonic Elegy for Liszt, Chorale and Fugue in Reverse on Themes of Robert and Clara Schumann*, 3 Elizabethan Pieces after John Bull, Tauberiana (My Heart and I)*, RACHMANINOV: Lilacs, IVOR NOVELLO/STEVENSON: We’ll Gather Lilacs. * - First Recordings.

Description: Much of this CD is a kind of 'Ronald Stevenson's Greatest Hits' disc - astonishing and gratifying as it is to be able to say that without sarcasm. It collects together a number of his best known and finest shorter works, both wholly original compositions and transcription-based, but adds a handful of previously unrecorded pieces, pointing up the composer's astonishing - and sometimes unlikely - range. Stevenson's love of melody, whatever its source, shows in his affectionate (and pianistically ingenious) transcriptions of Ivor Novello and Richard Tauber, while the brief but telling, somberly resonant and very Busonian Chorale and Fugue (not surprisingly incorporating a Faust reference!) confirms that there are many gems awaiting discovery in the composer's hitherto unexplored output. Also a premiere is the revised and extended version of the third John Bull transcription. Kenneth Hamilton (piano).