MODERN INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC. (a) Barry Tuckwell (horn), Brenton Langbein (violin), Maureen Jones (piano). (b)William Bennett (flute), Peter Graeme (oboe), Gervase de Peyer (clarinet). (c) William Pleeth ('cello). Gervase de Peyer (clarinet). (d) Margaret Kitchin (piano), Barry Tuckwell (horn). Argo Q RG475 0 ZRG5475 (12 in., 38s. including PT).

Banks. Trio for horn, violin and piano (a). Rodney Bennett. Trio for flute, clarinet and oboe (b). Tate. Sonata for clarinet and 'cello (c). Hamilton. Sonata Notturna for horn and piano (d).

This is a most enterprising anthology. Living British composers are nowadays getting rather more representation on disc than at one time; and it is in any case very good, on musical grounds not at all connected with the welfare of British composers, to see the issue of such a sensibly arranged disc. For in choice of composers and of instrumental mediums there is a nice balance of similarity and of dissimilarity; the record is a most enjoyable recital programme in its own right.

'Modern' turns out to mean, in this context, written in the last year or two, save in one case: the Phyllis Tate Sonata for clarinet and 'cello (OUP), an immediately post-war work which offers music well in the character of the two instruments, assembled into something not altogether unlike a divertimento. This last could not be said of any of the other pieces; and this, of course, is one of the differences which helps to make the programme as a whole such a good one.

At furthest remove from anything in the nature of entertainment is the lain Hamilton Sonata Notturna. The night is a disturbed but not entirely a black one: horn and piano unite in the alternation of sombre darkness and irridiscent flashes of cadenzalike irruptions. I know nothing else in the horn repertory quite like this. Nor, as it happens, in the horn trio repertory much resembling Don Banks's Trio: here Brahms, and even Berkeley, seem distant, as new requirements of range and facility substantially enlarge the palette provided by this combination. The music is as adventurous as the writing: both are very rewarding.

So, in a sense, is the remaining piece: Richard Rodney Bennett's Trio, composed for the Zagreb Contemporary Music Festival of 1965. Does foreknowledge of this circumstance make it too easy, perhaps, to find in it a constricting influence, an influence arranging that Bennett should on this occasion be on his best behaviour as a Contemporary Composer ? For he knows probably as well as anybody else in London the resources of his chosen flute, oboe, and clarinet, yet the three seem to come out in the wash as a largely undifferentiated woodwind trio; he knows the resources of rhythm and of the human heart-beat, yet here the heart is brought to a halt for the duration; he knows the resources of music for lightening the human spirit, yet this essentially lightweight combination refuses to acknowledge any duty in this respect.

Yet if the Trio seems grey compared with the other music on the disc it is after all one of the lighter shades of grey; and again its character helps to provide diversity for the disc as a whole. One thing in which every piece shares, happily, is a high standard of performance: if I mention Barry Tuckwell and Margaret Kitchin in particular it is most certainly not on account of any non-existent shortcomings elsewhere, but because the demands on both these players of the Hamilton Sonata Notturna are exceptional (though you would not suppose it from the deceptive ease with which they seem to be met).

The recording of this most agreeable disc is good: the mono perhaps a little stronger than the stereo. M.M.