Sir Eugene Goossens
Pastorale et Arlequinade for flute, oboe & piano

Madeleine Dring
Trio for flute, oboe & piano

Thea Musgrave
Impromptu for flute & oboe

Sir Richard Rodney Bennett
Sounds and Sweet Aires for flute, oboe & piano

Edward McGuire
Three Dialogues for flute & oboe

Rhian Samuel
Shadow Dance for flute, oboe & piano,

Sir Malcolm Arnold
Suite Bourgeoise for flute, oboe & piano

Nancy Ruffer (flute)
John Anderson (oboe)
Helen Crayford (piano)

Recorded at St Silas Church, Chalk Farm, London, 18–19 July 2005
and Potton Hall, Suffolk, 18 May 2006

The combination of flute, oboe and piano is an evocative and atmospheric one, here explored by seven varied composers. Flautist Nancy Ruffer, oboist John Anderson and pianist Helen Crayford bring a telling fluidity and spontaneity to a succession of delightful scores. Goossens’s sunlit Pastorale et Arlequinade Op. 1924 is followed by Madeleine Dring’s three movement Trio and Sir Richard Rodney Bennett’s Sounds and Sweet Aires, also in three movements. Edward McGuire’s Three Dialogues and Thea Musgrave’s Impromptu are both two-way instrumental conversations for flute and oboe, the Musgrave being more light-hearted. Rhian Samuel’s Shadow Dance features fragments of a dance tune, which undergo a central catharsis before the tune emerges in a gentle 6/8. The programme ends with Malcolm Arnold’s Suite Bourgeoise, five delightful movements written at the beginning of WWII whilst Arnold was still in his teens, but little known because he had mislaid the scores for over fifty years.

CDLX 7181