Michael Krein (saxophone)
London Classical Orchestra (Led by Emanuel Hurwitz )
Conductor, Trevor Harvey
Phyllis Tate, who was born in Buckinghamshire, studied at the Royal Academy of Music and while still a student there had several compositions performed, including an operetta and a symphony. The first important work by her to be given in public was a Cello Concerto, played in London in 1933 and broadcast in the following year. Among her recent works three are outstanding: Concerto for saxophone and strings; Nocturne for Four Voices (a highly imaginative setting of a poem by Sidney Keyes); and Sonata for clarinet and cello, which has been chosen as one of the two English works to be performed at the thirtieth festival of the International Society for Contemporary Music, now being held at Salzburg. The Saxophone Concerto, composed in 1944, brings the mercurial qualities of the saxophone into evidence in gay turns of thought and brilliant passage-work, but the music also has much quiet beauty.
(Harold Rutland)