<<  -- 4 --  Peter Dale    TREMENDOUS ENGAGEMENT

I wish his phrases inclined more often into matured sentences, and his sentences into the sort of thematic richness which the harmonic backgrounds so often imply. I wish also that much more of Williams' music were available on disc. The man who can conjure up so much from only a cello (and piano too except in the Sonata) ... what does he do with a string quartet, an orchestra, the human voice? I wish we could find out.

For the time being, the listener who attends carefully to this disc will be very handsomely rewarded.

The recorded sound is excellent. The sleeve notes are informative, though inclining to the technical (and the music, though often difficult to play, is anything but essays in technique). We should have had a large reproduction of the Nolan self-portrait (and not just a large detail but only a postage stamp whole). And one or two of Nolan's landscapes wouldn't have gone amiss either.

To listen to the aural illustrations in this review, you may need to download RealNetworks' realplayer G2.