Foote's Piano Music

[petershott@btinternet.com]

Over the previous few days I've had some delightful experiences exploring the new Delos 3CD set of Arthur Foote's piano music. The box proclaims the word 'Complete', and that's what I presume it is - even down to a 1917 'Octave Study in G minor' with a duration of just over a minute.

It seems all this music - largely I believe unrecorded before - has been a personal project of Kirsten Johnson who has been assiduously chasing up many of these pieces. On the evidence of the performances, lucky is the composer who has Kirsten Johnson on their side.

Like, I suspect, most others I've often encountered and enjoyed some of Foote's orchestral music - and I'd very much commend three Marco Polo discs of chamber music. But I don't think I've heard a note of the piano music.

It includes two fairly extended Suites, Opp. 15 and 30, each of around 15 minutes duration and which are almost 'sonata like' (though without the tight formal structure of a sonata). And then groups or collections of pieces most of which could stand on their own. For example, the 'Five Poems after Omar Khayyam', Op. 41 - think a kind of lyrical poems without words.

And why do I keep somehow hearing echoes of Brahms in many of these pieces? And even sometimes Chopin (try the Capriccio ending the Suite No. 1) The music is that good. Perhaps friends in America can tell us whether Foote gets played in concert? Certainly I've never come across the piano pieces in any recital in the UK.

Thus I consider the boxed set an especially rewarding and significant event. (What also causes some delight is that its cost is also sub-Naxos. I got mine from Amazon UK - around £9 for a 3 CD set is pretty good going.)

By coincidence I read a review of the set on Classics Today first thing this morning - almost fell off my chair in astonishment at my agreement with every single word and sentence of the review. Then I noted its author is not the infamous Mr DH but one of his colleagues. I've become habitually inclined to explode whenever I look at that site - and quite a shock not to be on this occasion!

[eschiss1]

Looking at IMSLP, he does seem to have written a good amount of "miscellaneous" (2 compositions for ..., ..., ) piano music, after all. (We - the site - have 18 workpages - rather more than 18 individual pieces/tracks - of published (maybe in some cases manuscript) works by Foote for piano (including the 20 Preludes op.52) uploaded there, and several in his worklist not yet uploaded like the Op.18 pieces.) If the CD set really is all his piano music, that's good, that... (the track listing here does confirm that she has all those works - neat... I guess I'll have to add the Octave Study and Rondo to the IMSLP list of works, then... )