Please submit a recording that will encourage others
to play the music. Thanks!
Rec 1. Midwinter, No. 8 of The Passing Year,
or Rain Wind and Sunshine, Epsom Choral Society,
December 2009. The society was founded in 1922 by Sir Humphrey
Milford in order to give Robin experience as a conductor in the
Leith Hill Musical Festival.
Rec 2. Here is my Winter Sketches, using a
microphone on top of the piano, feeding into a cassette deck
recording onto tape, feeding in turn into Audacity recording on
the computer, all in one go. The only editing I allowed myself
was Noise Removal, to cut out most of the background roar. Fun.
1. Procession . 2. The Dancer
. 3 Winter Landscape
. 4 Carol
Rec 3. Marion Milford gave me an LP made by
Snellgrove of Oxford of a 'Copy of Customer's own tape' of
Christopher Finzi and the Newbury Players playing the Elegy on
the Death of the Duke of Monmouth at the Ramsbury Music Festival
in 1962. Spoken introduction . . . and
music (6.3 meg)
Rec 4. Here are my attempts at the
Diversions for Piano: No. 1
. . .
No. 2
. . . No 3
. . . No 4
. . . No 5
. . The pieces were written in July
and August 1938: my parents were married on August 6th 1938. The
pieces are headed as follows: "We put up at the Angel inn,
and passed the evening by ourselves in easy and familiar
conversation. Talking of constitutional melancholy, he observed,
'A man so affected, sir, must divert distressing
thoughts, and not combat with them'." (From Boswell's Life
of Johnson). Note. - These five pieces may be
played as a suite, or separately. The first perfomance was given
by Howard Ferguson in Newbury at a concert of works by local
composers on November 7th 1938. R.H.M.
I find Milford's metronome markings in the Diversions too
fast, personally. See
I have no illusions about my recordings: I simply offer them as being better than no recording at all. If you can produce something more worthy, I shall be only too delighted to retire mine!