MARBECKS COLLECTABLE: Peacock Pie - Six attractive and unjustly neglected English compositions

"This is a delightful disc for all lovers of British music with a lighter touch. All the featured works - miniature piano concertos with string accompaniment by generally unsung British craftsmen - positively teem with invention. they speak of a very specific time and place and their interpreters rise to the modest challenges with aplomb: Martin Roscoe plays with just the right sparkle and in the Guildhall Strings he has the perfect collaborators. Hyperion's recording is well judged."
Editor's Choice - Gramophone Magazine (June 2002)

'I have to be honest: of all recent CDs from our 'land without music', this has been spinning on my player the most' (The Times)

'Martin Roscoe and his colleagues obviously enjoy themselves enormously, and their readings of these attractive works are beautifully recorded … this delightful release is a joy from first to last, and is unreservedly recommended' (MusicWeb International)

'Martin Roscoe's playing is sparklingly sympathetic, as are the accompaniments from the Guildhall Strings. This is music which you are seldom likely to encounter in the concert hall, but is ideally suited to revival on disc' (International Record Review)

A typical Hyperion record if we may say so - six attractive and shamefully neglected English early-to-mid-20th-century works by five composers whose names are not as familiar as they should be.

As far as we can trace, none of these pieces has been commercially recorded before, although Peacock Pie was available many decades ago on a now rare Boosey & Hawkes 78rpm disc available only from the publisher ('Peacock Pie' is the title of one of Walter de la Mare's 'books of rhymes').

The friendly and genial mood of this disc makes it virtually another one of our 'British Light Music Classics' CDs.