Witold Lutosławski: The Complete Piano Music (Warner)
I first had the opportunity to play to Lutosławski whilst collecting the Chappell Medal at a prize-winners concert at the Royal College of Music. It was at this event, that the composer kindly said how much he had enjoyed my playing and that I should ‘play for me again’, which I did in Warsaw, covering all the solo piano and chamber music repertoire and recording it the subsequent year. Sadly, I was the last person to play to the composer in Warsaw, before his illness and subsequent death in 1994.
‘Beautiful and Exquisite’ – The Times
‘Ann Martin-Davis playing shines with brilliance’ – BBC Music Magazine
Heaven-Haven: The Songs of Peter Pope (Nimbus Records)
Armed with only a box of scores, it took two years to trace the composer Peter Pope and his family. His
life and works had been erased from the public eye because of his critical years spent as a member
of the religious sect, the Raven-Taylor Brethren.
Peter Pope was born in 1917 and had studied at the Royal College of Music, with John Ireland. He won a travelling scholarship to study with Nadia Boulanger in Paris, but his studies were cut short by the German invasion of Paris. Pope narrowly escaped death, by fleeing France on a bicycle through Northern Spain. After service in the Royal Army Medical Corps, Pope’s piano quartet received a rave review in The Times and Augeners offered to publish anything he wrote, but instead he met and married Noreen. Noreen was s a member of the Exclusive Brethren (more extreme than the Plymouth brethren) who announced that Christmas and music were to be ‘cancelled.’ Peter didn’t write another note until the sect was disbanded in 1971.
‘Ann Martin-Davis and Susan Legg lavish on Pope’s songs a measure of affection commensurate with their considerable technical and musical abilities and are to be appaluded for bringing such wonderful music to a wider audience.’
Robert Levett, International Record Review
‘Ann Martin-Davis has become closely associated with the music of Lutoslawski and is a distinguished scholar and pianist. Susan Legg has worked with her on several projects and indeed their styles, like that of the composer, share an undemonstrative rightness such as one comes to value increasingly with every encounter.’
Gramophone Magazine
Ravel: Le Langage des Fleurs (Guild)
‘This Tombeau with it’s swirling Prélude, the appropriately deliberate Fugue, playful Forlane and irrepressible Rigaudon are all comme il faut. Earnest innocence in the Menuet provides the perfect contrast before an exciting Toccata, all the more bracing for its pointilliste bent. Of the smaller pieces, the Pavane stands out for its forthright delicacy and simplicity, its tender melancholy thoroughly convincing. There’s so much to enjoy in these seasoned performances.’
Gramophone Magazine
‘Ann Martin-Davis’s approach to Ravel is light, airy, often quite playful, and always sharply-defined. The Prélude to Le Tombeau de Couperin is typical of her approach, delicately, fluttering fingerwork, minimum pedal, and a clarity of texture which removes any hint of that kind of misty pseudo-Impressionism so many pianists bring to this music. Michal Ponder’s recording is wholly sympathetic to this approach with a sharp focus and immediacy which leaves no room for atmosphere or elusiveness. It takes some getting used to, especially indoctrinated as those of us who listen on an almost weekly basis to new recordings of this kind of repertory are, but while we might miss the sense of mystique and vagueness others feel is an obligatory stylistic hallmark of Ravel’s piano music, after a while I find this clear, unfussy and texturally direct approach in its own way very endearing. At the very least, the Fugue from Le Tombeau de Couperin reveals its Baroque imagery exceptionally strongly, while the concluding Toccata has a sparkling energy to it with impeccably crisp figurations articulated with great precision.’
Marc Rochester, Music Web International
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