Bamert's Parry cycle for Chandos has generated a major reconsideration of this composer's orchestral music and some of the rarer choral works are still to come. The image of Parry as a stuffy, academic composer with worthy aims but little imagination and originality has been blown out of the window by these performances. Sir Adrian Boult, at the end of his life, began this process, and I mean to take nothing away from his dedicated efforts when I say that Bamert brings a fresh approach to the music which Boult was no longer able to summon—his spirit was willing, but by then his flesh was weak. Bamert's interpretation of the Symphonic Variations, for instance, has a flair that eluded the same orchestra 12 years ago.
The Second Symphony, known as the ''Cambridge'' for no better reason than that it was first performed there—one might as well call Elgar's First Symphony the ''Manchester''—dates from 1883 but was revised four years later, when Richter reintroduced it in London. It is true, as Bernard Benoliel hints in his accompanying notes, that some of the music in this symphony is ramblingly discursive, rather too reminiscent of Schumann spiced by Dvorak, but for all that it has a disarming freshness and vitality that carry the listener along. The heart of the work is its third (slow) movement, an andante of dark and mysterious beauty. The over-long finale has a rich Brahmsian tune to give it momentum, and Bamert holds the cyclic structure together most convincingly.
How unfair it seems that such music should be virtually unknown, even though one has to concede that the symphonies of Elgar and Vaughan Williams are on a higher imaginative plane, building on Parry's foundations. Since concert audiences and managements are equally reluctant, on the whole, to extend their horizons, it cannot be expected that Parry's symphonies, except perhaps No. 4, will find a way back to the repertory. That is where recordings are so important. For those who value this music, here it is, at our disposal in excellent performances.'