How wise it was of the programme planners to kick off proceedings with the Piano Trio No 1 of 1950 – a magnificent beast, brimful of doughty integrity and always evincing a breathtaking contrapuntal scope. It is cast in a single movement, comprising an initial Andante moderato of glorious, long-breathed eloquence, a perky central Episodio scherzando and a concluding theme and three variations (labelled ‘Meditazioni’). Like all of Rubbra’s finest music, the score unfolds with an intuitive purpose and questing spirituality as awesome as it is rewarding, an observation that extends to its scarcely less imposing two-movement successor of 20 years later. The mood here is darker, more rarefied, the opening Tempo moderato e deliberato distilling a lofty austerity that not even the jaunty, syncopated rhythms of the Allegro scherzando second movement can quite dispel.
The remaining five items span virtually the whole of Rubbra’s career. Even in the early Phantasy for two violins and piano (penned in 1927 and dedicated to Gerald Finzi) Rubbra’s burgeoning mastery of the flowing line and capacity for organic thought are already very much in evidence, the music’s rapt, at times distinctly pastoral lyricism engagingly reminiscent of the young Herbert Howells’s sublimely assured chamber offerings. It’s a lovely work, as is the Suite for flute, oboe and string trio that Adrian Cruft prepared from Rubbra’s incidental music to Clifford Bax’s 1947 radio play, The Buddha. Of the two works for oboe, the appealing Sonata of 1958 (written for Evelyn Rothwell, later Lady Barbirolli) impresses by dint of its quiet cogency, while the 1949 Meditazioni sopra ‘Coeurs desoles’ (whose theme derives from Josquin’s eponymous chanson) inhabits much the same gently ruminative landscape found in the last section of the Piano Trio No 1 (with which it shares an adjacent opus number). That just leaves the deeply felt Duo for cor anglais and piano (Rubbra’s very last chamber work, completed six years before his death in 1986).
Performances throughout are laudably poised and unstintingly dedicated; truthful sound and balance, too. A peach of a disc, not to be missed.'