Paul Watkins (cello), Huw Watkins (piano)Chandos CHAN10741 ***

The four English works here were written between 1880 and 1919. The most adventurous of them, John Foulds's Sonata,Op 6, only survives in a 1927 revision of the 1905 original, so you'll have to decide for yourself if the quarter-tones the sturdily thrusting work asks for were conceived in the first decade of the 20th century or the third. Granville Bantock's 1919 Hamabdil is a not very strongly characterised Hebrew melody. The earliest piece, Parry's Sonata of 1880, is the work of a man clearly in awe of Brahms. Delius's 1916 Sonata is the most celebrated of the works, and rightly so. Its rhapsodising may meander a little too much, but its harmonic reach is wide, its individuality unmistakable. Brothers Paul and Huw Watkins give sensitive accounts of these little-known pieces. url.ie/f1f2