University of York Music Press

In its bell-like sonorities, clear textures and ritual manner, the piano music of Robert Saxton (born in London in 1953) suggests an almost oriental fascination with light and the way light refracts and diffracts – and yet it is audibly music written by an Englishman. In the two Books of Saxton’s Hortus Musicae in particular, this fascinating confluence generates a soundworld somewhere downstream from Takemitsu and Tippett, giving these gardens of music both a ceremonial dignity and sense of spring growth.

Paul Driver of the Sunday Times accounted that ‘Saxton’s work unites craftsmanly rigour and a wide-ranging fantasy, the latter quality being explicit here in a double sequence entitled Hortus Musicae, Book 1 and Book 2. These “musical gardens” variously invoke what he calls a “sacred space”, taking inspiration from Marvell, Auden, the Song of Solomon and even Proust, in the beautiful reminiscences of Beech Bank (A la recherche). Hammond begins her deft recital with the Chacony for Piano Left Hand and single-movement Sonata.’

Here at UYMP, we’d like to congratulate Saxton on this wonderful first review and hope that many of you will take the opportunity to purchase this CD to hear the music for yourselves.