Malcolm Williamson shocked Australia with his jagged Organ Concerto in 1961, his brutal Piano Concerto No. 3 in 1962, and his Sonata for two pianos in 1967. In this 2007 collection of those three works played with unbridled enthusiasm and unstoppable energy by the composer himself, they still sound fresh and bracing. Aside from a few outstanding examples, the organ concerto genre seems to bring out the big and bombastic in composers, and Williamson's three-movement work, though big and bombastic in its scoring for romantic organ, mostly plucked strings and mostly hammered percussion, is nonetheless both sharper in its forms and edgier in its harmonies. His Piano Concerto is even more aggressively modernist, and the Two Piano Sonata is, in terms of form and content, past
Stravinsky and headed out toward Schoenberg in its tonal materials. Williamson is joined in the Organ Concerto by
Adrian Boult and the
London Philharmonic, in the Piano Concerto by Leonard Dommett leading the
London Philharmonic, and in the Two Piano Sonata by composer
Richard Rodney Bennett, and not one of them gives the composer anything other than unstinting support. Lyrita's smooth, clear, deep stereo sound admirably captures the range of the music.