String Quartets and String Quintet, Divine Art, dda 25203
This CD from 2020, with a generous playing length of 76 minutes, embraces the Late Romanticism of Robin’s youthful String Quintet; the expansive Modernism of his String Quartet No.1; and the dramatic, heartfelt concision of his String Quartet No.2, all given vibrant performances by the London-based Behn Quartet.

“A spending recording, enjoyable from the first note to last. The music is well-written, often profound and always interesting… fascinating and essential.” – MusicWeb

“I can recommend this release. I found much to enjoy. Outstanding performances.” – Fanfare

“Fascinating…incisive and precise performances.” – British Music Society

Prevailing Winds: Music for Wind Instruments, Divine Art, dda 25194
Prevailing Winds (2019) is a double-album of twenty five pieces centring on orchestral wind instruments, covering an enormous stylistic range, from Classical Romantic, through Jazz, Folk and pastiche Medieval to Contemporary Classical. The wind players are some of the finest – Sarah Miller (flutes), John Bradbury (clarinet), Richard Simpson (oboe), Helen Peller (bassoon), Lindsey Stoker (French horn), and John Turner (recorders) – and they give some truly outstanding performances. With a running time of 88 minutes this ambitious album is not to be missed by any lovers of wind music.

“A high level of musical imagination, combined with skilled and involved performances… very enjoyable.” – Fanfare

“I enjoyed this. These miniatures are bursting with ideas.” – American Record Guide

Music for Cello and Piano, Divine Art, dda 25217
“Several items on this CD reveal Robin Stevens to be a very individual and exploratory composer. Stevens make the instruments sound so different and yet marries them together so well” – British Musical Society

“Successive hearings could releave [Sonata Romantica] to be one of the greatest Romatic cello sonates in English music. Cellist Nicholas Trygstad and painist David Jones are sympathetic to Steven’s complex, technically demanding and often wide-tanging music. The recital is helped by a vbrant and clear recording. An absoring and satisfying combination.” – MusicWeb

Balmoral Suite (and other recorder favourites), Prima Facie, PFCD101
Robin’s popular Balmoral Suite reappears as the headline piece on this collection of contemporary recorder music. It receives a sparkling performance from John Turner and the Manchester Sinfonia in this delightful arrangement for recorder and chamber orchestra. An affectionate portrayal of Britain’s most famous family, including a poignant character-study of the late Prince Philip.

A wacky, ‘left field’ review of A Questing Soul from the Congleton Chronicle…

Modern classical music has either beaten me into submission, or this is really good. Either is possible. Despite odd jarring moments, notes that seem not quite right and an aversion to developing an actual melody, this is an enjoyable album. Some classical albums I play from time to time — or never again — but this has become a dog-walk regular on the iPod, which is high praise. It is music that creates an ambience rather than a collection of tunes, with Christine Townsend on violin and Stephen Robbings on piano doing a sterling job.

At first play-through it almost seems a startling-the-cat collection of modern music but its gentleness and nostalgic feel bring it down from harsher modernity to something warmer. Tracks are mostly violin and piano but there are some solos. It skirts around tunes that might be familiar, such as in “Scherzo in Blue”, which suggests to me “Porgy and Bess” style jazz / blues classical while shying away from anything as mundane as a tune.

Opener “The Fantasy Sonata” is fairly traditional, the violin leading over the piano; it is played well but it was written for Townsend and Robbing so they should have the hang. It’s soulful but also stirring. “Stratospheric!” is solo violin; think Eddie van Halen’s “Eruption” — you don’t have to be a fan of American rock, just “Back to The Future” — and it’s got the same vibe, only on violin. The title track (on CD2) is a more thoughtful piano piece, but is followed by solo violin piece “Tom and Jerry”, and yes it does suggest a cat scampering about after a mouse (or escaping from a bulldog).

I like “An Interrupted Waltz” which, after a lot of perhaps less conventional stuff, is a charming piece based on; well, guess. Closer, “Soliloquy” ends in as thoughtful style as the title track. I just found a review that says of this “not particularly easy listening” — I vehemently disagree; maybe if you want a nice bit of Nachtmusik it’s a little jarring, but for anyone with an ounce of curiosity it’s a strong album.

Chasing Shadows
In Chasing Shadows, three of Robin’s major chamber works – the Clarinet Quintet, the Fantasy Trio for Flute, Cello and Classical Guitar, and the Romantic Fantasy for Flute, Clarinet, Harp and String Quartet, rub shoulders with two experimental miniatures for Double Bass and Piano.

The Clarinet Quintet is conceived on an epic scale, lasting a full half hour, with a Romantic breadth of vision, and … unexpectedly, perhaps, a happy and conciliatory ending! The clarinet’s unmatched capacity to blend with stringed instruments gives attractive richness and warmth to the sonic textures of the piece, which somewhat believe the complexities of its underlying musical argument.

The single-movement Fantasy Trio for Flute (doubling Piccolo), Cello and Classical Guitar, unsurprisingly exploits the particular timbral possibilities of this unusual instrumental ensemble. Combining plucked and bowed strings often has a felicitous impact: the guitar’s plucked strings create a  harmonic framework in which the bowed, melodic lines of the cello can be supported, but clearly audible. The flute adds characteristic atmosphere in its evocative lower register, but, towards the finish and in a dramatic twist as it switches to the piccolo, it careers off in uninhibited flights of fancy, like a blackbird on steroids, bringing the Trio to a breathless, thrilling conclusion.

The Romantic Fantasy for Flute, Clarinet, Harp and String Quartet (the same forces as Ravel’s Introduction and Allegro, except that Robin has the Flute doubling Piccolo), is an expansive, single-movement work, using a symmetrical, Bartokian ‘arch-form’. Given the forces employed, colouristic effects abound in this piece, but it is a tightly-knit, closely-argued work, which pulls no punches, and in which all seven players are given an equal opportunity to shine.

Brass Odyssey
Tredegar Town Bans, under its fine and innovative conductor, Ian Porthouse, has undoubtedly been one of the top brass bands in the UK over the past couple of decades. Tredegar is marked by a willingness to take risks, to engage with composers and projects outside the banding mainstream (witness, for example, their 2022 Prom playing Gavin Higgins’ Concerto Grosso with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales), so they were the obvious choice to undertake the daunting challenge of recording this potentially ground-breaking CD.

The title track, Brass Odyssey, is by far the longest piece on the CD, an unbroken span of 25 minutes’ music, divided into two parts: Part I, Elegy, is slow and contemplative, a heartfelt lament; Part II, Towards Rejoicing, breaks free from introspection in a series of wild and wacky lop-sided dances, inspired by Eastern European folk music, which drives the piece towards its joyful, life-affirming conclusion.

The remaining ten tracks on the CD show the brass in a more intimate context, in smaller chamber groupings. There are stunning virtuoso solos from Dewi Griffiths (cornet),SiônRhys Jones (euphonium), and Les Neish (tuba), but this is emphatically not a string of empty show-pieces – the music reaches much deeper than that. Dona Nobis Pacem, for example (two euphoniums and piano), imitates monastic plainsong in the brass, against bell-like effects in the piano, for an unusual take on the end of the Latin Mass. Supplication (tuba and piano) is an almost mystical exploration of the sonic and expressive capabilities of the tuba, whereas Mancunian Fanfare (full band) with its ‘in your face’ percussion gives Expressionist vent to our unspoken frustrations…

Orchestral Music, Volume 1

Orchestral Music, Volume 2

Orchestral Music, Volume 3