William Baines ‒ 7 Preludes

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William Baines (1899 - 1922), 7 Preludes for Piano (1919) • Performed by Eric Parkin • 00:00 - No. 1 (Moderately quick - with restrained passion) • 01:21 - No. 2 (Very slow) • 04:28 - No. 3 (Very slowly - with devotion) • 05:37 - No. 4 (Furiously) • 07:06 - No. 5 (Moderate speed - dreamily) • 10:18 - No. 6 (Quickly) • 11:36 - No. 7 (Very quickly - with vigour) • Born at Horbury in the West Riding of Yorkshire on 26th March 1899, Baines showed early promise both as composer and performer. He received a thorough grounding in technique from Albert Jowett of Leeds, but family means precluded advanced tuition and by 1916 he was earning a living, like his father, as a cinema pianist. His health was never strong, and of seventeen weeks' military service during the influenza epidemic in 1918 all but two were spent in hospital. From this blow he never fully recovered, and a particularly severe bout just before his 21st birthday proved crucial at the very moment he seemed opised on the threshold of a brilliant career, frustrating his efforts to capitalize on the successful publication of Paradise Gardens and the Seven Preludes which had even attracted attention in the popular press. • All the Seven Preludes are terse, the sumptuous No. 3 comprising a mere eight perfectly judged bars. The spirit of Scriabin lies also behind the muted ecstasy of No. 1 and the drifting opiate tonality of No. 5, but the Fourth Prelude is pure Baines, a torrent of semiquavers without key and without time signature. No. 7 unleashes the restrained passion of the First Prelude; Baines' publisher had asked for an exciting finale to the set and this he was given with a coda exploding into space on a precipitate minor seventh.

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