First Published: 28 Nov 2010
Pages: 356
Size: 23.4 x 15.6
Binding: Hardback
Imprint: Boydell Press


In the thirty years since his Centenary in 1982 it has become even clearer that Percy Grainger [1882-1961] - composer, pianist and revolutionary - was a man born out of his time. Many of his ideas, both musical and social, sit far more easily in our contemporary world. Those thirty years have also seen a notable expansion of interest in Grainger's music. Innumerable recordings have been made, including the first complete Grainger recording survey by Chandos in its monumental Grainger Edition. The growth of the internet has made it possible, as never before, for Grainger's music to be heard widely.
The central theme of The New Percy Grainger Companion is to give information and help from established musicians for performing and listening to this life-celebrating repertoire. The Companion's fully detailed, up-to-date Catalogue of Works - the most complete of any existing catalogue - gives invaluable assistance. Authoritative contextual chapters in the Companion offer some surprising new background information, together with thoughtful evaluations which signal a new twenty-first century perspective in Grainger scholarship.

PENELOPE THWAITES, pianist, composer and broadcaster, has performed and researched Grainger's music for more than three decades and her recordings include an extensive Grainger discography.

Contributors: BRIAN ALLISON, TERESA BALOUGH, ROGER COVELL, KAY DREYFUS, LEWIS FOREMAN, PAUL JACKSON, JAMES JUDD, JAMES KOEHNE, ASTRID BRITT KRAUTSCHNEIDER, BARRY PETER OULD, STEWART MANVILLE, MURRAY MCLACHLAN, TIMOTHY REYNISH, BRUCE CLUNIES ROSS, DESMOND SCOTT, PETER SCULTHORPE, GEOFFREY SIMON, RONALD STEVENSON, STEPHEN VARCOE, DAVID WALKER


Reviews
It is a breath of fresh air [...] to encounter a book that concentrates exclusively on Grainger's work as a composer, pianist and pioneering thinker. Penelope Thwaites's new book, The New Percy Grainger Companion, breaks away from many other studies of the composer that tend to become engrossed in his personality, and looks at Grainger purely as an artistic figure - no more or no less. [...] it contributes very usefully to a better understanding of this truly remarkable Australian figure. MUSIC FORUM

Grainger is not just a composer, or a pianist, or an arranger, he is a phenomenon. And in The New Percy Grainger Companion we are given a vision of that phenomenon in the wealth of his music and in his wide global context. DELIUS SOCIETY JOURNAL

Thwaites and her fellow contributors go far in restoring to general consciousness the full scope of Grainger's work as composer, performer, and ethnomusicologist. The book has something to offer almost every conceivable audience. [...] Recommended. CHOICE

This is an invaluable book about one of music's least understood practitioners. [...] British-born Australian pianist and composer Penelope Thwaites has done a terrific job piecing together the jigsaw that was Grainger. THE AUSTRALIAN

[T]his handsome volume is an invaluable - and essential - contribution towards a fuller understanding of a composer on the cusp of overdue rediscovery. CLASSICAL MUSIC

Recommended without hesitation. THE DELIAN

This book is full of useful advice. SYDNEY MORNING HERALD

It is clearly a labour of love on the part of all concerned. Out of its meticulously researched, impeccable argued advocacy emerges a complex portrait of a controversial creative spirit [...] Generously filled with black and white photographs, reproductions of programmes and musical illustrations, this handsome volume is an invaluable - and essential - contribution towards a fuller understanding of a composer on the cusp of overdue recovery. INTERNATIONAL PIANO

Thwaites has already contributed substantially to a Grainger revival [...]. Here, as an editor, she manages the trick of finely balancing the various competing aspects of Grainger's energetic and highly productive life [...]. This New Companion succeeds in its aim to portray a complicated man in all his variety [...]. TLS