Cobbett's Legacy - The New Cobbett Prize review | Andrew Clements's classical album of the week

The Guardian 80

Berkeley Ensemble
(Resonus)
Recognising its impact on British music, the Ensemble has revived the prize and champions work by early winners including William Hurlstone

In 1905, the businessman and amateur musician Walter Cobbett sponsored a chamber music competition for young composers. The competition took place five times up to 1919; each time entrants were required to write for a different combination of instruments, though nearly always following the form of the single-movement Phantasie, which Cobbett had borrowed from the 17th-century fantasies for viols by composers such as Henry Purcell and Matthew Locke. Prizewinners in the competitions included Frank Bridge, John Ireland and Ralph Vaughan Williams, and even after the competitions had ended, the idea of composing single-movement Phantasies persisted in British music, so that Benjamin Britten called the work for oboe and strings that he composed as a student in 1932 a Phantasy Quartet.