Peter Dickinson's 2005 CD on Albany, Pianos Voices and Brass is an odd collection of ADD and DDD recordings of keyboard and vocal works, made in various venues in 1974, 1982, 1988, and 2004. Due to these peculiar circumstances, this disc sounds spotty and uneven, and the program seems too offhandedly assembled for an important commercial release.
Dickinson himself plays his mildly entertaining solo piano pieces, Bach in Blue (2004), Five Diversions (1963), Four Easy Pieces (1965), and Eight Very Easy Pieces (1979), yet these are not particularly memorable works, largely because of their resemblance to beginner's exercises or weak jazz noodling. The original
King's Singers analog recording of Winter Afternoons (1971) with contrabassist Rodney Slatford is perhaps more interesting for preserving the vocal group's sound than for any great substance in
Dickinson's score; and the performance of The Unicorns (1982) by soprano
Elisabeth Söderström and the Solna Brass, conducted by Lars-Gunnar Björkland, is similarly more striking for the musicians' involvement than for the music itself.
Eric Parkin's performance of the Sonatas for piano with tape playback (1987) may be the most fascinating for pure sound and energy, but it eventually wears thin and, like
Dickinson's other pieces, loses its tentative hold on the imagination.