Pure Bliss – rediscovering a great forgotten composer
Can new recordings of this neglected British composer’s music finally put an end to our ignorance of Bliss?
Unbridled originality: Sir Arthur Bliss
Credit: Bettman
The two volumes of the piano music of Sir Arthur Bliss, played with great perception and sensitivity by Mark Bebbington and available on the Somm label as part of its heroic mission to present lesser-known pieces by British composers, has precipitated me back into an exploration of the work of this curate’s egg of a composer. I have always thought Bliss missed out on the renown he deserved, even though he ended up, for the last 22 years of his long life (he died in 1975, aged 83), as Master of the Queen’s Musick, in succession to Sir Arnold Bax. Unlike many who have held that role, he made quite a success of it. He found composing easy, and never seemed to have any trouble doing it to order.