Stephen Pritchard
The Observer
June 2014

Shot down in 1917 by Hermann Goering—a flying ace in the first world war—poor Arthur Benjamin had later to endure another shooting down at the hands of critics who unfairly mistook his brilliance with pastiche and ease with film music as evidence of a shallow output. Lawrence Power, our leading viola player, comes to his defence by recording Benjamin's work premiered by previous greats, Lionel Tertis and William Primrose. He switches to the violin for the formidably difficult Sonatina and the delightfully quixotic Three Pieces for Violin and Piano, before he and Simon Crawford-Phillips settle the argument with the profound Viola Sonata of 1942.