Although best known for his symphonic poems such as Tintagel, Bax also wrote prolifically for the piano. His early life was dominated by the keyboard and in his twenties he appeared in concerts playing his own music and that of famous European contemporaries. On this first volume of the complete piano works, two epic sonatas are combined with impressionistic miniatures. The First Sonata, a turbulent Lisztian single movement abounding in colouristic effects, particularly at the bottom of the keyboard, was inspired by the new piano music of the Russians, particularly that of Scriabin. The foreboding Second Sonata was described by the composer himself as ‘concerned with the warring forces of light and darkness’, perhaps an autobiographical response to the recently ended war or the Easter Rising or both.