The English composer-pianist Freda Swain (1902–85) left behind a huge legacy of music that was largely unknown even during her own lifetime. Her compositions – hundreds of them, in a series of large boxes – found their way to the Swiss pianist Timon Altwegg, who begins his survey of her piano music with these three mighty sonatas. They are astonishing discoveries: big-boned, virtuosic pieces, full of wild energy, crossing from late Romanticism to a more modern idiom – from Rachmaninov to Bartók, so to speak – – and with Bax’s fondness for Celtic seascapes and a hint of Debussyan Impressionism.

Freda Swain was born in Portsmouth and went on to study at the Royal Academy of Music. She won the Sullivan Prize in 1921 and started teaching at the Royal Academy of Music in 1924. In 1936 she founded the British Music Movement to help promote the efforts of young composers and artists.