Britten Piano Concerto; Diversions
A great case made for Britten’s piano works, and a pianist to challenge Richter
View record and artist detailsRecord and Artist Details
Composer or Director: Benjamin Britten
Genre:
Orchestral
Label: Hyperion
Magazine Review Date: 10/2008
Media Format: CD or Download
Media Runtime: 0
Mastering:
Stereo
DDD
Catalogue Number: CDA67625
Tracks:
Composition | Artist Credit |
---|---|
Concerto for Piano and Orchestra |
Benjamin Britten, Composer
BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra Benjamin Britten, Composer Ilan Volkov, Conductor Steven Osborne, Piano |
Young Apollo |
Benjamin Britten, Composer
BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra Benjamin Britten, Composer Ilan Volkov, Conductor Steven Osborne, Piano |
Diversions |
Benjamin Britten, Composer
BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra Benjamin Britten, Composer Ilan Volkov, Conductor Steven Osborne, Piano |
Author: Arnold Whittall
Britten replaced the original slow movement in 1945, possibly because it spent too much time in waltz-like regions already visited in the second movement. This disc adds it anyway, alongside two other scores for piano and orchestra. Young Apollo (1939) was not heard for half a century after its premiere, perhaps discarded by Britten because its fanfare-like material was more effectively deployed in Les illuminations (also 1939). It’s a quirky piece, difficult to programme, a euphorically unguarded response to Keats’s vision of male beauty in Hyperion.
Diversions is on a much grander scale, its style making even clearer those debts to Mahler which Britten had allowed to surface now and again in the concerto. The multifarious challenges to the single-handed soloist create moments of strong emotional depth and, as throughout the disc, Osborne and his colleagues make the best possible case for pieces which have tended to be placed on the outer fringes of the Britten canon. The recordings, made in Glasgow’s Henry Wood Hall, have ample depth of sonority and vividness of colour.
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