HOWELL; BEACH; CHAMINADE Piano Concertos
View record and artist detailsRecord and Artist Details
Composer or Director: Cécile (Louise Stèphanie) Chaminade, Dorothy Howell, Amy Marcy (Cheney) Beach
Genre:
Orchestral
Label: Hyperion
Magazine Review Date: 03/2017
Media Format: CD or Download
Media Runtime: 69
Mastering:
DDD
Catalogue Number: CDA68130
Tracks:
Composition | Artist Credit |
---|---|
Concerto for Piano and Orchestra |
Dorothy Howell, Composer
BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra Danny Driver, Piano Dorothy Howell, Composer Rebecca Miller, Conductor |
Concertstück for Piano and Orchestra |
Cécile (Louise Stèphanie) Chaminade, Composer
BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra Cécile (Louise Stèphanie) Chaminade, Composer Danny Driver, Piano Rebecca Miller, Conductor |
Author: Jeremy Nicholas
It is little to do with Danny Driver’s gender that allows him to far outshine two earlier champions of the Amy Beach Concerto who happen to be women: Marie Louise Boehm (sounding a little elderly now on Vox or as part of the 40 CD Brilliant Classics box set I welcomed in the August 2016 issue) and Joanne Polk (Arabesque, 6/00). This is a big, virtuoso vehicle demanding great endurance and a bravura technique (the first movement lasting nearly 17 minutes is followed by a very difficult vivace perpetuum mobile 5'38" in length). Driver surmounts these demands with real artistry and, in the lovely slow movement, immense sensitivity. Hyperion’s recording (Simon Eadon and Andrew Keener in Glasgow’s City Halls) is also better focused and with greater depth than the otherwise fine version from by Alan Feinberg (Naxos, 6/03).
If Driver offers a robust, muscular view of the Beach, he is certainly in touch with his feminine side in the highly attractive single-movement Concerto (19'33") by Dorothy Howell (1898-1982), composed in 1923. Lighter in substance but even more appealing is Cécile Chaminade’s Concertstück in the same key as the Beach. The repeated scale figure could become mundane. In Driver’s hands it is enchanting – as indeed is this whole disc, a worthy addition to this series, launched more than a quarter of a century ago.
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