This attractive recital presents several sides of Hummel's creative personality, from the classical sonata to the fanciful early romantic character piece, with a good deal of virtuosity thrown in. The items I relished most were some of the more contemplative, pensive ones - including, of course, the 'Contemplazione' from his Op 107 bagatelles, a beautiful piece that takes a short theme as its starting point (it either is, or resembles, the opening of the fantasia slow movement of Haydn's Op 76 No 6 Quartet) and weaves a poetic fabric around and beyond it. The other bagatelle here, the 'Rondo all'ungherese', is quite a different kind of piece, exploiting ideas of gipsy themes and rhythms with a good deal of wit.
Both respond splendidly to Howard Shelley's playing, his attentive shaping, his sense of the music's poetry, his springy rhythms. These are latish works, from the mid-1820s; the rather earlier Capriccio, Op 49, is another particular success, notable for Shelley's exquisite timing and aristocratic poise in the slow music and his brilliant fingerwork in the fast.
The recital begins with the earliest piece, an 1804 Rondo to which Shelley brings crisp phrasing, precise ornaments and happily judged touches of rubato. He ends with a sonata of 1805, more classical in manner than much of what has gone before: easy to say that the style is Beethovenian with less exalted content, but the central Adagio really is a fine piece with a vein of nobility of its own. The other items are the ingenious Gluck variations, in which Shelley shows a fine command of piano sonorities and some subtle management of rhythms, as well as ample brilliance in the closing pages, and the polonaise La bella capricciosa, which moves from a gentle, unassuming start to a coruscating finish. The recording is a model of clear and rich piano tone.
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