Recording Review
Frederick Delius/John Ireland
Piano Concertos
Piers Lane piano
Ulster Orchestra
David Lloyd-Jones conductor
Hyperion CDA67296
Saturday 14 January 2006, The Daily Telegraph
by Geoffrey Norris
Deeply unfashionable though it might be to say so, I have always had a soft spot for John Ireland's Piano Concerto, and this new recording sympathetically catches its mood. If some will shy away from its episodes of bitter-sweet nostalgia, Piers Lane interprets them touchingly. This is music written by a composer of sensitive, perhaps even vulnerable temperament. As with so much Ireland (and as parts of the Legend also suggest), you feel that the concerto has some sad autobiographical tale of lingering regret to tell. But spiced harmony and spiky rhythmicality attest to the fact that he also knew his perky Prokofiev well, and the concerto's lightness of touch establishes a distinct contrast with the Delius.
Delius had doubts about this original, three-movement version of the concerto, recorded here for the first time. The most atmospheric music comes in the central slow movement, thoroughly characteristic of Delius but at times redolent of Skryabin's concerto as well. Elsewhere, the efforts to ignite titanic struggles between piano and orchestra can lapse into grandiloquence, though it is interesting to hear Delius in a robust frame of mind, and the performance itself is one of great allure and power.
Sunday 8 January 2006, Sunday Times, Culture section
Despite reeling from the crippling costs of a lawsuit, Britain’s favourite independent classical company begins the year with the continuation of one of its bigger-scale projects: The Romantic Piano Concerto, now, astonishingly, into its 39th volume. Not content with resurrecting forgotten and neglected works of the genre, Hyperion presents the first recording of the 1904 version of Delius’s much-altered C minor Piano Concerto, hitherto known only in the edition by Thomas Beecham, based on a revised solo part by the pianist Theodor Szanto. Reconstructed from the original orchestral parts (and what remains of the full score), what emerges is echt youthful Delius (the work started life as a Fantasy for Piano and Orchestra, completed in 1897). If not especially innovative, and less characteristic than his concerted works for stringed instruments, Delius’s Piano Concerto gets strong advocacy from Lane, Lloyd-Jones and the Ulster Orchestra. The two Ireland works, Legend and the Piano Concerto, make ideal companions on this highly attractive, collectable disc. Three stars