COMPOSERS: FergusonGerhardDarntonRowley
LABELS: Naxos
ALBUM TITLE: British Piano Concertos
WORKS: Piano Concertos
PERFORMER: Northern SinfoniaPeter Donohoe
CATALOGUE NO: 8.55729
There’s plenty of variety in these four
concertos for piano and strings. The
1938 First Concerto by Alec Rowley,
best known for innumerable teaching
pieces, sounds in turn like Hindemith,
Rachmaninov, Delius’s First Cuckoo
and Lambert’s Rio Grande, but it’s
held together by some busily effective
piano writing. The 1948 Concertino
by the little-known Christian
Darnton is less successful in escaping
from the shadow of Stravinsky. The
1951 Concerto by the Ulsterman
Howard Ferguson is designed on
strictly Classical lines, but includes
some Romantically friendly melodic
writing and ends in Festival of Britain
optimism. Most challenging is the
1961 Concerto by the Catalan-born
modernist Roberto Gerhard, a virtuoso
piece full of Spanish references,
notably in a bizarre carnivalesque
finale with hints not only of ‘La folia’
but also of Chabrier’s España.
Peter Donohoe achieves miracles
in delivering mountains of notes with
dazzling aplomb and simultaneously
directing the excellent Northern
Sinfonia strings (though the unnamed
leader surely deserves a credit). Only
in the rhythmically intricate first
movement of the Gerhard, taken
faster than the metronome mark,
does a slightly panicky feeling set in.
Perhaps because of the layout needed
for soloist-direction, the recording
has a slightly clangorous piano sound,
and the strings are often too far in
the background. But don’t let that
put you off a fascinating collection.
Anthony Burton