The Romantic Piano Concerto 43 - Sterndale Bennett & Bache
BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Howard Shelley (piano/conductor)
Sterndale Bennett's Fourth Piano Concerto of 1838… Written at 22…it is by no means all Mendelssohian in its style, having a sombre, rather Schumannesque first movement, an expressive Barcarolle...
The Romantic Piano Concerto 43 - Sterndale Bennett & Bache
BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Howard Shelley (piano/conductor)
Purchase product
Sterndale Bennett's Fourth Piano Concerto of 1838… Written at 22…it is by no means all Mendelssohian in its style, having a sombre, rather Schumannesque first movement, an expressive Barcarolle...
About
The Romantic Piano Concerto series returns to England, and explores further fascinating and little-known repertoire. Indeed, the concerto by Francis Edward Bache (18331858) has perhaps never been performed. The composer, a pupil of Sterndale Bennett, and acclaimed at a young age by contemporaries all over Europe as a prodigious talent of whom great things were expected, died of TB at the age of 25, leaving the manuscript of his Piano Concerto in the library of the Royal Academy of Music, where it has languished until this recording. This enchanting work is a great discovery. Also on the disc are two accomplished works by the composer-pianist Sterndale Bennett. The indefatigable Howard Shelley directs the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra from the piano.
Contents and tracklist
Awards and reviews
January 2008
Sterndale Bennett's Fourth Piano Concerto of 1838… Written at 22…it is by no means all Mendelssohian in its style, having a sombre, rather Schumannesque first movement, an expressive Barcarolle for slow movement and a scintillating finale thrown off with patent enjoyment by Howard Shelley in this excellent recording. The short-lived Francis Edwards Bache, a star pupil of Bennett's died aged 24... the E major Piano Concerto of 1856... has a nonchalant vigour and bravura, formal shapeliness and a bright, attractive personality of its own.
Howard Shelley … gives us an air-spun brilliance and stylistic elegance very much his own. Most refined of virtuosos, he has been admirably presented and recorded
December 2007
…neither composer could wish for a more persuasive advocate than Howard Shelley who, in his customary role as soloist and conductor, gives us an air-spun brilliance and stylistic elegance very much his own. Most refined of virtuosos, he has been admirably presented and recorded.
