It would be hard to find a more highly committed advocate a more highly committed advocate for this music than Howard Shelley for this music than Howard Shelley who masters all the considerable who masters all the considerable technical challenges of these works technical challenges of these works with consummate ease, and the with consummate ease, and the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra offers sturdy and reliable support offers sturdy and reliable support throughout.

If one cannot claim these works as deathless masterpieces, the redoubtable Howard Shelley once again proves himself the piano world’s St Jude: the passionate advocate of the Romantic concerto repertoire’s lost causes. The pianist’s nuanced and sweeping phrasing, his wide dynamic range and his perpetually singing tone convey both urgency and nobility to the point where he convinces you that this is great music.

[1st Concerto] thrown offhere with exhilarating panache by Howard Shelley [2nd Concerto] Shelley once again has the work manifestly under his fingers and directs the excellent Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra with assurance. Great Hyperion sound make this a sonically pleasing, well-executed curiosity.

Some see Elmas as lying too much in Chopin’s shadow...but both concertos contain flashes of originality that suggest otherwise. Each work is replete with graceful passagework that Shelley consistently dispatches with panache... A day will presumably come when the Romantic Piano Concerto series finally has to end, but having made the acquaintance of two wonderful works that might otherwise have been mere footnotes in an encyclopedia and never heard, I hope that day is still a long way off.