The piano and C20th British composers

[Peter Katin]

There's a splendid CD of (I think) all Britten's piano and orchestra works. The playing should convince everyone!

[BBMmk2]

I have thouight about that a lot, PK. The composers Ireland and Bliss come to mind of the greatBrit PC. I didn't mention the Delius PC, because I have always felt, that it was not one of his strong works. Why Elgar never puit a PC down on paper, I really don't know?

[Mary Chambers]

There's a splendid CD of (I think) all Britten's piano and orchestra works. The playing should convince everyone!

Is that the Steven Osborne one? He nearly convinced me!

[french frank]

Well Bartok, Rachmaninov and Prokofiev were all renowned piano soloists in there own right. Martinu just wrote lots in every genre. Who else, other than those equally well known as pianists, did you have in mind as being particularly fond of writing piano concertos?

I didn't think it meant, exclusively, piano concertos. Janacek (apologies again for the bug which disallows accents - it's being worked on) wrote wonderful pieces for solo piano.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

The Piano Elgar made sketches for was elaborated/completed/realised by Robert Walker and is available on a Dutton CD. Sadly, despite my enthusiam for Elgar (and the better known Anthony Payne realisations) I can find little to cheer about in this one.
I do agree about Britten's "Diversions"

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

[QUOTE=french frank;6965]...apologies again for the bug which disallows accents - it's being worked on...QUOTE]
Don't apologise for anything, french frank. We are for ever in your debt for continuing the Radio 3 messageboards in this way.

[Suffolkcoastal]

Actually Vaughan Williams wrote a number of short pieces for piano including The Lake in the Mountains. We musn't forget Bax with his 4 Piano Sonatas (they are very virtuosic) and his two large scale works for piano & orchestra, the Symphonic Variations and Winter Legends as well as the Left Hand Concertante, there is also the G major concerto of Edmund Rubbra (a rather odd work, I have a two piano score of it) the concerto by Robert Simpson (very much worth getting to know) and the Walton Sinfonia Concertante.

[Suffolkcoastal]

Oops i also the forgot the Alwyn and Howells concertos, the Howells 2nd Concerto really ought to be better known.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

John Field (and Clementi, if he counts: lived in London for much of his life) spring to mind.

Wasn't John Field Irish?

[Kurwenal]

I cannot recall offhand if he composed a piano concerto, but I would make a plea for York Bowen who was certainly prolific with solo piano music. I would also cheekily suggest Medtner, who composed magnificent (and overlooked) concerti. He may not have actually been British, but he lived in Wales (Swansea, I think) for most of his life, so the works were at least born in the UK. I am not particularly into contemporary music but I would make a plea for Thomas Ades " In Seven Days" as a grand piece, also the Macmillan "Berserking".
Great review by Simon Heffer here:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/simonheffer/5742334/James-MacMillan-and-a-musical-bag-of-spanners.html

[ahinton]

I cannot recall offhand if he composed a piano concerto, but I would make a plea for York Bowen who was certainly prolific with solo piano music. I would also cheekily suggest Medtner, who composed magnificent (and overlooked) concerti. He may not have actually been British, but he lived in Wales (Swansea, I think) for most of his life, so the works were at least born in the UK. I am not particularly into contemporary music but I would make a plea for Thomas Ades " In Seven Days" as a grand piece, also the Macmillan "Berserking".
Great review by Simon Heffer here:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/c...-spanners.html

Bowen wrote four piano concertos. Medtner did not live in Swansea but in London! I believe that only the last of his three piano concertos was composed in Britain, however.

No one has yet mentioned the piano concerto by Alan Bush - one of the most ambitious of all English piano concertos. Bush was himself a considerable pianist in his younger days and he premiered the work himself.

[Lion-of-Vienna]

Raymond Clarke is a pianist whose name always springs to mind in relation to British piano music. I remember him giving a recital in Manchester a decade or more ago of the piano music of Robert Simpson, not the first composer that you would associate with the piano, but it is well worth listening to if you respond to Simpson's symphonies and string quartets. At about the same time he recorded the music on CD.

Clarke has also recorded the music of another composer who is not chiefly remembered for his piano works, Havergal Brian. There are two Preludes and Fugues and a Double Fugue written about the time of the Gothic symphony as well as several short pieces. Pianists who could occasionally include some of these works in recitals would be doing a great service in keeping Brian's name in the (admittedly rather dim) spotlight.

[mercia]

This is rather attractive

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JnvNPElfRk

[ahinton]

Raymond Clarke is a pianist whose name always springs to mind in relation to British piano music. I remember him giving a recital in Manchester a decade or more ago of the piano music of Robert Simpson, not the first composer that you would associate with the piano, but it is well worth listening to if you respond to Simpson's symphonies and string quartets. At about the same time he recorded the music on CD.

Clarke has also recorded the music of another composer who is not chiefly remembered for his piano works, Havergal Brian. There are two Preludes and Fugues and a Double Fugue written about the time of the Gothic symphony as well as several short pieces. Pianists who could occasionally include some of these works in recitals would be doing a great service in keeping Brian's name in the (admittedly rather dim) spotlight.

I rather fear that both of these composers - most especially Brian - should have stuck to writing other than for the piano (which of course they did, largely); Brian's piano writing is clumsy in the extreme and he seems never to have had anything to say that specifically called for the piano with which to say it, IMHO.

[Op. XXXIX]

John Ogdon wrote a concerto which he recorded in the '70's. Anyone have the old LP lying around? Would be curious to hear it.

I love the Vaughan Williams concerto in either version, though I have noticed amongst VW's admirers a fair amount of disagreement over its merits.