"First, a question: what is not to like about this disc? Nothing that I can hear.These concertos, one by Sir Donald Francis Tovey--an Englishman who worked extensively in Scotland, and one by Sir Alexander Campbell Mackenzie--a Scot who worked in England, may not be world beaters. They sure are wonderful all the same.Yes, Tovey may sound a lot like Brahms at times. Is that a bad thing? For all of his Brahmsian sensibility, Tovey's concerto has a Toveyian warmth and ease that is all its own. Call it Brahms on the rocks.Of the two works here, Mackenzie's concerto was the one that really grabbed me upon first listening. I am a fan of traditional Scottish music. It was fun to hear The Reel of Tulloch and Green Grow the Rashes in a classical setting. The Scottish Concerto has more thunder up front and more beauty in the middle than Tovey's.Yet the Tovey concerto is the piece that I have returned to the most over time. There is a charm to this music, particularly the finale, that is very endearing.Steven Osborne, who is himself Scottish, brings just the right touch to this disc. One minute he is racing up a mountain of virtuosity, the next he quietly meditating on the beauty of the piece.The BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and their conductor Martyn Brabbins rarely fail to impress me. This is a first class outfit and a first rate conductor. They show it here.This nineteenth installment of Hyperion's Romantic Piano Concerto series is very likable. Both pieces are fun, worthwhile and recorded beautifully. I recommend this disc highly."
Forgotten masterpieces
NotATameLion | 08/17/2002
(5 out of 5 stars)
"Amazingly, this is the first recording of either of these concertos, which are far too original to be considered historical curiosities. Tovey is probably best known for his critical writings and editions of music, but was also a master composer as evidenced by this concerto written just in his 20s. Though the sleeve notes claim it strongly resembles Brahms, I think Tovey finds his own voice quite well here. None of the movements is extremely grave or serious on the surface, but the first reaches great climaxes with waves of orchestral sound and keyboard passages blending together in a nearly impressionistic way. The second is a reflective and sober slow movement, while the third is a catchy march with many contrapuntal sections. Mackenzie's Scottish Concerto is quite identifiable as such, since each movement is based around a traditional Scottish melody. Each movement evolves directly from the melody in quite an interesting way. The dramatic first movement leads into a warm slow movement and a very exciting finale.While obviously written by different composers with different intentions, the two concertos do show some similarities and complement each other very well. The superb performances by soloist and orchestra, plus great sound, combine to make this one of my favorite CDs in my whole collection. Let's hope that these two concertos by two composers with flawless musical sensibilities are heard as much as they deserve to be in the future."
Tovey takes all
janus_kreisler_sachs | the Midwest, USA | 07/23/2003
(4 out of 5 stars)
"The Mackenzie work is basically a potpourri-type concerto that uses traditional Scottish melodies and original material in a similar vein. No profundity to be found here, to be sure. But the work can certainly be enjoyed for what it is: a loosely structured, flashy romp through several tunes.
Tovey is perhaps best known for his insightful (if sometimes quirky) writings on music, but his piano concerto shows that he could apply his musical knowledge to the craft of composition (no mean feat indeed!). Written in 1903 (six years after Brahms's death), the work is the closest thing to being Brahms's third piano concerto. The spacious yet tightly structured first movement shows the influence of the first movement of Brahms's second concerto, and is filled with rich harmonic progressions, some wonderfully knotty contrapuntal passages, ingenious development of themes and motives (the way themes and motives would grow and change into one another is really quite remarkable, a tour de force of musical development), and a piano part that is rich and muscular without being needlessly showy. The slow movement is pensive without being lugubrious, and the march-like finale brings the concerto to a spirited close. I must admit I sometimes feel the finale to be something of an anti-climax, especially after the intricate first movement. Nevertheless, I'm still very fond of Tovey's concerto, and I've been listening to it everyday for weeks now without tiring of it. Yes, it is not the most "progressive" piece of music for its time, but considering the fact that it takes up the mantle of a master (Brahms) who had died only six years before, I wouldn't dismiss it as a mere anachronistic curiosity. If you are a Brahms fanatic (as I am), do consider getting this CD for Tovey's magnificent concerto. Performances and sound are both top notch."
A Mixed Bag
Jeffrey Lee | Asheville area, NC USA | 01/20/2003
(3 out of 5 stars)
"In Tovey's Piano Concerto, with its traces of measured, semi-heroic cadences, there's more than just a slight hint of Brahms' youthful opus 15 d minor Piano Concerto. The impression becomes more obvious as the first movement proceeds with its orchestral swells and pleasant woodwind expressions. A similar pattern emerges in the poetically reflective second movement, but Tovey is no Brahms clone. He does quite nicely on his own. Some of the strains of the last movement give the impression of a mild Mendelssohnian flavor. What develops is a rather pleasant interplay between piano and orchestra. A lyrical tunefulness continues to the end.
Alexander Mackenzie's Scottish Concerto begins with an impressive horn call. What follows for piano and orchestra sounds like a dramatic movie soundtrack theme. Soon, things begin to sound episodic and more theatrical, and start to border on aimlessness. The second movement continues uneventfully. I find it increasingly difficult to hold my interest here. Some catchy, tuneful bits surface in the last movement, but, for the most part, the impresssion of insipidness returns. Sorry, but not for me. In conclusion, however, I do like the Tovey Concerto and plan to return to it for enjoyment. The grooves on the Mackenzie will more than likely remain relatively new. I have no quibble with the performers in these works. Hyperion offers, as usual, very fine sound reproduction."
SECOND SUBJECTS
DAVID BRYSON | Glossop Derbyshire England | 04/13/2006
(4 out of 5 stars)
"What Georg Szell termed `the English professorial school' of composers probably mainly signified for him, as it does for me, Bernard Shaw's triumvirate of targets Parry, Stanford and Mackenzie. If you recall, Shaw tells us how we know these were all great composers - each of them vouches for the other two. I see and hear less of Stanford these days although Parry lives on immortally through his Jerusalem, but I never heard much by Mackenzie at any stage of my life, so it is a particular pleasure to have his Scottish Concerto for piano now available on disc for the first time.
However if any of us were required to name a famous English professor of music, I suspect that the first name that would spring to our lips would be that of Donald Francis Tovey. Tovey was a pupil, or at least a disciple, of Parry, and what he is famous for is not his compositions but his commentaries on other composers' compositions. This is not how he would have wished matters to be, but it is only fair to say that his analytical essays and other writings have a unique place in the musical education of the English-speaking world for the brilliance of both their insights and their style. Inevitably, Tovey's approach has dated somewhat. Music for me at least has long since ceased to be any matter of second subjects, unexpected modulations to the submediant, codas and the other Toveyan marvels. On the other hand I was more than curious to hear how he went about conjuring up these wonders in his own works, and now here is his piano concerto, as well as Mackenzie's, making its debut on disc.
Before I say anything else, let me commend this disc earnestly and quite sincerely to all music lovers whose interest is not totally confined to established masterpieces by established masters. The pieces are well worth hearing and owning, enterprises like this deserve support, and this particular venture has been well, if not quite ideally, done. My main reservation concerns the recording, particularly in Tovey's first movement. The balance between soloist and orchestra is natural and well judged - it is no longer common to have the soloist only inches from the microphone as used to be the rule - but the piano is liable to be swamped by the full orchestra in a forte, there is a lack of ring in the treble and the effect of the full orchestra at full power is just slightly sooty. In a recording from 1978, perhaps even from 1988, this might not have bothered me, but I see this production is from 1998. By that date Hyperion could certainly do better, and as a son of Glasgow myself I hope the problem was not the acoustics at ra Caun'lriggs. Matters are certainly rather better in the other two movements, and better they remain throughout Mackenzie's concerto. This is only fair to the fine work of the soloist Steven Osborne, whom I'm sure I have heard in broadcasts and whom I could have sworn (from his photo) I had seen as a striker or an attacking midfielder somewhere in the English Premiership.
I must be candid and say that both these concertos seem second-rate to me, although there are some much more famous efforts in the genre that I would call third-rate at best. Unless the composer is Britten, I have learned to beware of British compositions that base themselves on folk music, and Mackenzie's ethnic offering reinforces this view. The work is skilfully scored, but I had only to recall Bruch's Scottish Fantasia to appreciate the difference between true and ersatz inspiration. The quality of such a work is not inherent in the style or idiom, I am convinced by Bruch, but in this case it is probably inherent in the composer. Tovey's work is very much what you might expect - the creative output of a gifted musician whose real vocation was to teach rather than to compose. It is melodious and pleasant, and thoroughly conservative. I would suggest that you ignore the predictable comparisons with Brahms, unless you are able to believe, as I and Schoenberg are not, that Brahms was some kind of conservative too; and indeed unless mild late-romantic music in general manages to sound like Brahms to you. The liner-note trots out this overworked proposition, and in general it is a very disappointing one considering that some reasonable space was for once available to the author. There is some useful background, but the remarks on the music really seem mainly solemn waffle to me, and some of the detail is slipshod as well - Tovey's concerto dates from 6 years, not 3, after Brahms's death, and Tovey did not graduate with distinction from Oxford but gained a third class on account of spending all his time on his precious music and not on the Latin and Greek that he was supposed to be studying. On the other hand Steven Osborne took the top honours at the great Royal Northern College of Music, I am grateful to him for his pioneering work in bringing these concertos into our homes, and I expect to hear great things from him in the future."