Tippett: Piano Concerto

“Three memorable classics: Yehudi Menuhin leads the Fantasia concertante, and in the Piano Concerto, Ogdon is both powerful and reflective. Clear, rather bass-light recorded sound.” BBC Music Magazine, June 2009 ****

“Osborne is superb at delineating the characters of the four sonatas and underlining how, in their very different ways, they relate to the piano tradition … under his fingers the Second Sonata emerges as a gritty and uncompromising masterpiece … his account of the Piano Concerto with Martyn Brabbins and the BBC Scottish Symphony is similarly charged” The Guardian

“This double album is a monumental achievement. Tippett’s writing for piano is as demanding as it is cliché-resistant. No body of music for the instrument since Messiaen’s is as distinctive as his and it is wonderful to have the oeuvre together on disc. The concerto is realised with a precision and vigour, both soloistic and orchestral, that leave one marvelling anew at its inventiveness. The account of the brief, early, concerted Fantasia on a theme of Handel makes me revise my opinion of the work sharply upwards. In Osborne’s account of the four sonatas, each a big statement, radiance and virtuosity go hand in hand” Sunday Times

“This splendid double album… assembles all Tippett's music for piano whether solo of with orchestra, in performances that impressively set new standards in these often challenging works.” BBC Music Magazine, January 2008 *****

“Most powerful of all is the mighty Concerto… the eloquence and fantasy of what is undoubtedly one of the major works of the 1950s is superbly projected in a performance which need fear no comparison with the best earlier recordings… As for the sonatas, Steven Osborne is at least the equal of Paul Crossley... in interpretative empathy, and has the advantage of superlative modern recording.” Gramophone Magazine, December 2007

“The young Tippett – magpie and maverick – sought maximum intensity of feeling while shunning what he felt to be the sentimental fervour of Elgar, Bax and Walton. Equally abhorrent were the pastoral pieties of Vaughan Williams. Tippett took his stand with Blake and Yeats rather than Bunyan, and a Blake whose 'bow of burning gold' required something altogether less complacent than Parry's well upholstered jingoism.
The results are plain to hear in Tippett's earliest works for piano, the First Sonata and the Handel Fantasia. The slow movement of the sonata may flirt briefly with Hindemith-style counterpoint but the predominant spirit is fiery and spontaneous, with a reinvigorated romanticism embracing those aspects of popular music which Tippett believed to have 'classical' potential.
The road ahead was bumpy and he occasionally lost his way, as in the very long slow movement of the Third Sonata, aspiring to Beethovenian depth but bogged down in overly dense textures. There are also several repetitions too many in the Fourth Sonata, though the final movement's gently poetic sense of resignation more than compensates.
Most powerful of all is the mighty Concerto, starkly and confidently poised between Tippett's still richly potent earlier style and the brave new possibilities explored in its visionary central movement. This recording blends the piano in with the orchestra, acknowledging the work's symphonic attributes, and there is a certain recessed quality to the sound of the piece throughout. Nevertheless, the eloquence and fantasy of what is undoubtedly one of the major works of the 1950s is superbly projected in a performance which need fear no comparison with the best earlier recordings. As for the sonatas, Steven Osborne is at least the equal of Paul Crossley (CRD) in interpretative empathy, and has the advantage of superlative modern recording.
There's a further advantage: perceptive and lucid booklet-notes by Ian Kemp, Tippett's friend and biographer, and one of Osborne's mentors. The set is dedicated to him.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010

“This is full-blooded, dramatic, joyful music. Steven Osborne makes the works his own, dealing with their considerable technical difficulties with ease and aplomb...Under his fingers, the piano glitters and glides through the multi-faceted concerto with luminosity and depth, and his playing is perfectly matched by the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra under Martyn Brabbins.” Charlotte Gardner, bbc.co.uk, 8th January 2008

“This is a highly desirable budget-priced Naxos release of two of the late Sir Michael Tippett's most well-loved works. The Ritual Dances adds up to a sizeable chunk of his first opera, the Midsummer Marriage, full of resonances of the countryside and the seasons, with darker overtones of birth, life and death (yes, almost a Rite of Spring, and almost as long). Their performance here from the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra under George Hurst is thrusting and colourful, with some wonderful woodwind solos. Breathing the same luminous, magical soundworld is Tippett's Piano Concerto of a few years later. Soloist in this finely-detailed, gently glowing account is Benjamin Frith.” Birmingham Post

“[Nimbus'] commitment to preserving the composer's own readings of his music during his lifetime was noble, assiduous and beyond reproach ... The achievement, as revealed on this four-CD collection, a panoramic view of his output lasting in all nearly four and a half hours, is such as to renew our sense of Tippett's greatness and his lasting historical presence, and the sheer glory of his music.” BBC Music Magazine