Piers

Piers Lane - Goes To Town (2013) [Official Digital Download 24-bit/96kHz]

Piers Lane - Goes To Town (2013)
FLAC (tracks) 24-bit/96 kHz | Time - 76:05 minutes | 1,24 GB
Studio Master, Official Digital Download | Artwork: Digital booklet

Piers Lane gambols delightfully through the twentieth century in this album of encores, party pieces and a few pianophile rarities, ranging from Dame Myra Hess’s unforgettable arrangement of Bach’s Jesu, joy of man’s desiring to Dudley Moore’s equally unforgettable Beethoven pastiche. This album includes first recordings of, among others, John Ireland’s Ballerina and Mark Saya’s Offenbach/Chopin conflation Barcarolles. A number of these pieces are by Australian composers who wrote for Piers himself. His unbounded virtuosity and joy in the music is clearly an inspiration, and is evident throughout the recording.
Piers Lane - Bach Piano Transcriptions, Vol. 8: Eugene d'Albert (2010)

Piers Lane - Bach Piano Transcriptions, Vol. 8: Eugene d'Albert (2010)
EAC | FLAC (image+.cue, log) | Covers Included | 01:13:57 | 266 MB
Genre: Classical | Label: Hyperion | Catalog: 67709

Some impressive pianism may be found here, both from Piers Lane and prior to that from Eugen d’Albert. The latter was a virtuoso pianist and transcriber, also a composer whose opera Tiefland (1903) has remained popular in Germany. He was, however, born in Glasgow of French and English parents and began his career in England. Eventually he publicly renounced all things Anglo-Saxon, much to the annoyance of his mentor, Sir Arthur Sullivan, and settled in Berlin to concertize, performing the great masters: Bach, interwoven with Spohr and Beethoven.
Piers Lane, The Orchestra Now & Leon Botstein - Rubbra & Bliss: Piano Concertos (2020)

Piers Lane, The Orchestra Now & Leon Botstein - Rubbra & Bliss: Piano Concertos (2020)
WEB FLAC (tracks) - 279 Mb | MP3 CBR 320 kbps - 183 Mb | Digital booklet | 01:17:27
Classical | Label: Hyperion Records

Two very different takes on the romantic piano concerto, both equally successful. The Bliss – written in 1939 for the World’s Fair in New York – is extrovert, exuberant and virtuosic, the Rubbra a profound reflection on, and continuation of, the English pastoral tradition.

Piers Lane goes to town again (2023)  Music

Posted by ArlegZ at Dec. 16, 2023
Piers Lane goes to town again (2023)

Piers Lane goes to town again (2023)
EAC | FLAC | Image (Cue & Log) ~ 227 Mb | Total time: 82.31 | Scans included
Classical | Label: Hyperion | # CDA68163 | Recorded: 2015, 2022

Piers Lane brings all his pianistic panache to this splendidly eclectic recital of works from the 1700s to 2019, in a programme exploring very different aspects of the dance.
Piers Lane, David Lloyd-Jones, Ulster Orchestra - The Romantic Piano Concerto Vol. 39: Delius & Ireland: Piano Concertos (2006)

Piers Lane, David Lloyd-Jones, Ulster Orchestra - The Romantic Piano Concerto Vol. 39: Delius & Ireland: Piano Concertos (2006)
EAC | FLAC | Image (Cue & no Log) ~ 253 Mb | Total time: 64:24 | Scans included
Classical | Label: Hyperion | # CDA67296 | Recorded: 2005

Hyperion’s record of the month for January presents, for the first time, the original version of Delius’s Piano Concerto. Two years after completing this work in 1904, Delius recast it, rejecting the third movement and reorganizing other material. Perhaps thinking that the solo part wasn’t sufficiently pianistic, Delius also consulted a friend, the Busoni pupil Theodor Szántó, who rewrote the piano part in virtuoso style (with Delius’s ultimate approval). It is the Szántó version that has, until now, always been performed. With Delius’s original, characteristically refined orchestration also restored (from the orchestral parts that survive from the first performance in 1904), we can now hear this work as the composer envisaged before the involvement of another hand.
Piers Lane, Tasmanian Symphony, Howard Shelley - Williamson: The Complete Piano Concertos (2014) [Official 24-bit/96kHz]

Piers Lane, Tasmanian SO, Howard Shelley - Williamson: The Complete Piano Concertos (2014)
FLAC (tracks) 24-bit/96 kHz | Time - 116:23 minutes | 1,93 GB
Studio Master, Official Digital Download | Artwork: Digital booklet

A real rarity from Hyperion's Anglo-Australian artistic collaboration: music by an Australian composer who was once at the heart of the English establishment. Malcolm Williamson was one of many Australian creative artists who relocated to Britain in the mid-twentieth century. This double-album set of the complete Piano Concertos is therefore an important document as well as a compendium of deeply appealing music. Williamson wrote with a generosity of emotion and melodic flair rare in the mid-twentieth century, in a forward-looking idiom. Piers Lane, the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra and Howard Shelley are the ideal performers of these unjustly neglected works.

Piers Lane - Eugen d'Albert: Solo Piano Music (1997)  Music

Posted by Designol at Nov. 23, 2022
Piers Lane - Eugen d'Albert: Solo Piano Music (1997)

Piers Lane - Eugen d'Albert: Solo Piano Music (1997)
EAC | FLAC | Image (Cue&Log) ~ 213 Mb | Mp3 (CBR320) ~ 184 Mb | Artwork included
Genre: Classical | Label: Hyperion | # CDA66945 | Time: 01:19:31

Here is a superb recital following Piers Lane’s earlier Hyperion release of d’Albert piano concertos (4/96) and, once again, provoking astonishment that music of such quality could have lain neglected for so long. Variety is, indeed, the spice of d’Albert (1864-1932), the legendary, six times married pianist so greatly admired by Liszt. Tending to leave his wives as soon as they bore him children (one for the Freudians), his occasional sense of confusion – including an outburst to Teresa Carreno, his second conquest, “Come quickly, my child and your child are fighting with our child” – hardly detracted from a dazzling career and a series of compositions of a special richness.
Piers Lane, Bergen PO, Andrew Litton - Eyvind Alnaes & Christian Sinding: Piano Concertos (2007)

The Romantic Piano Concerto, Vol. 42: Eyvind Alnæs & Christian Sinding (2007)
Piers Lane, piano; Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra; Andrew Litton, conductor

EAC | FLAC | Image (Cue&Log) ~ 233 Mb | Mp3 (CBR320) ~ 152 Mb | Artwork included
Genre: Classical | Label: Hyperion | # CDA67555 | Time: 01:05:10

You're going to love this disc. It does everything this wonderful series of "Romantic Piano Concertos" is supposed to: present captivating repertoire in excellent performances. Christian Sinding was a notoriously spotty composer when working in large forms. After all, if you live well into your 80s writing tons of music along the way, but remain famous for one three-minute piano miniature ("Rustle of Spring"), then something's not right. That said, this youthful concerto offsets its tendency to ramble with an abundance of fresh, enjoyable tunes and fistfuls of pianistic fun and games. When the melodies are so attractive it's impossible to deny Sinding his right to dwell on them at length.

Piers Lane - Camille Saint-Saens: The Complete Etudes (1998)  Music

Posted by Designol at Feb. 15, 2023
Piers Lane - Camille Saint-Saens: The Complete Etudes (1998)

Piers Lane - Camille Saint-Saëns: The Complete Études (1998)
EAC | FLAC | Image (Cue&Log) ~ 205 Mb | Mp3 (CBR320) ~ 167 Mb | Artwork included
Genre: Classical | Label: Hyperion | # CDA67037 | Time: 01:12:10

Saint-Saens’s Etudes offer an intricate and scintillating panoply of the French school of technique (the basis and prophecy of what Jean-Philippe Collard so mischievously called Marguerite Long’s ‘diggy-diggy-dee’ school of piano playing). Yet as Piers Lane tells us in his alternately wry and delightful accompanying essay (obligatory reading for all lovers of French pianism), they can be as evocative (‘Les cloches de las Palmas’) as they are finger-twisting (‘En forme de valse’, to name but one). The left-hand Etudes, too, given their self-imposed limitation, are a fragile and poetic surprise. In other words Saint-Saens’s Etudes are more comprehensive than their equivalents by, say, Moszkowski or Lazare Levey (superbly recorded by Ilana Vered on Connoisseur Society and Danielle Laval on French EMI, respectively – neither issued in the UK).
Piers Lane, Niklas Willén - The Romantic Piano Concerto Vol. 21: Kullak & Dreyschock: Piano Concertos (1999)

Piers Lane, Niklas Willén, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra - The Romantic Piano Concerto Vol. 21: Kullak & Dreyschock: Piano Concertos (1999)
EAC | FLAC | Image (Cue & no Log) ~ 254 Mb | Total time: 59:26 | Scans included
Classical | Label: Hyperion | # CDA67086 | Recorded: 1999

Dreyschock and Kullak are today only footnotes in the biographies of those who emerged from the nineteenth century as giants of the musical world, but in their time both artists were very significant indeed.