Howard Shelley

Active in every genre other than opera, Carl Czerny is largely remembered for the numerous piano studies he wrote as pedagogical aids. Howard Shelley's advocacy of his three overlooked virtuoso works for piano and orchestra is a welcome reminder of this composer's greater appeal. Alongside the Piano Concerto in A minor Op.214 are two premiere recordings of his Piano Concerto in F major Op.28 and Rondo Brillant in B flat major Op.233.

Henri Herz was a phenomenon in 1830s Paris and 1840s America, but today his music is mostly forgotten. He wrote eight piano concertos, one of which was lost. Concertos 1, 3, 4, 5, 7 and 8 appear across two previous volumes of the Romantic Piano Concertos series. Here, Howard Shelley and the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra put on their finest dancing shoes to complete the cycle with Piano Concerto No. 2 (the one with which Herz conquered America in 1846) and three extended fantasies.

The ‘air-spun brilliance and stylistic elegance’ which Gramophone so admired in Howard Shelley’s previous recording of Sterndale Bennett is in abundant evidence in this new release of the first three piano concertos.

Volume 72 of our Romantic Piano Concerto series comes to the rescue of yet another neglected figure with three first recordings courtesy of Howard Shelley and his Tasmanian forces. Composer, pianist, writer and educator (he was an early Principal of the Royal Academy of Music), London-born Cipriani Potter was encouraged by Beethoven and admired by Wagner.

No fewer than four composers vie for attention in volume 78 of the Romantic Piano Concerto. There’s only one official piano concerto here, but it’s a remarkable work from a composer in her mid-teens.

This wonderful CD is the product of the Chandos phenomenon; they find a neglected masterpiece that is unplayed and unknown, they record it brilliantly with a top class orchestra and conductor with soloists if appropriate and sell it to people like me, lovers of the English Musical Renaissance of the early part of the twentieth century. This CD contains well over an hour of the most tuneful and innovative music you can buy.