Amy Beach; Cécile Chaminade; Dorothy Howell - Piano Concertos (Danny Driver)

Information

Composer: Amy Beach; Cécile Chaminade; Dorothy Howell

1. Howell - Piano Concerto in D minor
2. Beach - Piano Concerto in C sharp minor, Op. 45: 1. Allegro moderato
3. Beach - Piano Concerto in C sharp minor, Op. 45: 2. Scherzo (Perpetuum mobile): Vivace
4. Beach - Piano Concerto in C sharp minor, Op. 45: 3. Largo
5. Beach - Piano Concerto in C sharp minor, Op. 45: 4. Allegro con scioltezza
6. Chaminade - Concertstück in C sharp minor, Op. 40

Danny Driver, piano
BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra
Rebecca Miller, conductor

Date: 2015
Label: Hyperion
https://www.hyperion-records.co.uk/dc.asp?dc=D_CDA68130

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Review

None of the 91 composers featured on the previous 69 volumes in Hyperion’s Romantic Piano Concerto series has been a woman. As if to redress the balance, Vol 70 has three. It is sponsored by Ambache (a charitable trust dedicated to raising the profile of music by women), and the BBC Scottish SO (leader Laura Samuel) is conducted by Rebecca Miller, whose special rapport with the soloist may or may not have something to do with the fact that she is married to him.

It is little to do with Danny Driver’s gender that allows him to far outshine two earlier champions of the Amy Beach Concerto who happen to be women: Marie Louise Boehm (sounding a little elderly now on Vox or as part of the 40 CD Brilliant Classics box set I welcomed in the August 2016 issue) and Joanne Polk (Arabesque, 6/00). This is a big, virtuoso vehicle demanding great endurance and a bravura technique (the first movement lasting nearly 17 minutes is followed by a very difficult vivace perpetuum mobile 5'38" in length). Driver surmounts these demands with real artistry and, in the lovely slow movement, immense sensitivity. Hyperion’s recording (Simon Eadon and Andrew Keener in Glasgow’s City Halls) is also better focused and with greater depth than the otherwise fine version from by Alan Feinberg (Naxos, 6/03).

If Driver offers a robust, muscular view of the Beach, he is certainly in touch with his feminine side in the highly attractive single-movement Concerto (19'33") by Dorothy Howell (1898-1982), composed in 1923. Lighter in substance but even more appealing is Cécile Chaminade’s Concertstück in the same key as the Beach. The repeated scale figure could become mundane. In Driver’s hands it is enchanting – as indeed is this whole disc, a worthy addition to this series, launched more than a quarter of a century ago.

-- Jeremy Nicholas, Gramophone

More reviews:
http://www.classical-music.com/review/danny-driver-performs-piano-concertos-beach-chaminade-and-howell
http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2017/Mar/Beach_PC_CDA68130.htm
http://www.classicalsource.com/db_control/db_cd_review.php?id=14540
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2017/mar/02/howell-beach-chaminade-piano-concertos-cd-review-danny-driver-miller
https://www.limelightmagazine.com.au/reviews/beach-chaminade-howell-piano-concertos-danny-driver/
https://www.straitstimes.com/lifestyle/arts/hot-track-beachchaminadehowell-features-piano-concertos-by-danny-driver
https://www.audaud.com/beach-piano-concerto-in-c-minor-howell-piano-concerto-in-d-minor-chaminade-concertstuck-in-c-minor-danny-driver-p-bbc-scottish-symph-orch-rebecca-miller-hyperion/
https://www.allmusic.com/album/the-romantic-piano-concerto-vol-70-beach-chaminade-howell-mw0003014273
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Romantic-Piano-Concerto-Vol-70/dp/B01NA7FSFQ

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Amy Beach (September 5, 1867 – December 27, 1944) was an American composer and pianist. She was the first successful American female composer of large-scale art music. Her "Gaelic" Symphony, premiered by the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 1896, was the first symphony composed and published by an American woman. She was one of the first American composers to succeed without the benefit of European training, and one of the most respected and acclaimed American composers of her era. As a pianist, she was acclaimed for concerts she gave featuring her own music in the United States and in Germany.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amy_Beach

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Cécile Chaminade (8 August 1857 – 13 April 1944) was a French composer and pianist, one of the relatively few women composers of her time to achieve great popularity. She was a regular on British concert stages and a big hit in America. Many of Chaminade's piano compositions received good reviews from critics; her music was described as tuneful, highly accessible and mildly chromatic. Chaminade was relegated to obscurity for the second half of the 20th century, as her piano pieces and songs mostly forgotten. The Flute Concertino in D major, Op. 107 (1902) is her most popular piece today.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C%C3%A9cile_Chaminade

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Dorothy Howell (25 February 1898 – 12 January 1982) was an English composer and pianist. She studied at the Royal Academy of Music, where her teachers included John Blackwood McEwen and Tobias Matthay. Howell achieved fame with her symphonic poem Lamia, which Sir Henry Wood premiered at The Proms on 10 September 1919. Among other compositions by Howell, Wood conducted Koong Shee in 1921, her Piano Concerto in 1923 and 1927 with the composer herself as pianist on both occasions, and The Rock in 1928. In her lifetime, Howell received the nickname of the "English Strauss".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorothy_Howell

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Danny Driver (born 1977 in London) is a British classical pianist. He trained with Alexander Kelly and Piers Lane at Cambridge University, with Irina Zaritskaya at the Royal College of Music, and completed his studies privately with Maria Curcio. Driver has a special interest in unusual or neglected works, alongside the mainstream repertoire. His recordings for Hyperion Records, which earned him three Gramophone Award nominations, include music by Robert Schumann, C. P. E. Bach, G. F. Handel, Mily Balakirev, as well as neglected British composers such as Benjamin Dale, York Bowen and Erik Chisholm.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danny_Driver

http://www.dannydriver.com/artist.php?view=bio

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