Piers Lane, Howard Shelley – Williamson: Complete Piano Concertos (2014) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Piers Lane, Howard Shelley - Williamson: Complete Piano Concertos (2014) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz] Download

Piers Lane, Howard Shelley – Williamson: Complete Piano Concertos (2014)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:56:14 minutes | 2,14 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Hyperion

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. Within a decade of settling in London he had established a reputation as one of the most gifted and prolific composers of his generation. His stature as a leading figure within the British music scene was publicly acknowledged in 1975 when he was appointed to the esteemed post of Master of the Queen’s Music in succession to Sir Arthur Bliss. But today he is almost forgotten and his music virtually never performed.

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.

The third concerto is perhaps the masterpiece, a huge and complex work. The fourth was written in 1993/4 and appears here as its world premiere performance and recording.

Piers Lane, the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra and Howard Shelley are the ideal performers of these unjustly neglected works.

Composer: Malcolm Williamson
Performer: Mark Bain, Piers Lane, Yoram Levy, Martin Phillipson, …
Conductor: Howard Shelley
Orchestra/Ensemble: Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra
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Howard Shelley, Nuremberg Symphony Orchestra – Tellefsen & Kalkbrenner: Piano Concertos (2024) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Howard Shelley, Nuremberg Symphony Orchestra – Tellefsen & Kalkbrenner: Piano Concertos (2024)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:15:55 minutes | 1,20 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Hyperion

A fascinating new name bursts into our Romantic Piano series with the two concertos by Thomas Tellefsen, here coupled with an extended concert piece by series stalwart Friedrich Kalkbrenner. All three works here enjoy Howard Shelley’s trademark dexterity and exuberant bravura technique.

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Howard Shelley – Tellefsen & Kalkbrenner Piano Concertos (2024) [24Bit-96kHz] FLAC [PMEDIA] ⭐️

Howard Shelley - Tellefsen & Kalkbrenner Piano Concertos (2024) [24Bit-96kHz] FLAC [PMEDIA] ⭐️ Download

Howard Shelley – Tellefsen & Kalkbrenner Piano Concertos (2024) [24Bit-96kHz] FLAC [PMEDIA] ⭐️
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:15:55 minutes | 1,20 GB | Genre: Classique
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover

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Roberto Prosseda – Gounod Complete Works for Pedal Piano & Orchestra (Hyperion Romantic Piano Concerto 62) (2013) [24Bit-96kHz] FLAC [PMEDIA] ⭐️

Roberto Prosseda - Gounod Complete Works for Pedal Piano & Orchestra (Hyperion Romantic Piano Concerto 62) (2013) [24Bit-96kHz] FLAC [PMEDIA] ⭐️ Download

Roberto Prosseda – Gounod Complete Works for Pedal Piano & Orchestra (Hyperion Romantic Piano Concerto 62) (2013) [24Bit-96kHz] FLAC [PMEDIA] ⭐️
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 00:55:52 minutes | 954 MB | Genre: Classique
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover

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Howard Shelley, Ulster Orchestra – Steibelt: Piano Concertos Nos. 3, 5 & 7 (2016) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Howard Shelley, Ulster Orchestra – Steibelt: Piano Concertos Nos. 3, 5 & 7 (2016)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:19:52 minutes | 1,17 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Hyperion Records

Howard Shelley and the Ulster Orchestra return for a second volume in Hyperion’s new Classical Piano Concerto series. Daniel Steibelt—the man who dared to challenge Beethoven and lost—ruled the keyboards of northern Europe for a quarter of a century, his own concertos as sensationally popular as their composer was ostentatious.

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Howard Shelley & Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra – Potter: Piano Concertos Nos 2 & 4 (2017) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Howard Shelley & Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra – Potter: Piano Concertos Nos 2 & 4 (2017)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:13:53 minutes | 1,21 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Hyperion Records

Volume 72 of the 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.

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Howard Shelley & Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra – Czerny: Piano Concertos (2017) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Howard Shelley & Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra – Czerny: Piano Concertos (2017)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:13:06 minutes | 1,19 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Hyperion Records

Active in every genre other than opera, Czerny is now remembered largely for the numerous piano studies he wrote as pedagogical aids. Which makes Howard Shelleys advocacy of the three virtuoso works for piano and orchestra recorded here, two of them for the first time, all the more welcome: this is music which cannot fail to appeal.

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Howard Shelley – Mendelssohn: The Complete Solo Piano Music, Vol. 4 (2016) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Howard Shelley – Mendelssohn: The Complete Solo Piano Music, Vol. 4 (2016)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:07:11 minutes | 1,04 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Hyperion Records

The Op 35 set of Preludes and Fugues is the most substantial single opus Mendelssohn wrote for solo piano, a mark of his reverence for the mighty Bach. Coupled with the popular fifth book of Songs without Words, we have here a heavyweight fourth volume in Howard Shelley’s compendium.

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Howard Shelley – The Complete Solo Piano Music, Vol. 3 (2015) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Howard Shelley – The Complete Solo Piano Music, Vol. 3 (2015)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:04:27 minutes | 1,04 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Hyperion Records

One of the very great pianists of the nineteenth century, Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy (1809–1847) achieved legendary status for his performances and improvisations alike, though his piano compositions generally have not withstood comparison with the very best keyboard music of the century. The one piano sonata he published was deemed not to have broken new ground after Beethoven’s path-breaking thirty-two; he created no large-scale cyclic works comparable to Robert Schumann’s hybrid literary/musical fantasies for the instrument; his meticulously crafted Lieder ohne Worte exuded for many a refined romanticism not as soul-searching as the miniatures of Chopin or Brahms; and nowhere did his technical demands on the pianist challenge the Promethean exertions of Liszt.

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Howard Shelley, Sinfonieorchester St Gallen – Mozart & Clementi: Piano Concertos (2016) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Howard Shelley, Sinfonieorchester St Gallen – Mozart & Clementi: Piano Concertos (2016)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:11:27 minutes | 1,16 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Hyperion Records

Franz Xaver Mozart was born just four months before the death of his father, Wolfgang Amadeus. A pianist of similarly precocious talent, he nevertheless wrote just two piano concertos: coupled with Clementi’s only surviving essay in the genre, they make a sparkling addition to our Classical Piano Concerto series.

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Howard Shelley, London Mozart Players – Kozeluch: Piano Concertos Nos. 1, 5 & 6 (2016) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Howard Shelley, London Mozart Players – Kozeluch: Piano Concertos Nos. 1, 5 & 6 (2016)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:15:35 minutes | 1,24 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Hyperion Records

Leopold Kozeluch—another composer-pianist trying to make his way in 1780s Vienna—has not been treated kindly by posterity, suffering that posthumous obscurity shared by so many of Mozart’s contemporaries. But his brand of Rococo galanterie, much in evidence in these three piano concertos, is guaranteed to delight, especially in such affectionately attentive performances as these.

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Howard Shelley & Sinfonieorchester St Gallen – Dupont & Benoit: Piano Concertos (2018) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Howard Shelley & Sinfonieorchester St Gallen – Dupont & Benoit: Piano Concertos (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:02:47 minutes | 994 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Hyperion Records

The figures of Auguste Dupont and Peter Benoit may be little known outside their native Belgium, yet both enjoyed pianistic and pedagogical success in their lifetimes. Benoit’s symphonic poem is a piano concerto in all but name, ending with a spiritedly Mephistophelean ‘fantastical hunt’.

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Howard Shelley – Beethoven: Complete Concertos for Piano and Orchestra (2011/2021) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Howard Shelley – Beethoven: Complete Concertos for Piano and Orchestra (2011/2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 05:16:05 minutes | 4,71 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Chandos

The piano remained the main instrument of Beethoven throughout his life, and this specially priced 4-CD box set represents his entire and sizeable output for piano and orchestra, starting with the early Piano Concerto in E flat,

WoO 4 – a work of tremendous energy and great technical demands, which Beethoven wrote when he was just twelve years old – and ending with Piano Concerto No. 5, the only one that Beethoven never performed himself in concert, due to his developing deafness.

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Howard Shelley, Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra – Godard: Piano Concertos (2014) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Howard Shelley, Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra – Godard: Piano Concertos (2014)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:10:07 minutes | 1,15 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Hyperion Records

In sharp contradistinction to the rest of the composers in this series, all of whom look like walruses, Benjamin Godard looks quite a lot like Johnny Depp in his daguerreotype. We should be marketing this directly to teenage girls.

Howard Shelley directs the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra from the piano in this latest volume of The Romantic Piano Concerto series. As ever, they perform unknown music with consummate style and deep understanding, making the best possible case for the works. We have reached Volume 63 and the works of French composer Benjamin Godard, a figure who is almost totally forgotten today. He is described by Jeremy Nicholas in his booklet note as ‘a composer who combines the sentimental melodic appeal of Massenet with the fecundity and technical facility of Saint-Saëns’.

Among Godard’s oeuvre, well over seventy opus numbers are devoted to works for solo piano, ranging from Les contes de Perrault, Op 6, to Valse No 15, Op 153. His Hommage à Chopin can be found on Hyperion CDA67803, performed by Jonathan Plowright. Much of the enormous amount of music he produced followed in the tradition of Mendelssohn and Schumann (his admiration for the latter inspired a string quartet arrangement of Kinderszenen in 1876). With the emergence of more innovative composers, Godard’s conservative idiom meant his reputation faded before his early death in Cannes on 10 January 1895. However, in the three works presented here his writing for the piano exceeds the technical range of his two idols, and is often reminiscent of the bravura demands found in the concertos of Liszt and Rubinstein.

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Howard Shelley, Ulster Orchestra – Dussek: Piano Concertos (2014) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Howard Shelley, Ulster Orchestra – Dussek: Piano Concertos (2014)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:08:17 minutes | 1,15 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Hyperion Records

Following on from Hyperion’s hugely popular ‘Romantic Piano Concerto’ series, the ‘Classical Piano Concerto’ focuses on the lesser-known concertos from the dawn of the genre. Between about 1770 and 1820—the high classical period dominated by Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven—musicians including Clementi, Cramer, Dussek, Steibelt, Woelfl and others made their names as composers and performers of piano concertos. This series aims to be the first in-depth recorded survey of this forgotten repertoire.

This first volume features three of Bohemian virtuoso Jan Ladislav Dussek’s eighteen piano concertos, taken from different points in his career. As a group, these pieces are a fascinating study, with most of the earlier works largely reflecting the Mozartian model, and the later ones revealing stylistic traits sometimes at odds with the late eighteenth-century conception of the form, and anticipating future developments in the genre.

There could be no finer guide to the hidden gems of this repertoire than Howard Shelley, whose recordings of Clementi keyboard works, and Mozart and Hummel piano concertos, have received such acclaim. He appears here as pianist / conductor with the Ulster Orchestra.

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