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A Howard Shelley Concerto Trifecta · The Piano Maven with Jed Distler

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  This is Jed Dissler and welcome to the Piano Maven, your friendly podcast guide to piano
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  recordings.
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  It's very easy to take the British pianist Howard Shelley for granted for the simple
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  reason that he has recorded quite prolifically for, oh goodness, so many different labels
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  and he's recorded a wide, wide range of repertoire.
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  He's recorded, for example, a lot of obscure concertos that are part of the Hyperion label's
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  Romantic Piano Concerto series and more recently he's contributed quite a lot to Hyperion's
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  classical piano concerto cycle.
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  He's recorded cycles devoted to the complete solo piano music of Clementi and Mendelssohn
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  and Rachmaninoff and the list goes on and on.
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  Now when you think about all of the recorded versions of standard concerto repertoire that
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  will eventually cause my CD shelves to cave in and crush me to death, it would make sense
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  probably to pass over or not really pay a lot of attention to this release on the Chandos
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  label that features Howard Shelley playing the Schumann and Grieg concertos as well as
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  the second concerto by Camille Saint-Saens and he's conducting all of them from the
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  piano and your first thought would be, well, do we really need that because there are so
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  many great Schumann and Grieg concerto couplings out there from really well-known pianists.
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  Think of Leon Fleischer and Géza Anda, Claudio Arau, the list goes on and on.
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  I think Rado Lupu did both of them.
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  Yeah, yeah, of course he did or maybe he didn't.
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  I can't keep the discography in my head.
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  I know that Stephen Kovacevic did, of course.
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  As far as the Saint-Saens second concerto, there are so many recordings of that piece.
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  It's a big, big standard.
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  However, Howard Shelley's disc that contains the Grieg and Schumann and Saint-Saens second
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  concerto actually holds quite a proud place in my collection and you really should hear
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  it because he brings something really fresh to his performances.
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  For example, he takes the Grieg and Schumann concerto first movements at unusually fleet,
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  yet very flexible tempos where the orchestra and the piano are so seamlessly integrated
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  that you would never, never suspect that there was not a standalone conductor participating.
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  He's conducting everything from the piano and I doubt he overdubbed the piano part.
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  It's what you hear is what you get, I suppose.
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  Each concerto on this disc, the Grieg and the Schumann and the Saint-Saens, has a finale
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  that benefits from really crisp articulation all around, not just from Howard Shelley himself,
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  but also the orchestra of Opera North and what wonderful, excellent first desk soloists
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  they have.
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  That really, really impressed me.
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  There's some cool little details in the performances.
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  Think about the timpani solos in the Saint-Saens second concerto's, what is it, oh, the central
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  scherzando movement.
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  The timpani have such a strong profile in that movement, quite prominent.
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  If you listen to the Saint-Saens finale, the woodwind and brass courting has a real tang
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  to it for lack of a better word.
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  There's a real punch and presence that is just thrilling to hear.
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  Now, of course, I'm not going to replace my reference versions of the Schumann concerto
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  like the Ivan Morovet's recording or Rudolf Sierkin with who's conducted with Eugene
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  Normandy in the Philadelphia Orchestra.
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  Those are two wonderful Schumann concertos.
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  Steve Ove Anzness in the first recording he did at the Grieg Concerto, that is still a
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  big favorite and I would never trade the live Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli recording on
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  BBC Legends for anything.
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  And of course, for the Saint-Saens second concerto, there are some wonderful recent
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  versions.
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  There's the one with Alexandre Cantarro on the bis label and Anna Malikova on Audit.
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  Wonderful recordings.
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  But I do keep coming back to these Howard Shelley recordings of the Schumann, the Grieg
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  and the Saint-Saens second concertos, not just for pleasure and illumination, but also
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  for Howard Shelley's really intelligent virtuosity and his ability to juggle both soloist and
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  conducting roles with absolutely no effort.
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  And it's wonderfully recorded too.
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  So definitely check this disc out.
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  For the Piano Maven, this is Jed Disler and happy listening.