Danny Driver, BBC Scottish SO, Rebecca Miller - Amy Beach, Cecile Chaminade, Dorothy Howell: Piano Concertos (2017)

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Danny Driver, BBC Scottish SO, Rebecca Miller - Amy Beach, Cecile Chaminade, Dorothy Howell: Piano Concertos (2017)

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Hyperion's Romantic Piano Concerto series reaches its 70th album with this program of three concertos by women. The ongoing success of the series suggests that audiences are ready and waiting for wider repertoire, and pianist Danny Driver and the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra under Rebecca Miller deliver a real find here. The Piano Concerto in C sharp minor, Op. 45, of American composer Amy Beach has been performed and recorded, but it's been in search of a recording that captures the autobiographical quality of the work, well sketched out in the booklet notes by Nigel Simeone. Essentially, Beach faced creative repression from her religious mother and to a lesser extent from her husband, who allowed her to compose, but only rarely to perform. These experiences, it may be said, poured out in this towering Brahmsian, four-movement piano concerto, which sets up an unusual quality of struggle between soloists and orchestra. It's this dynamic that's so well captured by Driver and Miller (who happen to be married to each other). Sample the opening movement, which has lacked this quality in earlier performances. Also worthwhile is the Concertstück in C sharp minor, Op. 40, of French composer Cécile Chaminade, now rarely represented on programs, but at one time so popular in the U.S. that there were more than 200 Chaminade Clubs there. Driver also gets the light, zippy quality of this work, which endeared Chaminade to audiences, if not to critics, for many years. The opening Piano Concerto in D minor of Britain's Dorothy Howell is less obviously in need of revival, but this recording is worth the time and money for the Beach performance alone.

Review by James Manheim, Allmusic.com

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.

Review by Jeremy Nicholas, Gramophone

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Danny Driver, BBC Scottish SO, Rebecca Miller - Amy Beach, Cecile Chaminade, Dorothy Howell: Piano Concertos (2017)

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Danny Driver, BBC Scottish SO, Rebecca Miller - Amy Beach, Cecile Chaminade, Dorothy Howell: Piano Concertos (2017)

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