RIES : Piano Concertos Nos 8 & 9 (Piers Lanee • The Orchestra Now • Leon Botstein) (2018) Serie The Romantic Piano Concerto – 75 | FLAC (tracks+.cue), lossless

Beethoven reputedly said of his pupil Ferdinand Ries that he was talented but that he "imitates me too much," and the few earlier recordings of Ries' piano concertos, naturally enough taken from the first part of his career when he was a star virtuoso, did nothing to challenge that evaluation. This album, however, contains Ries' last two concertos and is an entirely different story. By the early 1830s, Ries was not such a renowned figure, but he was clearly keeping up with new trends in the piano music of Hummel, Field, and even perhaps Chopin, of whom the middle Introduction and Polonaise is strongly reminiscent. The two concertos are spacious works with ornamented figuration, chromatic modulations, and, yes, a bit of Beethoven, but Beethoven is present in little quotations or strong allusions, indicating perhaps that the student by this time was confident enough of his own identity. Sample perhaps one of the slow movements, where Ries' skill as an orchestrator is on full display. Pianist Piers Lane and New York state's little-known Orchestra Now give the music its appropriate weight under scholar-conductor Leon Botstein, and Hyperion's engineers do very well in the unfamiliar surroundings of an auditorium at New York's Bard College. An above-average entry in Hyperion's Romantic Piano Concerto series, and one that has contributions to make to the music history books. James Manheim  
Tracklist :
Piano Concerto No 8 In A Flat Major 'Gruss An Den Rhein'    (29:56)
Piano Concerto No 9 In G Minor    (28:38)
Credits :
Conductor – Leon Botstein
Orchestra – The Orchestra Now
Piano – Piers Lane 

RUBBRA ♦ BAX ♦ BLISS : Piano Concertos (Piers Lane • The Orchestra Now • Leon Botstein) (2020) Serie The Romantic Piano Concerto – 81 | FLAC (tracks), lossless

The Hyperion label's Romantic Piano Concerto series here reaches its 81st volume. If there's any sign of a diminution, it's that one of the present works was written in 1938 and the other in 1955, neither date conventionally placed in the Romantic era. Yet the two main attractions here can indubitably be described as Romantic, and both are entirely distinctive pieces well worth a revival; neither is commonly heard, even in Britain. The Piano Concerto No. 1 in G, Op. 85 (the lack of designation of major or minor is perhaps intentional), of Edmund Rubbra, is the later of the two works. The work was dedicated to Indian sarod player Ali Akbar Khan, an influence audible from the beginning of the work (beautifully handled here by pianist Piers Lane and the Orchestra Now under Leon Botstein) and elegantly integrated into concerto form. It's also very much the work of a symphonist, which was Rubbra's primary métier; the piano is sometimes a soloist, sometimes an element of orchestral color. The slow movement is a lovely nocturne. The Piano Concerto in B flat major, Op. 58, of Arthur Bliss, was composed for the 1939 New York World's Fair and dedicated to the American people. Perhaps this circumstance brought forth an unusually broad musical language from the once-modernist Bliss, who remarked, "Surely the Americans are at heart the most romantic in the world." The finale is an energetic and technically challenging romp that lives up to Bliss's stated ambition to produce a British "Emperor" Concerto. All of the musicians approach the music with freshness and commitment, and the whole project is of interest far beyond the usual circles of Romantic music specialists and enthusiasts. James Manheim  
Tracklist :
Piano Concerto In G, Op. 85 (29:54)
Composed By – Edmund Rubbra
Morning Song 'Maytime In Sussex' 7:38
Composed By – Arnold Bax
Piano Concerto In B Flat Major (39:54)
Composed By – Arthur Bliss
Credits :
Conductor – Leon Botstein
Piano – Piers Lane

DOHNÁNYI : Symphony No. 1 (Leon Botstein) (1998) APE (image+.cue), lossless