British Piano Concertos
Gordon Jacob (1895-1984)
Piano Concerto No.2 in E flat (1957)
John Addison (1920-1998)
Variations for Piano and Orchestra (1948)
Edmund Rubbra (1901-1986)
Piano Concerto, Op.30 (1932)
Simon Callaghan (piano)
BBC National Orchestra of Wales/Stephen Bell, George Vass (Rubbra)
rec. 2022, Hoddinott Hall, Cardiff, UK
Lyrita SRCD.416 [72]

These premiere recordings will be of interest to all British music lovers. Jacob and Rubbra were near-contemporaries whilst Addison was a generation younger and the three works were composed over a quarter-century span between 1932 (Rubbra) and 1957 (Jacob). Each has distinctive features.

Jacob’s concerto opens with fanfare orchestral figures before the piano announces himself in a puckish entry spreading light-hearted wit – briefly ruminative in the first movement – alongside suitably pert orchestration. Jacob was much admired for his powers in this area and it’s no different here. There are also stripped-back Rachmaninovian elements. The variations in the central movement vary from slow and crisp to darker-hewn with pensive withdrawn piano writing, richly meditative. Darkness is eventually overcome by the light in the exchanges between orchestra and piano, a tension definitively lifted in the finale, where ripe syncopation admits a brief funereal gesture – not unlike like the band going by in Elgar’s Cockaigne, though obviously darker – before the confident close.

Addison’s 1948 Variations for piano and (small) orchestra is a compact quarter-of-an-hour piece subdivided into three clear sections. The theme is both condensed and melancholy though it broadens expressively and the piano is given a romanticised profile which allows some virtuosic and dapper faster sections. As with Jacob, puckish wit is to be heard, too. This is no dour exercise but a genuinely engaging piece unafraid to dance the waltz and to end quickly but relatively unobtrusively. Notably well structured it is not beholden either to fashion or fad but ploughs its own honest, direct course.

The Piano Concerto, Op.30 of Edmund Rubbra should be distinguished from his much later venture from 1956 which has received several recordings. The earlier work was his first essay in large scale – that’s to say soloist and orchestral – form but he wasn’t satisfied with it and it wasn’t to be published during his lifetime. As is perhaps to be expected, it wears a strong Sibelian cloak – the opening figures are right out of the Finnish Song Book – but there are also rather unexpected folkloric elements too reminiscent of VW in his more rollicking moments. The piano is primus inter pares in its striding thematic writing and in its confidence, as themes return at the end of the first movement in affirmative elation. The song without words of the central slow movement is dappled, reflective, thoughtful and finely orchestrated; the piano decorates colourfully and there is some dynamic contrast. The folkloric writing returns in the finale, with skirling winds, big themes and some piano writing that, in its percussive insistence, sounds to me like à la mode chinoiserie.

One can see why Rubbra neglected this Concerto. It lacks his well-known sense of organic writing but it has plenty of vitality and admittedly, more conventional flair. It’s also by some way the most enticing and multifarious of the three works on this disc.

Fortunately, Simon Callaghan is on hand to deliver the stylish and stylistically savvy performances, supported by the BBC National Orchestra of Wales who are on excellent form under the two fine conductors – Stephen Bell, who directs the Jacob and Addison and George Vass, who conducts the Rubbra.

Paul Conway’s notes tell us everything we could possibly want to know and this Hoddinott Hall recording, which is splendidly judged acoustically, is made in association with BBC Radio 3.

Jonathan Woolf

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Previous reviews: Rob Barnett (August 2023) ~ Nick Barnard (September 2023)