MusicWeb International One of the most grown-up review sites around 2024
60,000 reviews
... and still writing ...

Search MusicWeb Here Acte Prealable Polish CDs
 

Presto Music CD retailer
 
Founder: Len Mullenger                                    Editor in Chief:John Quinn             


CD REVIEW

Some items
to consider

new MWI
Current reviews

old MWI
pre-2023 reviews

paid for
advertisements

Acte Prealable Polish recordings

Forgotten Recordings
Forgotten Recordings
All Forgotten Records Reviews

TROUBADISC
Troubadisc Weinberg- TROCD01450

All Troubadisc reviews


FOGHORN Classics

Alexandra-Quartet
Brahms String Quartets

All Foghorn Reviews


All HDTT reviews


Songs to Harp from
the Old and New World


all Nimbus reviews



all tudor reviews


Follow us on Twitter


Editorial Board
MusicWeb International
Founding Editor
   
Rob Barnett
Editor in Chief
John Quinn
Contributing Editor
Ralph Moore
Webmaster
   David Barker
Postmaster
Jonathan Woolf
MusicWeb Founder
   Len Mullenger

alternatively
AmazonUK AmazonUS

 

Montague PHILLIPS (1885-1969)
Piano Concerto No.1 in F sharp minor (1907) [31:54]
Piano Concerto No.2 in E major, Op.32 (1919) [28:42]
Victor HELY-HUTCHINSON (1901-1947)
The Young Idea: rhapsody for piano & orchestra (1928) [8:07]
David Owen Norris (piano)
BBC Concert Orchestra/Gavin Sutherland
rec. The Colosseum, Town Hall, Watford, 14-15 January 2008. DDD
World premiere recordings
DUTTON EPOCH CDLX7206 [69:18]
 
Experience Classicsonline


Phillips is known in the field of British light music but rather like Haydn Wood he had occasional excursions into the concert hall. Here are two of them.
 

The Second Piano Concerto has been broadcast by the BBC in various studio performances; not that there have been many of these. The First Piano Concerto is a total unknown. 

The two concertos would not have been out of place in Hyperion's ‘Romantic Piano Concertos’ series. Neither for that matter would Dutton's recordings of the Bowen piano concertos and as if to prove the point Hyperion's recordings of the second Bowen and his monumental third piano concerto will be released later in 2008. Roll on a project to record the allegedly Rachmaninovian piano concertos of Roger Sacheverell Coke. There are six to choose from. At one stage in the 1930s and 1940s they were getting regional concert exposure and broadcasts. After that someone needs to look over Gaze Cooper's piano concertos. 

As for the present works for piano and orchestra, Phillips' First Piano Concerto would sit comfortably alongside the Tchaikovsky First and Concert Fantasy, the First Rachmaninov and the two Glazunovs. The outer movements are agreeably rhetorical-heroic with the central movement being touchingly reflective and delicately pointed. The finale carries the grand manner high with a dash of pomp. 

The Second Concerto, from twelve years and a world war later, is more original and with a slightly more tangy harmonic edge. The music is still high on rhetoric with good ideas not in short supply. Some stock romantic gestures will be recognised but there is plenty to engage the attention and the heart. Phillips' writing in this work sometimes recalls the Bliss Piano Concerto. The second movement is more relaxed but still has a lean energetic charge (2:43 onwards). The finale has a mariner's swagger and something of Elgar's sweeping nobilmente but with more of a surrender to sentimentality (1:33) and a redolence of Harty's Piano Concerto. 

Hely-Hutchinson's The Young Idea is a fun piece with a zany music-hall accent. There are glittering cross-currents from ragtime, West End shows, Satie and Walton's Façade. 

These are the works' first commercial recordings. 

Phillips has already had two previous Dutton CDs: CDLX7140 including the Sinfonietta and Surrey Suite and CDLX7158 the Empire March and the Phantasy for violin and orchestra. 

Performances crackling with all the brio and energy of a live event and brought to the retailer with breathtaking speed.

Rob Barnett


 




 


Advertising on
Musicweb


Donate and keep us afloat

 

New Releases

Naxos Classical
All Naxos reviews

Hyperion recordings
All Hyperion reviews

Foghorn recordings
All Foghorn reviews

Troubadisc recordings
All Troubadisc reviews



all Bridge reviews


all cpo reviews

Divine Art recordings
Click to see New Releases
Get 10% off using code musicweb10
All Divine Art reviews


All Eloquence reviews

Lyrita recordings
All Lyrita Reviews

 

Wyastone New Releases
Obtain 10% discount

Subscribe to our free weekly review listing

 

 


EXPLORE MUSICWEB INTERNATIONAL

Making a Donation to MusicWeb

Writing CD reviews for MWI

About MWI
Who we are, where we have come from and how we do it.

Site Map

How to find a review

How to find articles on MusicWeb
Listed in date order

Review Indexes
   By Label
      Select a label and all reviews are listed in Catalogue order
   By Masterwork
            Links from composer names (eg Sibelius) are to resource pages with links to the review indexes for the individual works as well as other resources.

Themed Review pages

Jazz reviews

 

Discographies
   Composer
      Composer surveys
   National
      Unique to MusicWeb -
a comprehensive listing of all LP and CD recordings of given works
.
Prepared by Michael Herman

The Collector’s Guide to Gramophone Company Record Labels 1898 - 1925
Howard Friedman

Book Reviews

Complete Books
We have a number of out of print complete books on-line

Interviews
With Composers, Conductors, Singers, Instumentalists and others
Includes those on the Seen and Heard site

Nostalgia

Nostalgia CD reviews

Records Of The Year
Each reviewer is given the opportunity to select the best of the releases

Monthly Best Buys
Recordings of the Month and Bargains of the Month

Comment
Arthur Butterworth Writes

An occasional column

Phil Scowcroft's Garlands
British Light Music articles

Classical blogs
A listing of Classical Music Blogs external to MusicWeb International

Reviewers Logs
What they have been listening to for pleasure

Announcements

 

Community
Bulletin Board

Give your opinions or seek answers

Reviewers
Past and present

Helpers invited!

Resources
How Did I Miss That?

Currently suspended but there are a lot there with sound clips


Composer Resources

British Composers

British Light Music Composers

Other composers

Film Music (Archive)
Film Music on the Web (Closed in December 2006)

Programme Notes
For concert organizers

External sites
British Music Society
The BBC Proms
Orchestra Sites
Recording Companies & Retailers
Online Music
Agents & Marketing
Publishers
Other links
Newsgroups
Web News sites etc

PotPourri
A pot-pourri of articles

MW Listening Room
MW Office

Advice to Windows Vista users  
Questionnaire    
Site History  
What they say about us
What we say about us!
Where to get help on the Internet
CD orders By Special Request
Graphics archive
Currency Converter
Dictionary
Magazines
Newsfeed  
Web Ring
Translation Service

Rules for potential reviewers :-)
Do Not Go Here!
April Fools




Return to Review Index

Untitled Document


Reviews from previous months
Join the mailing list and receive a hyperlinked weekly update on the discs reviewed. details
We welcome feedback on our reviews. Please use the Bulletin Board
Please paste in the first line of your comments the URL of the review to which you refer.