"fluency, confidence and effortless technique" — Jed Distler
It's surprising that these three major works for piano and orchestra by three major 20th-century English composers have not previously appeared together on a single release. Of particular interest is Walton's 1928 Sinfonia Concertante in its seldom-heard 1943 revision, where the composer pared down the busy counterpoint, thinned out the textures and simplified the piano-writing. While it's understandable some virtuoso pianists prefer the meatier original, including Peter Donohoe (Naxos) and Eric Parkin (Chandos), Clare Hammond is clearly content to be a team player. You'll notice how the deft piano-ensemble interplay vivifies the imitative lines in the opening Maestoso movement's central section, as well as Hammonds sparkling support under the first-desk soloists in the Allegro vivo. Fine though Walton's 1970 recording of the revision may be (with soloist Peter Katin), George Vass gets more incisive and dynamically attentive playing from his BBC Symphony forces.
Although Britten's inventive Diversions for piano left hand and orchestra hardly lacks for excellent recordings, Hammond and Vass prove thoroughly competitive. Their liltingly flexible treatment of the Arabesque variation contrasts with the Leon Fleisher/Seiji Ozawa recording's probing deliberation (Sony Classical). While Steven Osborne's relatively quick Burlesque (Hyperion) undermines the musics gawky surface, Hammond's measured tread and decisive accents come closer to the standard-setting 1954 Julius Katchen recording under the composer's baton. On the other hand, some listeners may prefer the bubbly lightness of Osborne's considerably faster Tarantella finale.
Sustained lyricism and long, singing lines are constantly to the fore throughout Michael Tippett's Piano Concerto, where the orchestration's rapturous shimmer mirrors the similarly magical sound world of the opera The Midsummer Marriage, composed around the same time. This applies to the long first movement's gnarly contrapuntal climaxes, where brass, woodwinds and piano soloist prove that it's possible to be combative without clogging up the texture. Hammond's mastery of the difficult solo part matches the fluency, the confidence and the effortless technique of recorded predecessors including Howard Shelley, John Ogdon, Martino Tirimo and the aforementioned Osborne. If anything, she's more willing to pull back when others have the spotlight. She also engages in more conversational interplay during those extraordinary outer-movement exchanges between piano and celesta. If I slightly prefer Shelley's Vivace finale (Chandos), it's due to the additional heft of the Bournemouth Symphony's string section and conductor Richard Hickox's stronger emphasis on the composer's cross-rhythmic phrasing. BIS's typically superb engineering and Hammond's informative, well-written annotations enhance my enthusiastic recommendation of this rewarding release
From the Winter 2025 edition of International Piano.