"one of our most admired pianists" — Stuart Millson
From BIS recordings, Britten’s Diversions for the Left Hand (1940, revised 1954), the Tippett Piano Concerto (1953-55) and Walton’s Sinfonia Concertante (1927, but revised 16 years later) make a triumphant trio of important, but – strangely – neglected British works. In the hands of Clare Hammond, one of our most admired pianists, these exciting concerto pieces reveal not just the genius of their composers, but (like the Bliss and Vaughan Williams mentioned earlier) the style and form of a whole golden era of our music: the unique fusion of nostalgic lyricism and light – especially in the Walton – interwoven with dynamic, often stretched tonality; and in the Britten and Walton, an intricate embroidery of variation upon variation, of abstract ideas, which somehow managed to sound as though they have been drawn, as if by water-divining magic from the fen, meadow and megalith landscape of England. George Vass and the BBC Symphony Orchestra give a razor-sharp accompaniment to Clare’s brilliant detail, but those who know Vernon Handley’s version of the Sinfonia Concertante may prefer his faster tempo and ‘thicker’ orchestral sound. But that is not to say that the BIS performance is anything other than completely satisfying and substantial in its well-captured recorded studio sound.