"The unifying factor is the crisp artistry of Clare Hammond" — Geoff Brown
Here’s an interesting prospect: three British (sort of) piano concertos, each from a different 20th-century decade, each offering different escape routes from those epic 19th-century boxing matches between a piano virtuoso and the orchestra. The unifying factor is the crisp artistry of Clare Hammond, whether she’s navigating the florid tendrils creeping over Tippett’s Concerto for Piano and Orchestra or pecking out the suggestive phrases that propel Britten’s Diversions using only the fingers of her left hand. The album begins with Walton’s early Sinfonia Concertante, heard in its 1943 revision, not his most compelling piece, with the piano sometimes reduced to guest appearances in a tapestry that never quite knits together. Hammond and orchestra (the BBC Symphony Orchestra, conducted by George Vass) secure bigger rewards in the chiselled exchanges of the Britten, written for the one-armed pianist Paul Wittgenstein. Tippett’s hothouse effusions suit them too, even if the orchestra at times needs just a little more virility to match Hammond’s athletic flair.