It is difficult to be too disdainful of the earlier work, a real glitterfest that does not allow a slow movement to dampen its merry fun. One wonders whether Hyperion's The Romantic Piano Concerto series may peter out with its forthcoming 64th volume, featuring obscurities from the pens of Brazilian composer Henrique Oswald and the Portuguese Alfredo Napoleao.
I suspect not but, in the meantime, the English label has a new brand in The Classical Piano Concerto, paying tribute to minor Titans of the 18th century. Volume 1 features the Czech Jan Ladislav Dussek (1760-1812), a composer often relegated to a shady no man's land between Mozart and Beethoven.
Howard Shelley, with the Ulster Orchestra, tackles three concertos, ranging from a 1783 work to one from 1810 that finds the ambitious composer vying with the likes of Hummel, Weber and Ferdinand Ries. It is difficult to be too disdainful of the earlier work, a real glitterfest that does not allow a slow movement to dampen its merry fun. Shelley and his orchestra dispense it with charm school elan.
The 1810 Concerto is more problematic, especially when Dussek has the audacity to stretch the parchment-thin material of its first movement to 15 minutes.
Yet, even here, the almost naive innocence of its Adagio almost compensates.
