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Later in his career, Benjamin Britten garnered a reputation as a collegial pianist, playing chamber music with friends like Yehudi Menuhin and accompanying his partner Peter Pears in lieder and songs. Early in his career, however, the piano was a vehicle for the irrepressible wit and brilliance of the young composer, qualities that he positively flaunted in works like the Piano Concerto, Young Apollo and Diversions, all written between 1938-1940.
All three now appear on a fine new Hyperion CD played by Steven Osborne, due to visit us next May with the NZSO, and the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra under Ilan Volkov. The concerto is unsparing in its demands on piano and orchestra yet, ironically, for listeners, it is a ear-tingling treat. The opening Toccata is a bracing and occasionally barbed dash, offset by the winsome waltz of its second movement, with Osborne weaving around the lyrical viola of Scott Dickinson and the BBC woodwind soloists.
By including Britten's original third movement as well as the later Impromptu, Hyperion lets us savour his sardonic wit. Osborne and the orchestra swerve from the balletic to the bluesy with dashing ease.
Britten's 1939 Young Apollo was inspired by the poet Keats' vision of "a new dazzling Sun-god, quivering with radiant vitality". Clocking in at under seven minutes, it's a scherzo showpiece, with manic glissandos that treat the piano like a toppled harp.
The 1940 Diversions, written for the left-handed pianist Paul Wittgenstein, takes a mock serioso tune and creates a procession of sweet, tangy miniatures from the halting salon waltzes to a spiky little March that Prokofiev would be proud to put his signature to. Osborne and the orchestra have immense fun with it, infectious in the best sense of that word.
William Dart
