Piers Lane; Howard Shelley: Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra - Williamson: The Complete Piano Concertos

A real rarity from Hyperion�s Anglo-Australian artistic collaboration: music by an Australian composer who was once at the heart of the English establishment.Malcolm Williamson was one of many Australian creative artists who relocated to Britain in the mid-twentieth century. Within a decade of settling in London he had established a reputation as one of the most gifted and prolific composers of his generation. His stature as a leading figure within the British music scene was publicly acknowledged in 1975 when he was appointed to the esteemed post of Master of the Queen�s Music in succession to Sir Arthur Bliss. But today he is almost forgotten and his music virtually never performed.This double-album set of the complete Piano Concertos is therefore an important document as well as a compendium of deeply appealing music. Williamson wrote with a generosity of emotion and melodic flair rare in the mid-twentieth century, in a forward-looking idiom.The third concerto is perhaps the masterpiece, a huge and complex work. The fourth was written in 1993/4 and appears here as its world premiere performance and recording.Piers Lane, the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra and Howard Shelley are the ideal performers of these unjustly neglected works.