Zarzycki & Żeleński: Piano Concertos

This 59th volume of the Romantic Piano Concerto series features Jonathan Plowright, whose brilliant and utterly idiomatic performances of Romantic Polish piano music have confirmed him as a master of this repertoire. Here he collaborates with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and Łukasz Borowicz to perform three very obscure but fascinating works. The music of Żeleński has already been championed by Plowright in a disc of Polish chamber music; now he performs his Piano Concerto in E flat major, which was written in 1903 and dedicated to the young Ignacy Friedman, who gave the premiere the following year.

A Piano Concerto in A flat major by Aleksander Zarzycki is also included, plus his barnstorming Grande Polonaise, an outrageous masterpiece which is unknown even in specialist piano circles.

CDA67958  61 minutes 24 seconds
‘Żeleński's E flat major Concerto is the more interesting work … the soloist is kept busy throughout. And who better to do the business than that alchemist among keyboard players, Jonathan Plowri ...
‘Even in the crowded field of rare Romantic Piano Concertos, the Polish composers Żeleński and Zarzycki have something particularly satisfying to bring Hyperion's invaluable series … Żeleński's C ...
‘Jonathan Plowright continues his persuasive advocacy of the Polish 19th- and early 20th-century repertoire with these two rarities in Hyperion's seemingly inexhaustible Romantic Piano Concerto series ...