‘Hough’s account of the First Concerto is expansive and measured, finding the fire in the stormy opening Maestoso but also the delicacy and quietude in the central Adagio. The final rondo is a model of balance, completing a rather fine interpretation … there’s a broadness about the first movement of the Second, too, which in the event works very beautifully, especially in the exchanges between piano and horn and throughout brings out the romantic ardour … their way with the remaining movements is nothing but assured and convincing. The ‘tiny, tiny wisp of a scherzo’ is executed with lightness and panache, the dialogue with cellist Marcus Pouget in the Andante is a delight and the Allegretto grazioso likewise’ (International Piano)» More

‘Hyperion does Busoni a great service in issuing this magnificent three-disc box. Those readers who know Busoni mainly (or only) via his transcriptions will have a whole new world revealed to them. Hamelin, one of today’s super-virtuosos but also a musician of the highest rank, seems to be the ideal interpreter, and is captured throughout in superb sound’ (International Piano)» More

„Marc-André Hamelin gelingt, alle Facetten in exzellenten Interpretationen darzustellen … seiner qualitativ hochwertigen Edition der Klaviermusik von Ferruccio Busoni dürfte deshalb über eine lange Zeit der Referenzstatus sicher sein“ (Piano, Germany)» More

‘This fascinating and beautiful release … an impeccably performed and recorded programme’ (International Record Review)» More

‘The E flat Sonata opens with arresting gestures designed to let the performers show off, which Tanja Becker-Bender and Péter Nagy seize with relish. They give generally spacious readings of all four Sonatas … Hyperion’s team is rewarding in the large-scale challenges of the D major Sonata, and attuned to the sonatina-like scale of the E major work. A transcription of the Meditation from Hindemith’s ballet Nobilissima visione bears testimony to the composer’s pacifism’ (BBC Music Magazine)» More

‘This is a wonderful disc, presenting Monteverdi the dramatist and the creator of vivid aural pictures. Presented in such vivid recorded sound and by such accomplished musicians, intuitively directed by the excellent Jonathan Cohen, it provides an invaluable and hugely attractive addition to the composer’s already generous representation on disc’ (International Record Review)» More

‘The three Cello Concertos … reveal a warmer, more human side to Pfitzner’s character. It’s evident not least in the late A minor Concerto (1943). In this piece, the 74-year-old composer, ill, bereaved and bombed-out, nostalgically recalled the rhapsodic A minor Concerto that he’d written as a student 53 years earlier and believed lost (it was rediscovered in 1975), while basing the slow movement on a 1923 song beginning ‘My end is drawing nigh’. Like the concise, single-span G major Concerto (1935), its rapturous cantilena all organically derived from its opening cello theme, the late A minor offers a sometimes bizarre mix of the lyrical and the whimsical. Gerhardt holds it all together with his sustained singing lines, while Weigle and his Berlin band provide vividly pointillist backing’ (BBC Music Magazine)» More

‘This new performance from Gerald Finley and Julius Drake is one of the finest I have ever heard. The merits of Finley’s singing are well known … Drake’s attentive, deeply musical playing is just as widely appreciated … a quite marvellous reading’ (International Record Review)» More

‘One of the very finest selections of Sibelius’s songs … Karnéus’s mellow, heartfelt mezzo is perceptively accompanied by Drake’ (BBC Music Magazine)» More

‘Karol Szymanowski was never a concert virtuoso but knew the piano inside out, writing music that, despite its often complex textures, is always beautifully laid out for the hands. The three Métopes from 1915 recall ‘the leavening, salutary influence of Ravel’s and Debussy’s weightless, diaphanous textures’ (to quote Francis Pott in his booklet-note) and rely ‘upon a performer of fastidious polyphonic instincts and acute subtlety’ … one can have no reservations about Cédric Tiberghien’s playing throughout this absorbing disc’ (Gramophone)

‘Whatever Szymanowski demands, Tiberghien delivers without a moment of strain or fakery … Tiberghien’s intellectual and emotional grasp of Szymanowski’s idiom allows him to light on a fully convincing balance of the music’s competing elements. The results are fragrant but never cloying, intricate but never convoluted; and he’s never thrown off by the music’s quirky syntax or its shifting metres. Timbrally, the playing is consistently gorgeous, too, tonally ravishing even at the quietest dynamic levels: listen, for instance, as ‘Shéhérazade’, the first of the three Masques, fades away to inaudibility. Consistently gorgeous but far from uniform in tone of voice’ (International Record Review)» More

‘Few players of this music combine quite such clarity and articulation with shimmering sparkle and virtuosic flair: this is sophisticated pianism … The most famous of these Scriabinesque pieces, the sorrowful and haunting No 3 in B flat minor, was made popular by Paderewski, and Tiberghien’s performance explains its enduring appeal … you will be left wanting to listen again’ (BBC Music Magazine)» More