JOHN FIELD : The Piano Concertos (Míċeál O'Rourke • London Mozart Players • Matthias Bamert) RM | 4xCD BOX-SET (2008) FLAC (tracks+.cue), lossless

 

This Box collects four discs released in the mid-'90s by pianist Miceal O'Rourke and the London Mozart Players under Matthias Bamert. Included are not only the seven piano concertos of Irish composer John Field, but also an assortment of chamber pieces for piano and strings. Several of these are arrangements of solo piano works, and even in the others the strings don't have much to do. Field is known as the originator of the nocturne, later elaborated to delicious effect by Chopin. His piano concertos, broadly speaking, are a bit like the young Chopin's, with virtuosic piano parts applied to rather simple structures. In a way it's nice to have the whole set, for their pleasures are scattered and discrete rather than thoroughgoing. Field was a crowd-pleasing pianist who took what he needed where he could find it, and in the Piano Concerto No. 5 in C major ("The Blazing Storm") he sounds like not Chopin but Beethoven. The Piano Concerto No. 1 in E flat major (as with Beethoven not the first one composed) has a central movement based on a lovely Scottish song, and there are other reminders that the music comes from the British Isles. Irish pianist O'Rourke has a more restrained style than one competitor in these works, British player Benjamin Frith, which is sometimes preferable (in the generally Mozartian early works) and sometimes not. The transparent but somewhat distant Chandos sound is unimpeded by the reissue process. James Manheim