ROGER SACHEVERELL COKE : Piano Concerto No 3, Op 30 • Piano Concerto No 4, Op 38 • Piano Concerto No 5, Op 57 (Simon Callaghan · BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra · Martyn Brabbins) (2017) Serie The Romantic Piano Concerto – 73 | FLAC (tracks+.cue), lossless

British pianist Simon Callaghan has specialized in neglected 20th century piano music, and with this 2017 release, part of the Hyperion label's successful and ongoing Romantic Piano Concerto series, he has turned to the almost completely forgotten Roger Sacheverell Coke, a composer and pianist who bankrolled much of his career out of his hereditary Derbyshire estate and numbered Rachmaninov among his admirers. The three piano concertos here certainly show the influence of Rachmaninov, but Coke seems at times to toy with the listener's expectation of getting retreaded Russian Romanticism: sample the opening of the Piano Concerto No. 4 in C sharp minor, which sounds like pure Rachmaninov only to depart into less heroic gestures almost immediately. That concerto and especially the fragmentary Piano Concerto No. 5 in D minor (Coke was given to destroying some of his own finished works) combine the Rachmaninov idiom with darker, perhaps more personal moods and with variance in the relationship between piano and orchestra; the Piano Concerto No. 5 might have been the concerto that Sibelius never wrote. The recording by Callaghan with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra under Martyn Brabbins does the work full justice. A commendable revival of work dug out of archives by the pianist himself. James Manheim
Tracklist :
Piano Concerto No 3 In E Flat Major    (30:13)
Composed By – Roger Sacheverell Coke

Piano Concerto No 4 In C Sharp Minor    (29:58)
Composed By – Roger Sacheverell Coke

Piano Concerto No 5 In D Minor    (8:56)
Composed By – Roger Sacheverell Coke
Credits :
Conductor – Martyn Brabbins
Leader [Of Orchestra] – Laura Samuel
Orchestra – BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra
Piano – Simon Callaghan 

RHEINBERGER ♦ SCHOLZ : Piano Concertos (Simon Callaghan · BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra · Ben Gernon) (2018) Serie The Romantic Piano Concerto – 76 | FLAC (tracks+.cue), lossless

Hyperion's ongoing Romantic Piano Concerto series reaches its 76th volume, with no sign of slowing down. The series as a whole has been invaluable in setting out the context in which listeners of the 19th century would have heard famous works, and this one sets the stage for how the Beethoven-Brahms axis persisted while facing competition from Liszt and lesser virtuosi. The models for these two works are the Beethoven Piano Concerto No. 5 in E flat major, Op. 73, for Rheinberger's Piano Concerto in A flat major, Op. 94, and the Brahms Piano Concerto in B flat major, Op. 83, for the Piano Concerto in B major, Op. 57. Rheinberger's music is performed from time to time, but Scholz is all but unknown, and his concerto receives its recorded premiere here. It would be wrong to say that the work matches Brahms' intricate weaving of solo and tutti, but it does evoke it, and the notes by Bryce Morrison explain why this was important: The concertos that one thinks of today as the hits were not necessarily hits when they appeared, and those of Brahms and Tchaikovsky had plenty of detractors. Scholz was a champion of Brahms, and in his delicately lyrical slow movement he comes close to hitting the Brahms mark. Pianist Simon Callaghan is smooth in the Rheinberger, which is the more virtuosic of the two works, and he gets fine support from the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra under Ben Gernon, with Hyperion operating in the unspectacular but wholly appropriate sound environment of the Glasgow City Halls. Recommended. James Manheim  
Tracklist :
Piano Concerto In A Flat Major Op 94 (30:24)
Composed By – Josef Rheinberger

Piano Concerto In B Major Op 57 (28:50)
Composed By – Bernhard Scholz

Capriccio For Piano And Orchestra Op 35 12:01
Composed By – Bernhard Scholz
Credits :
Conductor – Ben Gernon
Orchestra – BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra
Piano – Simon Callaghan