The rationale behind the rather unusual programme is explained by Eric Salzman in the accompanying notes. He argues that the orchestra and the piano were the dominant means of musical expression throughout the Romantic period, developing side by side, the orchestra making the big public statements while the piano served as the ideal instrument for domestic music making. It was this period of music history, of course, which gave birth to the piano concerto as a dramatic battle between soloist and orchestra. The writer uses this fact to draw attention to another kind of writing for piano and orchestra which he calls a "lyric or narrative poem" in which the piano tells the story and the orchestra "provides the setting" (with these roles sometimes reversed). There are, apparently, a "huge number" of works in this vein which are now forgotten. Well, I for one have forgotten most of them, and the argument seems only partly convincing. Salzman's presentation of each of the four works, however, is really excellent, perfectly balanced between descriptive and technical writing and a model of what CD insert notes should be.

From the opening notes of Finzi's Eclogue the composer is unmistakeable. The work was to be the slow movement of a piano concerto which never saw the light of day. It is an affecting piece, if without the melodic distinction to be found in other Finzi works, thinking of the concertos in particular. The performance is a thoughtful one, but a certain hardness of tone from the soloist allied to a close balance negates somewhat the pastoral tone of the piece. (An eclogue is defined in my dictionary as "a pastoral or idyllic poem usually in the form of a conversation or soliloquy".)

The soloist seems more at home in the suite of twelve short pieces which make up Milhaud's Le Carnaval d'Aix. The themes are taken from an earlier ballet entitled Salade and elements of folk music from Sardinia rub shoulders with jazz and tango. The music is mainly lively, often brash, though there are a few short moments of repose. It is all great fun, I suppose, and the work has become one of the composer's more popular pieces. But it is a bit relentless, and the steely-fingered pianist plus orchestral playing which also has its moments of harshness do nothing to counteract this effect.

Benjamin Britten's Young Apollo was composed in 1942 to a commission from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, and the composer was the soloist in the first performance. For one reason or another he immediately withdrew the work and it was only heard again after his death. The music portrays the young god in all his hard, dazzling splendour. The opening is as icy-cold and brilliant as that of Les Illuminations (completed some little time before despite the later opus number) and the two works share the same voice. (Interestingly, at the very end of his life, Britten returned to a similar sound-world to evoke the Athenian sun in Phaedra.) The transformation of the opening theme into the closing gesture is typical of the composer's precocious talent during this period. A short reflective passage just before the end is sensitively handled by the soloist and the challenging bravura throughout the rest of the piece holds no fears for him. The orchestral playing is excellent. Peter Donohoe and Simon Rattle on EMI found rather more human sentiment behind the steely sheen of this piece, but I suspect that Joshua Pierce is more faithful to the composer's intentions. The work has had very few recordings and this performance is easily good enough to make the disc valuable for this work alone.

The programme closes with the concert suite Strauss prepared in 1920 from the incidental music he had composed for an earlier German-language production of Molière's Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme. Incorporating many elements of eighteenth-century music, the suite is sufficiently well known to need no introduction. It is rather the odd-man-out in this programme though, since the piano part is fully integrated in the orchestra and is arguably even less important than the solo parts for violin and cello, excellently played here by Frantisek Figura and Pavol Simcik. The playing is well up to the standard of the rest of the disc, but again I sensed a lack of charm and elegance, a feeling confirmed when I played Jeffrey Tate's reading from 1986 with the English Chamber Orchestra.

The programme is interesting and a welcome change from the usual concerto fare. Joshua Pierce is a pianist who need fear no comparison with the finest and the orchestral support from two Slovak orchestras led by the English conductor Kirk Trevor is excellent. The recording is close and rather unforgiving. These elements combined work well in the Britten and Milhaud pieces, and if there is more tranquillity in the Finzi and more simple charm in the Strauss than these performers display, this really is no reason not to invest in this excellent disc if the programme appeals.

-- William Hedley, MusicWeb International