The British Hyperion label’s project to record 100 volumes of piano concertos from the Romantic period (early-mid 19th century to early 20th century) was ambitious.

Between 1991 and 2023, 87 volumes were released in this series. Aside from Stephen Hough’s award-winning set of the five Saint-Säens Concertos, his Mendelssohn concertos, Seta Tanyel’s two by Edward MacDowell, and Marc-André Hamelin’s Busoni Concerto, most of the other works were (and remain) little known. Many are not known at all.

Now repackaged in two box sets of 50 discs each – the second will be released early in 2027 – the numbers have been made up by including popular concertos of the period recorded outside of the series, by Rachmaninov, Brahms, Tchaikovsky and Chopin. This first collection takes in recordings released between 1991 and 2007.

The pianists, mostly British, learned and performed these unfamiliar, challenging works with extraordinary discipline and flair. Previous artists dipped into this repertoire, such as Earl Wild and Michael Ponti – Wild remains unsurpassed – but the standard of the Hyperion performances is consistently high. Pianists include Hough, Hamelin, Piers Lane, Howard Shelley (who specialises in early Romantics and conducts from the keyboard), Nikolai Demidenko, Stephen Coombs, Peter Donohoe, Martin Roscoe,...