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, and Seta Tanyel.

The orchestral playing and sound quality are far superior to older versions. The BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra was used in the initial recordings, but gradually the scope widened to include others in Britain, and eventually to Europe, Dallas, and Hobart.

Space prevents me from going into detail on each disc, but I will mention a few favourites out of the 130 works by 59 composers!

CD 2: Nikolai Medtner’s Piano Concertos Nos. 2 & 3 (BBC Scottish SO under Jerzy Maksymiuk) and CD 10: Carl Maria von Weber’s Piano Concertos Nos. 1 & 2, plus his once popular Konzertstück (Scottish Chamber Orchestra conducted by Charles Mackerras). The pianist on both discs is Nikolai Demidenko, equally convincing in the melancholic Russian world of Medtner, a conservative contemporary of Prokofiev, and the crisp post-Classicism of Weber. Mackerras brings Weber’s orchestral part to vivid life.

CD 16: A fun piece in the same world as Dohnányi’s Nursery Song Variations is the American composer Ernest Schelling’s Suite Fantastique (Ian Hobson; BBC Scottish SO under Martyn Brabbins). Beautifully played, it boasts a charming scherzo, and Schelling’s fooling around with Yankee Doodle and suchlike songs in the finale has been described as “Charles Ives with the right notes”.

The Scherzo from Henry Litolff’s Concerto Symphonique No. 2, a famous encore piece, was recorded by Moura Lympany, Clifford Curzon, and Yuja Wang, but none of the rest of his music is ever heard. The composer (whose life story might have come from a swashbuckling novel by Dumas) wrote five substantial Concerti Symphonique, although the first is lost. Peter Donohoe plays Nos. 2 and 4 (CD 14, Bournemouth SO) and 3 and 5 (CD 26, BBC Scottish SO, both with Andrew Litton conducting). Despite the Second’s scherzo’s fame, No. 3 is the most interesting. It is very experimental formally and harmonically for its time. Illuminating performances.

CD 35 features Stephen Coombs with the BBC Scottish SO under Ronald Corp in the Piano Concerto and three shorter concertante pieces by Gabriel Piérne. These are delightful works in the French Saint-Säens tradition. In spite of fierce competition from Jean-Efflam Bavouzet on Chandos, Coombs gives sympathetic, light-fingered renditions.

The most recent work in the entire set could still be termed Romantic and is in my view the best English Piano Concerto of the 20th century: that of John Ireland, composed in 1930. On CD 40 it is coupled with Ireland’s haunting Legend for Piano and Orchestra, and the original (and preferable) version of the Piano Concerto by Frederick Delius. Piers Lane is an ideal soloist and David Lloyd-Jones conducts the Ulster Orchestra.

Friedrich Kalkbrenner was a contemporary of Beethoven and Schubert. A pre-Liszt virtuoso pianist, he was hated by everyone for his egotism and snobbery, so much so that nobody wanted to touch any of his music after he died in 1849. It’s rather fun, in fact. Howard Shelley plays and conducts the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra in Kalkbrenner’s Concertos Nos. 1 & 4 (CD 42). His concertos Nos. 2 & 3 will reappear in the second box set.

Finally, first class performances not part of the original series are the Brahms Piano Concerto No. 2 (Hamelin, CD 48) and the four Piano Concertos and Paganini Rhapsody by Rachmaninov (Hough, CDs 49 and 50), all with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra and Andrew Litton.

This is a collection to dip into, rather than play back-to-back. The reason is the stylistic similarity among works written by virtuoso pianists designed to showcase their technique. Whatever qualities these pieces may or may not have, they all contain a lot of decorative keyboard writing: cascading chromatic scales in thirds, flowing arpeggio accompaniments in slow movements, glittering bravado in finales, and over-the-top rhetorical flourishes (as was the fashion). Nevertheless, there is so much enjoyable music here, well worth getting to know, and so well presented, purchase is a no-brainer. The expansive notes that came with the original releases are accessible online.

The Romantic Piano Concerto, Vol. 1
Music by Moscheles, Litolff, Saint-Säens, Rachmaninov et al.
Stephen Hough, Marc-André Hamelin, Piers Lane, Howard Shelley p, Various orchestras and conductors
Hyperion CD44701-50 (50 CDs)