British Music Society CDs Mewton-Wood plays Twentieth Century Piano Concertos An interesting selection of BMS CDs has been received in connection with the 70th birthday of the Society's President, John McCabe: This is a fine compilation of demanding piano concertos, with a personal memoir by John Amis, who once played for Noel second piano in the Busoni Concerto, and talked with him for an hour and a half the night before he killed himself. Best remembered is probably the Bliss war-horse, which I fear has not made it into the enduring repertoire. The Stravinsky concerto is recorded with Walter Goehr & the Residentie Orchestra wth "uncanny and faultless accuracy", but for me the best of this disc is Mewton-Wood's joie de vivre and panache in Shostakovich's No.1 (with trumpet); exhilarating and excellent mono-1953 recording in a transfer which is "the first on CD to be made at the correct pitch level" ! Peter Grahame Woolf
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