It is seldom these graceful, delightful pieces have such consummate musicianship lavished upon them. Few pianists today besides Stephen Hough could devise such a recital featuring his own compositions beside works by Liszt, Sibelius, Elgar, Mompou and many more. Such stuff is what dreams are made of.

Symphony No. 1 in D minor for Large Orchestra and American Rhapsody. Dohnányi’s First Symphony was written just three years or so after the First Piano Concerto and here we are beginning to be aware of a more individual style developing. He scores the orchestra adroitly. Unlike the First Piano Concerto it is less derivative; although, like that work, it is portentous and intense and is a marathon indulgence, sprawling over almost an hour. It begins in the manner of Bruckner and its opening movement spreads over a glut of moods from no-nonsense harshness and martial heroics through eerie and mysterious stuff to intimate sentimentality visiting folk material on the way and indulging in fist-shaking bombast towards its end.

Dohnányi’s Ruralia hungarica celebrates his homeland’s folk music with authentic melodies, collected by Bartók and Kodály, all presented in glowing, vibrant orchestral dress. The opening movement introduces a pastoral atmosphere with important material for oboe and strings and then comes a song for clarinet about a weeping willow. The music is warm and sunny, sentimental but with a dramatically tense climax. The second movement is a racy, thrusting rondo with a touch of the oriental. The third movement is gentler, calmer and wistful and innocent. The fourth movement is full of emotion, quite raw at times when it touches on the depravity of a girl who is banished from her home. Finally the Fifth movement rushes headlong to a tempestuous conclusion.

Hyperion is delighted to introduce the highly sought-after German cellist Alban Gerhardt to the label with these dazzling performances of three cello concertos written within the span of five years either side of the close of the nineteenth century. This disc is a fitting start to Hyperion’s new series of Romantic Cello Concertos; a follow-up to the highly successful Romantic Piano Concerto series and Romantic Violin Concerto series.

Another superb addition to Matthias Bamert's splendid series of recordings with the BBC Philharmonic of the orchestral music of Ernst von Dohnányi, this 2004 disc brings together three concerted works from the composer's early years in Tallahassee, FL. But although they were composed between 1946 and 1952, the Piano Concerto No. 2, the Violin Concerton No. 2, and the Concertino for harp and chamber orchestra all sound as if they could have been written between 1896 and 1914 in Budapest, Hungary: although war and fascism had driven Dohnányi from his place and time, it did not drive from him his place and time. Indeed, the works on this disc are just as tuneful and romantic as Dohnányi's earlier works and anyone who enjoyed them will enjoy these.

In this series featuring ‘The Romantic Piano Concerto’, Dohnányi’s two works in this form are fitting examples of the genre because he was throughout his life a romantic both at heart and in his musical language. Although he died as late as 1960 he had little to do with the musical developments of the twentieth century. The two Concertos on this recording evoke a world which belongs to the nineteenth century. Dohnányi continued to compose in a style deeply rooted in the Austro-German classical tradition exemplified by Brahms. His merit as a composer is that he was able to prolong meaningfully the classico/romantic past, of which he was one of the last practitioners, well into this century, both in his chamber and orchestral music. This he did with elegance, wit, and stylish virtuosity. The two Piano Concertos are fine examples of his fluent mastery of form and instrumentation.

In terms of a First symphony being the establishment of a recognizable voice of a respective country, Ernst Von Dohnanyi (1877-1960) was an Hungarian equivalent to England's Sir Edward Elgar. Dohnanyi, however, was a little-known, overshadowed force of 20th Century Hungarian music, largely due to the popularities of both Bela Bartok & Zoltan Kodaly. His works, especially his two symphonies, therefore continue to suffer from obscurity. But, here comes the rescue, at least in part. Leon Botstein & the London Philharmonic brings the First symphony from the coldness of obscurity with this excellent, probing Telarc recording. It's rival Chandos recording, released in March of 1999, features Mathias Bamert & the BBC Philharmonic.

The celebrated partnership of Marc-André Hamelin and the Takács Quartet has already set down reference recordings of piano quintets by Schumann, Franck and Shostakovich, and this latest addition is equally illustrious; an important milestone in the critical re-evaluation of the work of Ernő Dohnányi.