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.

Here is a superb recital following Piers Lane’s earlier Hyperion release of d’Albert piano concertos (4/96) and, once again, provoking astonishment that music of such quality could have lain neglected for so long. Variety is, indeed, the spice of d’Albert (1864-1932), the legendary, six times married pianist so greatly admired by Liszt. Tending to leave his wives as soon as they bore him children (one for the Freudians), his occasional sense of confusion – including an outburst to Teresa Carreno, his second conquest, “Come quickly, my child and your child are fighting with our child” – hardly detracted from a dazzling career and a series of compositions of a special richness.

When d’Albert appeared in 1881 at one of Hans Richter’s concerts in London he played his own Piano Concerto in A, but the work was never published and has not survived. However, from a review in The Musical Times of November 1881 we can reasonably deduce that the Concerto had the traditional three movements. The reviewer stated that it was ‘uncompromising in its pretensions to rank with the chief of its kind; largely developed, ambitious in style and character, and rigidly observant of classical form, while redundant in matter’.