Teeming with detail and infectious energy, these live recordings make superb cases for two works from the mid-1950s which had rocky starts in life: the Piano Concerto (with Steven Osborne on clear-headed form) and Symphony No. 2.

The challenges of Prokofiev’s ‘War Sonatas’ trilogy may be fearsome, but Steven Osborne is one of those rare musicians who can bring light and clarity (as well as phenomenal reserves of power and concentration) to bear on some of the most ferociously volatile and brilliant piano music written in the twentieth century.

What the world needs more of is intelligently planned, stupendously played, and brilliantly recorded collections like this one. These two discs contain all the piano works of Michael Tippett, works that come from every period of the composer's very long life except his very last. It includes the youthful, tuneful Piano Sonata No. 1 written between 1936 and 1938 and revised in 1941, the massive Fantasia on a Theme of Handel from 1941, the exuberant Piano Concerto from 1955, the experimental Piano Sonata No. 2, the gnomic almost Beethovenian Piano Sonata No. 3 from 1973, and the gnarly post-Beethovenian Piano Sonata No. 4. It features a bravura performance by pianist Steven Osborne that makes the best case for all the music, no matter how outré or recherché its harmonic proclivities or rhythmic audacities.

A complete survey of Ravel’s piano music is an especially challenging prospect for any pianist. It is not merely that this sublime music frequently demands exceptional, post-Lisztian virtuosity. Beyond such dexterity is the fact that, as Steven Osborne observes in this recording’s booklet, the composer’s fear of repeating himself ensure that the lessons from one work can rarely be transferred to the next. This is not merely the aesthetic change from the nightmarish imagery of Gaspard de la nuit to the elegant neo-classicism of Le tombeau de Couperin. Ravel essentially re-imagined how to write for the piano with each significant work. Osborne is more than up to the task. The contrasting fireworks of the ‘Toccata’ from Le tombeau and ‘Alborada del gracioso’ (Miroirs) are despatched with relish, the piano exploding with power in the latter after a disarmingly impish opening. The Sonatine has a refined insouciance, while the love bestowed upon each note is clear. Then there are the numerous moments of sustained control, such as the shimmering opening pages of Gaspard. Sometimes changes of spirit occur effortlessly within a piece. Having been a model of clarity in the ‘Prelude’ from Le tombeau, Osborne treats the codetta not as a brisk flourish, but as if this particular vision of the 18th century is dissolving beneath his fingers.

Martha Argerich’s Ravel G major was for so long a reference recording that it’s easy to forget how idiosyncratic it actually is. I wouldn’t actually blame anyone who found it too garish in its colouring, with its volatility giving diminishing returns and its rubato too predictably appassionato for a sensibility as dapper as Ravel’s. Such a person might well find exactly what they want in Steven Osborne’s account, which is masterful in its own way but essentially self-effacing.

Debussy may have stipulated ‘mains formidables’ as the requirement for pianists tackling his Études, but they need a lot more besides: it’s clear from these magisterial performances that Steven Osborne’s ‘formidable hands’ are always at the service of a profound musical intelligence.

A programme which bridges Debussy’s first work for piano (the Danse bohémienne, from 1880) and his last (Les soirs illuminés par l’ardeur du charbon, from 1917). Steven Osborne is equally responsive to the very different musical moods of both.

Debussy may have stipulated ‘mains formidables’ as the requirement for pianists tackling his Études, but they need a lot more besides: it’s clear from these magisterial performances that Steven Osborne’s ‘formidable hands’ are always at the service of a profound musical intelligence.

Sergey Prokofiev's output for violin and piano was quite small, and it would have been limited to the Violin Sonata No. 1 in F minor had he not also arranged his Five Songs Without Words and the Flute Sonata in D major, the latter at the request of David Oistrakh. One experiences a degree of discomfort in the Violin Sonata No. 1, which is one of Prokofiev's more unsettling pieces, due in part to its sinister tone and harsh dissonances, but also to its conflicting expressions.

‘Rachmaninov fans won’t want to miss this’ was Gramophone’s verdict on Steven Osborne’s recording of the Études-tableaux, and this thrilling new release is an equally essential acquisition. Osborne proves a predictably fine exponent of the Faustian Piano Sonata No 1 and is no less compelling in the selection of shorter works which completes the album.

Steven Osborne has only twice before been mentioned in the review pages of Gramophone: Andrew Achenbach found his playing ‘outstandingly sensitive and dashing’ in concertos by Mackenzie and Tovey (Hyperion‚ 10/98)‚ while Roger Thomas appreciated his wit in the jazzinflected sonatas of Nikolai Kapustin (Hyperion‚ 8/00). He faces a much tougher job in Messiaen’s Vingt Regards: not only music of exceptional difficulty but a score of which there are seven rival recordings currently available‚ six of them very good indeed.

Two first recordings of concertos by a Scot (Mackenzie) who settled in England as Principal of the Royal Academy of Music and an Englishman (Tovey) who settled in Scotland as a Professor at Edinburgh University's Reid School of Music.
Mackenzie's Scottish Concerto, premiered by no less a man than Paderewski in 1897, is a colourful and entertaining work which uses several Scottish themes in a fundamentally Lisztian design.

In a true meeting of musical minds, the two superb pianists team up once again for a delectable programme of miniatures by Fauré, Poulenc, Stravinsky, Debussy and Ravel. A bewitching programme of music often associated with childhood, including favourites by Fauré, Ravel and Debussy; works which amply reward the care lavished on them by Paul Lewis and Steven Osborne in these exquisite accounts.