Mozart / Gal: Concerto For Piano And Orchestra – Sarah Beth Briggs

   in Piano International (Sep, 2016)
With the lushness of a film soundtrack and a dollop of Prokofiev and Tchaikovsky ballets, Hans Gál’s Piano Concerto is also a ruminating wander through a sprightly English sonic landscape. It was composed in 1948, by which time Gál (1890-1987) had already dwelt in the land of Vaughan Williams for a decade, including internment as an enemy alien near Liverpool and on the Isle of Man. Despite these refugee hardships, the opening movement, marked Allegro energico ma non troppo, is high-spirited.

Briggs, born in 1972, is a student of Denis Matthews and plays in a piano duet with James Lisney as well as in the Anton Stadler Trio, Trio Melzi, Clarion …