Two very different takes on the romantic piano concerto, both equally successful. The Bliss—written in 1939 for the World’s Fair in New York—is extrovert, exuberant and virtuosic, the Rubbra a profound reflection on, and continuation of, the English pastoral tradition.

Gordon Jacob’s Piano Concerto no.2 in E flat was completed in 1957 and premiered on 11 July of that year at the Winter Gardens, Bournemouth by the soloist Edith Vogel. A Proms performance took place at the Royal Albert Hall on 9 August 1957 with the same soloist. A review in The Times of the 1957 Proms performance of Gordon Jacob’s Piano Concerto No.2 declared that ‘the composer’s masterly understanding of the orchestra enables him to express each idea economically and in the most clean and attractive colours’, while The Sunday Times’ critic wrote that, ‘having taught the craft of orchestration to a whole generation of composers, Dr. Jacob is himself a past master at clear and effective scoring’.

Smaller concertos for piano and modest orchestral forces were a feature of British composition in the first half of the 20th century. Often they were written for a special occasion, and typically vanished into oblivion thereafter. During the COVID period we were looking for things to record with small numbers of players, and stumbled across this treasury: short concertos written for entertainment that don't outstay their welcome.

The disc contains three groups of songs and is completed with the Sinfonietta for large string orchestra. This was a late work (Opus 163 composed in 1986 – the year of his death) but was his first piece for a string orchestra. Hans-Hubert Schönzeler, the conductor on this disc, states that Rubbra told him he wanted to compete in the tradition set by Elgar (Inroduction and Allegro & Serenade), Vaughan Williams (Tallis variations etc.), Holst (St Paul’s suite) and Britten (Frank Bridge variations, simple symphony etc…). The Sinfonietta was first performed by the Albany Symphony Orchestra who had wished to commission a work and accepted this one in progress. The two sections, Andante con moto ma non flessibile and Lento run contiguously through a held bass line.

This disc shows Rubbra (1901-86) becoming more mature on one hand (Symphony No. 2 of 1937), and on the other, returning to more experiments in tonality than most other composers of his generation (Symphony No. 6 of 1954). The disc starts off with Symphony No. 6, which is much more user-friendly. It's more tonal, more engaging in lyrical ideas; yet these ideas do not draw from folk-music sources. It only alludes to them obliquely, then moves on. Symphony No. 2 avoids folk-music sources altogether and is more of an experiment in polyphonic patterns. It's quite an intense work; it's also quite brilliant.

For some years the Third Symphony was a repertory piece, at least on BBC programmes, but it fell out of favour in the late 1950s. Commentators have noticed a certain Sibelian cut to its opening idea (with woodwind in thirds) but everything else strikes you as completely personal.