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The disc brings together three major pieces by two outstanding and highly individual English composers. Walton’s Viola Concerto is one of his greatest works—haunted throughout by the dreamy opening melody, yet suffused with action and vigour, exhibiting the dazzling, biting brilliance familiar from works such as Façade. The ‘eloquent epilogue’, wrote Walton’s biographer Michael Kennedy, ‘remains the single most beautiful passage in all his music, sensuous yet full of uncertainty’. It is presented here in the original 1928 version in its first modern recording. Rubbra’s Viola Concerto is also one of its composer’s major works, demonstrating the new musical depths he had sounded with his Sixth Symphony and showing influences of the symphonic traditions of Tchaikovsky and Sibelius. Alongside it we have the first recording of Rubbra’s Meditations on a Byzantine Hymn for solo viola, an extended virtuoso work of religious and solemn aspect.

Reviews:
Classic FM Magazine
This is music that is somehow virtuosic but not showy, bold and exuberant in places yet profoundly intimate, tinged with a nostalgic reflectiveness yet never merely self-indulgent. Lawrence Power magically combines the soulful intensity of Lionel Tertis with the quicksilver agility of that other British viola genuis, William Primrose. In Power's skilled hands the viola is transformed from the lumbering second-class citizen of legend into a sleek, fine-tuned, noble instrument of infinite grace and expressive subtlety. Walton is one of the few composers to have really understood the viola's unique inner voice and Power traces the music's emotional contours with unerring accuracy … The BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra under its gifted chief conductor, Ilan Volkov, also sounds utterly transported, illuminating Walton's and Rubbra's elusive musical idioms with playing of considerable accomplishment. The solo viola Meditations, here receiving their premiere recording, are no less captivating, and Power plays them like a lost masterwork. An outstanding release.

BBC Music Magazine
Power's playing is stunningly precise, crisply articulated and beautifully projected, with no hint of the little scrambles and occasionally pinched tone that beset even quite famous rival recordings … As a substantial bonus, there are two rarities by Walton's underrated contemporary Edmund Rubbra … Here Power's rich and even sound, secure intonation and eloquent phrasing confirm his place as successor to Lionel Tertis, Primrose and Riddle in the royal line of British violists.

Daily Telegraph
If proof were still needed of Lawrence Power's pre-eminence among viola-players, then this magnificent disc is it … The advantage of a true violist, rather than a violinist who doubles on the viola, is apparent in the flexibility of Power's tonal colouring and the ease with which he slips between the questing melody of the opening, the bright sound of the scherzo and the resignation of the epilogue. He is matched in playing of real bite and textural interest from Ilan Volkov's BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra … Power's identification with this music is complete, steering an expert course through the music's moods.

International Record Review
This is a greatly distinguished disc … These very different composers have each produced a masterly work, each of which receives here the finest performance I have heard of either score … [Walton] A new recording of the superior original orchestration is very welcome indeed. This new Hyperion disc is actually the first recording of it to have been made in stereo, and the richness of the original orchestration comes across in Andrew Keener's production with greater delicacy and impact than it has ever had before. The quality of the recording is one thing, but the engineers can capture only the performance taking place, and in this regard, and on this showing, Lawrence Power has to be counted as one of the finest masters of his instrument … He plays with a perfect sense of style and with a profound understanding of and insight into each score as well as a technical mastery and sure intonation which are wholly exceptional. In this, he is abetted by an orchestral contribution under the baton of a superbly gifted conductor. Ilan Volkov matches his soloist with a spontaneity and complete musical unity that … reveal this work to be a greater masterpiece than most of us have experienced until now … Such richly poetic performances as these should be in everyone's record collection.

Musicweb International
This is a highly satisfying release, both for the excellent playing of all concerned, Hyperion’s gorgeous recording and for the programme. There are plenty of excuses for buying, even if you already have one or other of the excellent Walton alternatives of Yuri Bashmet and Previn on RCA, or Lars Anders Tomter and Paul Daniel on Naxos. The coupling is well nigh irresistible, and introduces a first modern recording of the Walton concerto in its original version, and the recorded premiere of Rubbra’s Meditations on a Byzantine Hymn. The cover design and illustration, Figure in the Moonlight by John Atkinson Grimshaw are the icing on the cake, making it into a highly desirable object which will instantly become what the Dutch call an 'aanwinst'; a fine addition to your collection.

Gramophone: (click to enlarge)



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