REVIEWS

Dickinson on Heritage 2014

Peter Dickinson on Heritage Records

With his own breadth of interests and open-mindedness, it's not surprising that Dickinson's music is so free of dogma, but it does have a distinctive identity, and a brilliant use of colour. Both are strong features of the Piano Concerto (1979-84), first performed at the Cheltenham Festival in 1984 and given its London premiere at the Proms two years later. on both occasions the soo part was played by Howard Shelley, to whom it is dedicated. This is a work that effortlessly combines passages of rugged, muscular modernism with others that evoke ragtime. As well as its exhuberant originality, there's also an energy and vital force in this Concerto that leaves a lasting impression, especially as the perfiormance by Shelley with the BBC SO/Atherton is outstandingly assured. It is one of three concertos that lie at the heart of Dickinson's large-scale orchestral output.These have been brought together on a disc from Heritage that deserves to be in any serious collection of modern British music.

Nigel Simeone, International Record Review, November 2014