Reviews

Danny Driver’s first foray into CPE Bach’s keyboard output was one of the most thrilling instrumental discs of 2010 and, once again, he proves an ideal guide to this repertoire....His impeccable technique is allied with the clarity of architectural vision crucial for making sense of this composer’s sophisticated challenges.

"It was one of those instantly recognisable and humbling instances of a musician being entirely at the music’s disposal and therefore its master. Not only did he realise with perfect consistency the first movement’s spiritual anticipation of and dependency on the second movement, he also presented the process of detachment and transformation of the Arietta’s variations, the sense of letting go that defines the music, with a disarming modesty, directness and simple inevitability. "

'It would be difficult to over-praise this wonderfully enterprising disc....the superb Danny Driver gives his all'.

The standout triumph was a blast from the past. Franz Reizenstein wrote his Concerto Popolare for Gerard Hoffnung’s first music festival in 1956; its soloist wanders from Grieg to Beethoven to Rachmaninov while the increasingly irate maestro insists on conducting Tchaikovsky..... Danny Driver’s pianist and Andrew Litton’s conductor were note-perfect impersonations of their preening archetypes.

Driver's performances, bold, exuberant and precise, were counterpointed not only by video projections, but with an actor. Andrew Stephen, in nerdy spectacles and a striped jumper, spent the performance seated at a 1980s computer, tapping out notes on the Studies and their starting points, from medieval Notre Dame composers to the tribal music of central Africa.

'Fascinating - two major British piano concertos that have nothing to do with the British musical mainstream. The music of the radical and visionary Scot, Erik Chisholm, has languished in obscurity for 50 years...' Hear excerpts and a discussion of this recording on the BBC Music Magazine podcast (iTunes or www.classical-music.com).

On this album, CPE Bach: Keyboard Sonatas II, Danny Driver is intimately in touch with the fluctuations of the musical language, writes Geoffrey Norris - 'Driver plays with an imagination and subtlety fully equal to Bach’s own.'

'Immensely rewarding listening'.

'Driver's playing is always beautifully measured and marked by an exquisitely deft precision'.