Sir William Sterndale Bennett wrote six piano concertos and two other works for piano and orchestra, but the three works here were composed in succession in the 1830s, while Sterndale Bennett was still in his teens. They have been likened to works by Mozart, Mendelssohn, and (in the annotations here), various English composers, but the most accurate contention may be that of Rosemary Firman that Sterndale Bennett had a style uniquely his own. It's notable that at this point his style was developing fast; the Piano Concerto ...
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Sir William Sterndale Bennett wrote six piano concertos and two other works for piano and orchestra, but the three works here were composed in succession in the 1830s, while Sterndale Bennett was still in his teens. They have been likened to works by Mozart, Mendelssohn, and (in the annotations here), various English composers, but the most accurate contention may be that of Rosemary Firman that Sterndale Bennett had a style uniquely his own. It's notable that at this point his style was developing fast; the Piano Concerto No. 3 in C minor, Op. 9, shows a sustained effort to deal with the example of Beethoven that is not present in the two earlier works. Sterndale Bennett's music has an impersonal flavor that is as far as one can imagine from Schumann, yet Schumann admired his early works. From Mozart he inarguably got a strong sense of form. Sample the finale of the Piano Concerto in D minor, Op. 1, which expertly unfolds the implications of the unusual alternation of orchestra and piano at the...
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![Bennett: Piano Concertos 1-3 [Bbc Scottish Symphony Orchestra; Howard Shelley] [Hyperion: Cda68178]](https://www0.alibris-static.com/cover/o39753s53r1_t.jpg)
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