LMP On Demand: Piano Explored – Hummel Piano Concerto No.4 in E, Op.110

LMP’s Piano Explored lunchtime concert series at St John’s Smith Square has become a firm favourite with concert-goers. In just one hour, virtuoso pianist Howard Shelley OBE gives a witty and insightful introduction to one or two famous and not-so-famous works for piano and orchestra, before performing them with LMP. And for 2021, these concerts are online!

Johann Nepomuk Hummel was one of the most talented pianist/composers of his day, and a musical ‘bridge’ between the Classical and Romantic eras. Hummel’s works are full of joie-de-vivre, their harmonic and lyrical variety showcasing his prodigious, virtuosic talent. If you are unfamiliar with Hummel, then the E major piano concerto is the perfect starting point, and Howard Shelley, a champion of this much-underrated composer, will bring all his consummate musicianship to the piece’s playful piano passagework. Take a lunch hour with the London Mozart Players and Howard Shelley to judge Hummel’s genius for yourself; you will be convinced.

‘Howard Shelley proves a supremely eloquent advocate of the composer, with his refined, shapely phrasing, crystalline textures’ BBC Music Magazine