Elizabeth Joy Roe is a prodigiously talented pianist. Her playing is infused with vitality and passion, essential elements for a performance of Benjamin Britten’s only piano concerto, composed when he was 25 and a piece that ‘dashes along at full-speed’, as he wrote in his diary. Roe says the concerto’s ‘sharply etched figurations [feel] enlivening to play’, and this is immediately apparent from the opening bars of the first movement.

Benjamin Britten and Samuel Barber make compatible CD companions. Barber is among America’s best-celebrated composers whose music bears strong national significance, and Britten is similarly regarded as the quintessentially British composer whose work brought about an English music renaissance when trends favoured the European avant-garde. Both were gay and were in committed, life-long relationships at a time when homosexuality was illegal, and, without compromising their artistic integrity, both wrote music that was accessible to audiences beyond the concert-going elite. Britten and Barber are as fascinating as their music is brilliant, and more importantly, the piano repertoire featured on this disc is representative of the finest twentieth-century Western art music.

A highlight is Roe’s powerful interpretation of Barber’s Nocturne. It’s worth purchasing the CD just to hear this mesmerising and eerie piece, composed in homage to John Field.

Alexandra Mathew