Musical Opinion

The appeal of the repertoire on this disc may be too widely-spread for it to appeal to many buyers – Liszt, Rebecca Clarke and Coleridge-Taylor would be awkward to programme in a live recital, along with short pieces by Stanford – but this selection dominated by the two magnificent if widely-differentiated Sonatas, is so consistently well-played that the ‘calling card’ nature of the programming has to fall away when the listener is confronted by playing of such consistent excellence.

Tom Hicks has the measure of the Liszt Sonata, and whilst specialists may question this or that tempo for a certain passage, or discuss the structural comprehension of this artist, there is no doubt that Tom Hicks is a serious musician, possessor of a formidable technique and has the intellectual capacity to master a relatively wide range of repertoire, both well-known and unknown. He is supported by very fine recording quality and one hopes that this young artist will go on to enjoy the career his undoubted gifts deserve. (FIVE STARS)

—Robert Matthew-Walker