Mark Bebbington

“Bebbington’s approach fulfils with prescient fluidity the composer’s textural ambitions, yet resists tossing off the flourishes with undue slickness or abandoning the chaste lyrical imperative that, as with all Ireland’s music, binds together the considerable pianistic accoutrements…. The continuing wave of enthusiasm for John Ireland’s music is certainly to be warmly embraced and I look forward with eagerness to Mark Bebbington’s second instalment.” International Record Review, June 2008

“…..Bebbington’s programme provides a pretty much ideal introduction, containing two of Ireland’s most popular and durable achievements, namely Decorations and London Pieces – both given with such winning aplomb, scrupulous care and heartwarming sense of new discovery that I found myself falling in love with them all over again…” Gramophone Magazine, October 2008

“For first-timers, however, Bebbington's programme provides a pretty much ideal introduction, containing two of Ireland's most popular and durable achievements, namely Decorations and London Pieces - both given with such winning aplomb, scrupulous care and heartwarming sense of new discovery that I found myself falling in love with them all over again...” Gramophone Magazine, October 2008

“Mark Bebbington's… approach to the brooding and combative Piano Sonata is to give the harmony time enough to breathe, in order to go more intensely into its emotional life. The depressive aspects of 'Chelsea Reach' and the mystical ones of the three Channel Island pieces collected as Decorations have seldom been more sensitively brought out.” BBC Music Magazine, October 2008 *****

“....I am delighted the ever-enterprising Somm label has brought out a recording of an arrangement for piano of Elgar’s First Symphony, transcribed shortly after the symphony’s premiere by the young British pianist Mark Bebbington. This fascinating transcription sheds new light on Elgar’s symphony and no Elgarian should miss it.” David Mellor, Mail on Sunday, 11th November 2007 + 5 Star Performance in BBC Music Magazine, November 2007

“Karg-Elert produced a virtuoso recasting that needs a Listz to play it. Mark Bebbington gives it his best shot with revealing and often thrilling results. The enterprising coupling is the debut recording of Alan Bush's early piano Sonata in B minor, written in 1921 when he was a student at the Royal Academy of Music... a powerfully concentrated one-movement design with the contrapuntal intricacy of mature Bush but also an aspiring romanticism in the lyrical second subject.” BBC Music Magazine, November 2007 *****

“Bebbington is a sensitive, stylish performer who never forces the tone and displays a genuine empathy for Bridge’s touching and consistently absorbing inspiration. What’s more, his subtly variegated tonal palette has been agreeably captured…If future volumes maintain a similar level of excellence, then this will surely be a series worth pursuing.” Andrew Achenbach, The Gramophone

“With this delectably performed and well engineered recording he (Bebbington) is well set to enter the mainstream CD market.” David Hart. Birmingham Post May 8th 2007

As Andrew Achenbach intimates in his review, this is a classy recital from a classy pianist. Mark Bebbington pairs works by Sir Malcolm Arnold (for an 85th birthday tribute) and Constant Lambert to complementary effect. But he brings out the invention that is common to both, the individuality that perhaps kept each from really joining the mainstream. - Gramophone Magazine

"Bebbington's playing of this attractive music is always secure but never too showy, full of warm musicality and dramatic atmosphere". Birmingham Post