The Brook Street Band has easily earned its reputation as “the smartest new baroque band around” (The Times, London). Among today’s most notable Handel specialists, the group’s founder, cellist Tatty Theo, and harpsichordist, Carolyn Gibley, turn their attention for only the second time to the music of J.S. Bach as well as his son Carl Philip Emmanuel. Like father, like son, each wrote three Sonatas for viola da gamba and harpsichord. These works have long been a valued part of the cello repertoire, but this recording is the first to make use of a regular four-string baroque cello.

Acclaimed for their life-affirming virtuosity and irresistible charm, The King’s Singers are in global demand. Their work – synonymous with the best in vocal ensemble performance – appeals to a vast international audience. “The Library is the name of a series of EP releases that celebrates our ‘close-harmony’ library, both historically and as it grows each year. Close-harmony is the phrase we have always used to describe its lighter repertoire, and we see The Library as our chance to make sure this rich vein of great songwriting and arranging gets the place of prominence it deserves. The Library recording series will involve regular releases which will come out alongside other touring and recording projects, giving us an output for revisiting some of these old favorites and commissioning brand new ‘close-harmony’ from recent releases. Every volume in The Library series will capture a variety of songs, celebrating the wonderful diversity of music in our world today.”

Featuring sensitive interpretations and a dazzling orchestral accompaniment, this release includes Four Mozart piano concertos punctuated by smaller Mozart tunes. Award-winning pianist Jean-Efflam Bavouzet enjoys a prolific recording and international concert career. He regularly works with orchestras such as The Cleveland Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, London Philharmonic, BBC Symphony and NHK Symphony orchestras, and collaborates with conductors including Vladimir Ashkenazy, Vladimir Jurowski, Gianandrea Noseda, François- Xavier Roth, Nicholas Collon, Gábor Takács-Nagy and Sir Andrew Davis amongst others. Bavouzet records exclusively for Chandos and his recording of Grieg’s Piano Concerto with Bergen Philharmonic under Edward Gardner has been nominated for the Concerto category of the 2018 Gramophone Awards. Together with Manchester Camerata and Gábor Takács-Nagy, Bavouzet has recorded several of Haydn’s Piano Concertos and embarked on the present series of Mozart concertos, which have been critically acclaimed.

Bill Ives has enjoyed a rich and varied career as both performer and composer (Grayston Ives). These experiences, culminating in nearly two decades as Informator Choristarum (Director of Music) at Magdalen College, Oxford, are reflected in a compositional style which is complex yet accessible, rich and colourful. His choral music comes from the heart, and this deeply personal reaction to the texts enables the performer or listener to engage with and enjoy the music to its full extent. This recording represents two ‘firsts’ for the choirs of Jesus College, Cambridge: The first time the choir have collaborated on a recording with the Britten Sinfonia, as well as is the first time both chapel and college choirs they have joined forces for an entire album. Bill (Grayston) Ives writes: “In the Requiem many influences are thrown into the musical melting pot and will be apparent to the discerning listener. Ultimately, the piece is firmly rooted in the Anglican choral tradition (written specifically for liturgical performance), the distillation of a lifetime in music ... The delicate, sweet sound of a pair of tiny hand-held cymbals is heard at the opening and at intervals throughout. They were bought at Snape Maltings from a group of Tibetan monks who were resident there during the summer of 2008 when ideas for the piece were forming.”

James Rhodes has no formal academic musical education or dedicated mentoring. The title of the debut album “Razor Blades Little Pills and Big Pianos”, hints at the suffering that dogged Rhodes’s childhood and early adult life. Classical music became his solace and key to his survival. It was Bach, Beethoven and Chopin, not Faith Hope and Charity, that offered comfort. In 1993, mental health issues stopped him taking up a scholarship to the Guildhall. Suffering further setbacks due to health issues it was not until 2008, when Rhodes met his present manager, Denis Blais, that he was encouraged to record his first album. This enabled him to bare his soul and put many of the ghosts of the past to rest. With Blais, Rhodes also created a distinctive and unique approach to how the classical piano repertoire should be presented. Uncomfortable with the austere and traditional ‘white tie and tails’ recital they decided it was time for the performer to communicate directly with the audience. Rhodes was going to introduce his own programme notes and share what it takes to perform these works of art using fascinating anecdotes about the composers and his own life experience. Delivered in his unique trademark stand-up style he creates an immersive experience that has won him and classical music a dedicated new following. His new album, presented here, shows the same no-holds-barred approach to these time-honored classics.

This is the second volume in the EP series ‘The Library’. The idea behind this series is to explore both the history, and the new horizons, of The King’s Singers close-harmony repertoire. Close-harmony is the part of their work for which they are best known, and their library of thousands of arrangements is one they’re determined to explore, maintain and develop. The track -listing is designed to celebrate some old favorites from the library alongside brand new arrangements and adaptations, created especially for these recordings, which may perhaps become ‘old favorites’ of the future. Volume 2 was recorded in the beautiful surroundings of Snape Maltings, Suffolk (UK) - a place most famous for its association with Benjamin Britten - and it proved to be a relaxing and inspiring place to work for two beautiful wintry days. The King’s Singers were founded on 1 May 1968 by six choral scholars who had recently graduated from King’s College Cambridge. Their vocal line-up was (by chance) two countertenors, a tenor, two baritones and a bass, and the group has never wavered from this formation since.

Along with Petrali, Davide di Bergamo and Fumagalli, Giovanni Morandi was one of the most influential organ composers of the 18th century. During his time as Master of Music at the cathedral of Senigallia, he wrote a great deal of liturgical works for organ. Morandi’s organ pieces feature brilliant melodies, pianistic writing, and sonic effects which mirrored the Italian opera world that was thriving around Morandi. This particular recording is made on an organ built by Gaetano Callido for the Paris church of SS Simon and Thaddeus in Borca di Cadore, as well as on an 1830 organ built by Antonio and Angelo Amati. Full organ specifications are included in the booklet.

Along with Vivaldi’s ‘Seasons’ or Beethoven’s ‘Fifth’, Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos belong to those works that are so well-known that we risk taking them for granted. In order to (re-)discover the special qualities that can inspire us today, in 2001 Thomas Dausgaard and the Swedish Chamber Orchestra decided to contact six contemporary composer, asking each of them to compose a companion piece to one of the concertos. Seventeen years later, in 2018, it was time to present the result, with a performance at the BBC Proms of all the works – new and old. Recorded over a period of 18 months leading up to this event, the present boxed set provides a unique opportunity to experience six very different musical minds and idioms entering into conversation with Bach: Mark-Anthony Turnage, Steven Mackey, Anders Hillborg, Olga Neuwirth, Uri Caine and Brett Dean. Bach’s concertos are remarkable in that they are all scored for different instrumental combinations, and part of the brief to the group of composers was to reflect this. In her Aello, Olga Neuwirth has for instance used several ‘instruments’ to stand in for Bach’s harpsichord, including a synthesizer, a milk frother and a typewriter. Brett Dean, on the other hand, has stayed very close to Bach’s instrumentation, but has chosen to write his work as a preparation for Brandenburg Concerto No. 6 – an Approach to Bach’s extremely tight canonic writing. In performing the twelve works the orchestra and Dausgaard are joined by leading soloists including Clare Chase, Mahan Esfahani, Håkan Hardenberger, Pekka Kuusisto and Tabea Zimmermann.

These composers were all affected by the carnage of World War I, and their elegiac music expresses regret and lost innocence, love won and lost, sacrifice and death. George Butterworth’s A Shropshire Lad, conceived as an epilogue to his Housman song cycles, encapsulates the poet’s sense of life’s transience. Ivor Gurney was both shot and gassed in 1917, and The Trumpet pleads with mankind to set aside the folly of war. Heard here in a new completion, Gerald Finzi’s Requiem da Camera mourns the death of his mentor Ernest Farrar and those of other fallen artists, and Ralph Vaughan Williams’s An Oxford Elegy recalls lost friends with an intense and magical nostalgia.