Although John Ireland is best remembered for his orchestral works, his 91 songs convey a peculiarly English quality of emotion expressed through reserve.

Alma Mahler-Werfel was born in Vienna 1879, the daughter of a soprano and a landscape painter. Her musical talent was soon recognized and she had lessons with a.o. Zemlinsky. In 1922 she married Gustav Mahler, who explicitly forbid her to continue her composing. Later however, seeing her withering, Mahler allowed her to publish a song cycle in 1910. Alma Mahler was a highly intelligent and cultured woman, surrounded by great artists like Klimt, Zemlinsky, Gropius and Werfel. Her salon in Vienna was the centre of high cultural life. After the war she settled in New York, where she became an iconic figure in the music scene till her death in 1964. Her songs reflect the Zeitgeist of composition: dramatic, brooding, the darkness occasionally lifted by visions of serenity and peace. These are beautiful performances by Catharina Kroeger and Monica Lonero, champions of neglected romantic music. As a bonus they perform a soprano-actress based work called “Penelope” by contemporary composer Patrizia Montanaro.

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Includes work(s) by Erik Satie.

Ronald Center (1913–73) is sometimes described as ‘the Scottish Bartók’, and his music does indeed capture some of the stark, wild energy of the Scottish landscape in a style of Bartókian asperity. These three string quartets show him, in his northeast corner of Scotland, to have been fully conversant with the quartets being written around the same time by Barber, Britten and Shostakovich, but their direct manner, terse expression, wiry humor and roots in Scottish folk-music ensure that Center is his own man.

The start of an exciting ane prestigious series: the complete Beethoven piano sonatas played by Giovanni Bellucci. Bellucci is one of the most interesting and extraordinary pianists of today. Described by Piero Rattalino as ''a force of nature, vast and palpitating'', his playing is highly original, striving to recreate the original impact of the work she is playing: ''het akes us back to the Golden Age of the Piano'' wrote Le Monde. His recordings, notably with works by Liszt, were showered with prizes such as Diapson d'Or, Choc, Editor's Choice, CD Maestro, etc. Giovanni Bellucci embarks on this epic musical journey of recording the complete Beethoven Sonatas, a challenge that every pianist of world stature will face. His Beethoven is free, with a strong sense of rhetoric and improvisation, adhering nevertheless strictly to the score and its intentions. The result is fresh, exhilarating and illuminating, letting us marvel at the originality and genius of the music.

Spending their summer holidays with Farmer Braithwaite and his wife in Scatterbrook, John and Susan come across a particularly lifelike scarecrow in a nearby field. That evening, much to the children’s surprise, the scarecrow makes an appearance in the Braithwaites’ Kitchen to warm himself by the fire. He is Worzel Gummidge and he is no ordinary scarecrow. His tendency to cause mayhem wherever he goes sparks a series of mishaps and adventures, often with hilarious results. This is the first of the Worzel Gummidge novels written by Barbara Euphan Todd, originally published in 1936. Jessica Martin is a leading musical theatre actor, voice artist and graphic novelist. Her television credits include voice work for Spitting Image and the role of Mags in the Doctor Who story “The Greatest Show in the Galaxy.” She has played numerous lead roles in West End musicals, including Me and My Girl and Elf. Her first graphic novel, Elsie Harris Picture Palace, was published in 2015.

Gotterdammerung (Twilight of the Gods) is the epic fourth and final opera of Wagner’s great Ring cycle, with a plot that depicts the fall of heroes, gods, and the entire world. As ever with the Ring, the joys of love are all too fragile and fleeting, and the drama of Gotterdammerung revolves around dark and unsettling reversals of fortune and illusions of hope that synthesize thrilling and powerful grand opera traditions with Wagner’s revolutionary techniques. Containing all of the Ring’s essential elements, Gotterdammerung’s profoundly satisfying sense of inevitability makes it both a towering climax and a unified summation of the Ring’s abundant variety.

Like his friend and contemporary Rachmaninoff, Nikolai Medtner enjoyed a privileged and affluent upbringing, and was also exiled from Russia following the revolution in 1917. Unlike Rachmaninoff, Medtner could point to an ancestry that was part German, and his father’s passion for Germanic culture ensured that Goethe and Beethoven exerted as much influence on the young Medtner as Russian composers and writers, in particular Beethoven’s piano sonatas and string quartets. Medtner moved first to Germany, then France, before settling in London in 1935. The earlier songs in this programme, Opp. 36 and 37, were written against the backdrop of the revolution, shortly before he fled Russia. Opp. 45 and 46 (written to Russian and German texts, respectively) were composed in France. Praised for her ‘formidably striking’ and ‘stunning silvery’ sound, the rising star soprano Sofia Fomina has performed in Toulouse and Baden-Baden, at Bayerische Staatsoper, Seattle Opera, Hungarian State Opera, Paris Opera, and The Royal Opera, Covent Garden. Her Pamina for Glyndebourne Festival Opera in 2019 received rave reviews. Alexander Karpeyev has performed throughout Europe and toured in the USA, Canada, and Russia as a concerto soloist, recitalist, and chamber musician. A prize-winner of several international competitions, he also completed a doctorate on performance practise in the music of Medtner, based on the Edna Iles Medtner Collection at the British Library.

REVIEW:

The Russian soprano’s lovely voice soars above the staff with ease – no wonder as she is a busy operatic coloratura soprano. But unlike many an opera singer, she is perfectly at home in the intimate world of art song, where her attention to the nuances of expressing the text are greatly in evidence. She is just as comfortable in the lyrical songs in 6 Stikhotvoreniy A. Pushkina (6 Poems by A. Pushkin), Op. 36 as in the rapturously dramatic Arion and in the intensity of Telega zhizni (The Wagon of Life.)

Sofia Fomina is perfectly partnered by the protean pianist Alexander Karpeyev, a Medtner specialist who would be the ideal artist to create an album of piano music by the prolific Medtner.

– Rafael's Music Notes (Rafael de Acha)

Since its founding, the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra (CSO) has maintained an unfaltering commitment to commissioning new music, resulting in substantial new works from a diverse array of composers including Aaron Copland and Philip Glass. For the 2015-16 season, three exciting international composers originating from three different continents, Sebastian Currier, Thierry Escaich and Zhou Tian, were each commissioned to write a new concerto for orchestra, showcasing the virtuosity, style, and sound of the CSO, thus furthering a genre championed by the likes of Bartók and Lutoslawski. The resulting three works featured on this live recording represent the culmination of this exciting project, and once again affirms the CSO’s core value of being a place of experimentation.

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Siggi String Quartet was founded in 2012 during the Young Scandinavian Composers festival in Reykjavik. The quartet has actively collaborated with current composers and commissioned and premiered numerous works by various composers. The quartet’s repertoire extends from the renaissance through the classical masters and Siggi String Quartet four members have great passion for 20 and 21th century repertoire.

“Experimenting with sound and texture, improvisation and live electronics is an important part of our work. It does deepen our understanding of the standard repertoire indirectly, and it goes both ways.” Playing a late Beethoven parallel to working on Haukur Tómasson Serimonia makes us aim for rhythmical super-precision and working on Mamiko Dís Ragnarsdóttir Fair Flowers after performing the same Beethoven pushed us into the long phrases, picturing endless moss, grey and green and the tiny wild Icelandic flowers in bright violet and yellow. Una Sveinbjarnardóttir´s piece Opacity is more free, the structure is simple and the improvisando feeling is reigning. Daníel Bjarnason wrote Stillshot in 2015. The piece is dreamy and nostalgic and in form resembles a chaconne, where the same chord progression repeats itself throughout. In the middle of the piece there is a retreat from the harmonic structure before it resumes the form until the end. The composer describes the piece as depicting fragmented memories of a noblewoman. The recollections appear abruptly and vanish quickly, some of them distant but others more focused and clear. The title of the piece refers to the early days of photography where people would have to stay still for considerable time so the camera would produce a clear picture.

"•The particularity of this edition of Donizetti’s masterpiece is in its reconstruction of the 1845 Saint Petersburg version. Along with some key transpositions, this 2010 performance presents the alternative finale adopted at the same time. • Bass-baritone Lorenzo Regazzo is an acclaimed “bel canto” and “coloratura” singer and renowned Mozart and Rossini interpreter. Giovanni Battista Rigon is considered “one of the best Rossini conductors...spirited...never tiring” (Il Corriere della Sera)."

Amanda Maier (1853-1894) and Julius Rontgen (1855-1932) were a couple in both music and love. This new album includes world premiere recordings of Amanda Maier's preludes, Julius Rontgen's piano suite "Julklapp" (Christmas Gift), and the piano suite "Zwiegesprache" (Dialogues), that the young couple composed together. In addition to this, you also get Rontgen's brilliant variation work "Neckens Polska," which he dedicated to his future bride. This release is charming, beautiful, and highly romantic music at it's best, performed by one of Sweden's most outstanding musicians: the award-winning pianist Bengt Forsberg.

Puccini: Turandot (Recorded 1955)

This release is the third volume in the retrospective series featuring Finn Videro, the finest Danish organist of all time. When the four LP records were released worldwide with Videro playing the organ music of Buxtehude they won the Grand Prix du Disque and lifted Buxtehude playing to a new level that few since have reached. These recordings have been digitally remastered and presented here. Viderø was born in Fuglebjerg, Næstved. He was the organist at the Reformed Church in Copenhagen from 1928 to 1941, the Jægersborg Church from 1942 to 1947, the Trinitatis Church in Copenhagen from 1947 to 1971 and St. Andreas Church in Copenhagen from 1971 to 1977. He was guest lecturer at Yale University and held an honorary doctorate from the University of Åbo in Finland. In 1933, he co-published with Oluf Ring a widely used organ primer. His organ playing was uncompromising and many believed that Viderø's musical interpretations were as close to the authentic, artistic and historical representation intended by the composer as one could get.

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The St Catharine's Girls' Choir, Cambridge, with director Edward Wickham, celebrate ten years since their foundation with this album of works for upper voices. In marking the momentous occasion in 2008 when St Catharine's created the first college-based girls' choir, the current choristers of this acclaimed group present a varied programme of secular works from British composers including Britten, Bennett and a world premiere by Sally Beamish. The St. Catharine's Girls' Choir- the only college-based girls' choir in the UK- was founded in 2008. The choir sings weekly in the College Chapel, as well as giving regular concerts and it's repertoire extends from the early Middle Ages to the twenty-first century, with several works written specially for it. The choir is made up of twenty girls, aged between eight and fifteen, drawn from local schools; and for this recording is augmented by former choristers. The choir has performed in some of the UK's leading venues, and has performed live in Radio 3's The Choir and toured to Poland and Hungary.

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