John Wilson conducts a series of orchestral works of his mentor and friend Sir Richard Rodney Bennett, which now reaches Volume 5, featuring three works composed between 1973 and 1989. Son of professional musicians, Bennett demonstrated musical talent from an early age and went on to study with Howard Ferguson, Lennox Berkeley, and later Pierre Boulez. He produced more than 200 works for the concert hall, and fifty scores for film and television. He was also a writer and performer of jazz songs for fifty years. Immersed in the techniques of the European avant-garde via his contact with Boulez, he subsequently developed his own dramatic-abstract style. In later years, he adopted an increasingly tonal idiom. The Concerto for Orchestra was commissioned at the instigation of Brian Priestman, the British chief conductor of the Denver Symphony Orchestra. It's three-movement structure, closing with a dazzling set of variations, displays the modern orchestra as a virtuoso body of players. His rarely performed cello concerto Sonnets to Orpheus was written for the Edinburgh International Festival, and premiered by Heinrich Schiff. Diversions was a commission from the Haberdashers' Aske's Schools, in north London, to celebrate their tercentenary, in 1990. It was first played by the combined orchestras of all seven schools at a celebration concert in the Royal Festival Hall and the finished work is an exuberantly colourful set of symphonic variations based on the Scottish folksong 'Whistle and I'll come to you, my lad'.

All of the pieces chosen for this new release center around the theme of evening time. Mark Williams and his Choir of Jesus College Cambridge have released four prior albums with Signum, all of which have gained critical praise. The programme of this album blends ancient and modern, featuring works from Thomas Tallis, William Harris, Gustav Holst, and many more.

A sense of expectancy, along with images of stillness in nature, are recurrent in depictions of the story of Christmas. This collection of contemporary carols, alongside well-known favourites, seeks to draw the listener deeper into the remarkable story of the Christ Child.

For a period of the 20th Century, due to his talent and association with Benjamin Britten, Peter Pears was perhaps the world's most famous classical singer. Pears inspired Britten to create great works of art precisely because Pears was a compelling artist with an exceptional voice, an inquisitive mind, a knowledge of art, history, literature and poetry. They became a self-perpetuating duo, inspiring each other to even greater heights of artistry, technical ability, and emotional certainty. This album of works by Lennox Berkeley, Benjamin Britten, Arthur Oldham, Richard Rodney Bennett and Geoffrey Bush is performed by tenor Robin Tritschler, who is joined by cellist Philip Higham, guitarist Sean Shibe and pianist Malcolm Martineau. Praise for Robin Tritschler and Malcolm Martineau: 4 stars Performance, 4 stars Recording "Robin Tritschler's sweet-toned voice is a continual delight, as is Malcolm Martineau's sparkling, pearly, luminous piano sound" - BBC Music Magazine

Singing together binds us together. From the Protestant Reformation in Europe during the 1500s to the U.S. Civil Rights Movement, there have been countless moments in history when songs have united nations, cultures and causes. This is still the case in today’s world. Finding Harmony is evidence that music has always been our common language. A unique collection of pieces that span the globe – including music that’s too often forgotten – each song is the key to a powerful true story about who we are and how we’ve got here. Together, Finding Harmony proves how deeply we can be moved by all kinds of stories when songs connect us to them, and to each other.

REVIEW:

For the most part, this album is a virtuoso piece of work. The Singers' vocal inflections and scoops are adaptable to a wide variety of styles, and they push themselves in that respect here, connecting pop sounds to the classic folk of Malvina Reynolds and to Eastern European traditions. In the main, it all holds together, and it is very much of the moment.

– All Music Guide (James Manheim)

Mixing iconic choral works with music by some of today's most exciting composers, this varied programme is centred around themes of rest. Joel Thompson's virtuosic new work is a particular highlight: written in 15 parts, A Prayer for Deliverance perfectly showcases Tenebrae's core values of passion and precision. The second half features Herbert Howells' Requiem - surely one of the most moving works in the English choral repertoire. Associated with the untimely death of Howells' young son Michael, the work remained unknown until it was finally published just three years before Howells' own death in 1983.

The Queen’s Six release their third album on the Resonus Classics label with a scintillating and varied programme of music for Christmas. Both modern and traditional carols feature alongside a selection of lighter and contemplative evocations of the festive season. The Queen’s Six bring their trademark flair to this broad range of arrangements for men’s voices, with works from the Renaissance to the present day, including a tribute to the life of the inimitable David Willcocks - forever associated with the Christmas season - and new works by Thomas Hewitt Jones, Richard Madden & Matthew Coleridge.

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.

In this new recording of contemporary works for saxophone and piano, Max Goldberg and Annabel Thwaite present a programme of contemporary works by European, American and Australian composers, including the world premiere recording of Welsh composer Edward-Rhys Harry's The Ballad of Lady Barham, the philanthropist who established schools and churches in the Gower peninsula through her own funding. Max Goldberg demonstrates the lyrical and expressive qualities of the saxophone as a solo instrument throughout this recording.

The Choir of St John's College, Oxford, directed by David Bannister, sings music associated with Christmas, together with youthful work by Imogen Holst and Benjamin Britten. Looking towards the sixtieth anniversary of Elizabeth Poston's Penguin Book of Carols (1965), initially undertaken with Ralph Vaughan Williams, the recording presents music associated with these two composers and the works they edited, alongside newer pieces exemplifying and revivifying the English carol tradition.