SOMM Recordings is delighted to announce Hush!, the second release by the “extraordinary voices” (BBC Radio 3) of female quintet Papagena following their internationally acclaimed, Amazon classical chart-topping debut, The Darkest Midnight. Hush! unearths a treasure trove of songs largely neglected on disc to deliver a stunning follow-up to The Darkest Midnight. Where it hymned the cold, harsh glamour of sun-starved winter, Hush! – playful, poignant, poetic and primed with the expectation of joy – celebrates the warmth and light of love. Typically for Papagena, Hush! is a centuries-spanning, genre-defying, culturally diverse recital marrying sacred and secular, ancient and modern, classical, traditional and even stadium rock. The result is an often gorgeous, always intelligent exploration of “hush” as a harbinger of consolation, of tranquil release and of mild admonition to pause, listen, feel and relish the quietly exultant glories of being alert and alive to the fleeting moment. Papagena’s beautifully blended, pristine vocal signature illuminates ecstatic heights, anguished depths and love in all its multi-hued splendour with a becoming thread of wit and humor. First recordings include The Woman’s ‘If’, Jim Clements’ knowing setting of Caitlin Moran’s wickedly arch re-imagining of Rudyard Kipling’s If from a modern female perspective, Papagena’s Suzzie Vango’s arrangement of American rock icons Guns N’Roses’ anthemic Sweet Child O’Mine and Geoffrey Weaver’s exquisite re-working of Tchaikovsky’s touching depiction of the Christ-child, Legend (The Crown of Roses). Traditional songs from English and Celtic sources are heard alongside pieces drawn from the profoundly moving religious heritage of Eastern Europe and Sephardic music. Hailed by arts site The Prickle as “a young female Hilliard Ensemble”, Papagena’s The Darkest Midnight was judged “stimulating, varied and full of interest” by MusicWeb International, adding: “What sets the album apart is the superb singing [of] an outstanding ensemble”.

Classical Music

SOMM Recordings is thrilled to announce the first release on disc of the only known live recording of Sir Thomas Beecham conducting Sibelius’s Symphony No.1 with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra to mark the orchestra’s 75th anniversary. The RPO was founded in 1946 by Beecham to inject new energy and new ideas into British orchestral life. Taken from the 1952 Edinburgh International Festival, the First Symphony heard here, says Beecham biographer John Lucas in his booklet foreword, is “a spine-tingling performance”. Three months earlier Beecham had completed his exacting studio recording of the First and comparisons between the two are fascinating. Also being released for the first time are previously unissued live recordings from 1947 of two of the composer’s Scènes historiques, and an interview by documentary maker Jon Tolansky with two RPO stalwarts (Sub-principal Viola John Underwood and the late Sub-Principal Second Violin Raymond Ovens) who share their memories of playing for Beecham. Both performances feature the RPO’s fêted “royal family” of wind players – Gerald Jackson (flute), Terence MacDonagh (oboe), Jack Brymer (clarinet) and Gwydion Brooke (bassoon) – with luminaries Dennis Brain leading the horns, Richard (‘Bob’) Walton as first trumpet, and Principal Percussionist Lewis Pocock. The album has been curated by Tolansky, the original founder of the Music Performance Research Centre. The archive was created in 1987 to preserve the heritage of public performances which included among its collection the Sibelius First Symphony. In 2001 the archive was renamed Music Preserved and transferred to the Borthwick Institute at the University of York. The Symphony, together with Tolansky’s other discovery, Scènes historiques have been brilliantly restored by acclaimed engineer Lani Spahr.

SOMM Recordings throws new, invigorating light on the Chamber Music of Erich Wolfgang Korngold, performed by the Eusebius Quartet and pianist Alasdair Beatson. Hailed by musicologist Nicolas Slonimsky as “the very last breath of the romantic spirit of Vienna”, Korngold’s stellar beginnings in Europe’s concert halls and opera houses were later overshadowed by his success in America where his soaring symphonic signature forged the template for the Hollywood soundtrack. But, as Korngold authority Brendan G Carroll notes in his informative booklet essay, the composer’s “relatively small body of chamber works... is no less impressive and actually offers a succinct distillation of his style and voice, often to considerably profound effect.”

The earliest work here is the string quartet arrangement of the suite drawn from his 1920 incidental music to Shakespeare’s Viel Lärmen um Nichts (Much Ado About Nothing). Its glowing Intermezzo is heard in the world premiere recording of Tom Poster’s sumptuous new arrangement. The following year’s Op.15 Piano Quintet was composed shortly after Korngold’s opera Die tote Stadt (The Dead City), and, Carroll notes, “its flamboyant, heroic melodic style owes much to the residual influence of that epic score”. The Op.26 Second String Quartet from 1933 “is one of the most intensely ‘Viennese’ works Korngold ever wrote.” The jolly, bubbling humor of its opening gives way to a rich, expansive Larghetto before concluding with a spirited hymn to that most Viennese of dance forms, the waltz.

Praised as “excellent” by The Sunday Times, the Eusebius Quartet was formed in 2016 and is making its debut on SOMM Recordings. Alasdair Beatson’s previous SOMM releases include his enthusiastically reviewed recording debut, coupling Schumann, Grieg, Brahms and Berg (SOMMCD 086), and a Mendelssohn recital (SOMMCD 104) hailed by Classic FM for its “highly sensitive playing of rare insight”.

Lights, Camera, Action! as SOMM Recordings says “Hooray for Hollywood” with its second volume of Great Classic Film Music featuring the Scottish- born maestro Iain Sutherland directing the Philharmonic Promenade Orchestra of Hilversum. The first volume of Great Film Music (Ariadne 5006) was hailed by Classic FM for “bringing together the finest music cinema has to offer” and featured by John Brunning as his ‘Drivetime Discovery’. This second visit to the Golden Age of Hollywood and its unforgettable successors is taken from live and studio recordings from 1988-95 that conjure up all the drama and romance, poetry and playfulness of film music at its most gloriously entertaining. A half century of unforgettable music is captured here, from the swashbuckling romance of Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s The Sea Hawk to the sci-fi heroism of Jerry Goldsmith’s Star Trek: The Next Generation. Cinema icons John Williams (Back to the Future), John Barry (You Only Live Twice), Maurice Jarre (Lawrence of Arabia) and Lalo Schifrin (The Eagle Has Landed) are heard alongside the late, great Ennio Morricone’s ‘Gabriel’s Oboe’ (The Mission). Love and romance feature among the thrills and spills of Burton Lane’s Finian’s Rainbow, Kurt Weill’s September Song, George Gershwin’s Funny Face, Robert Stolz’s Spring Parade and Cole Porter’s sparkling songs in Evil Under the Sun. Two towering figures of the concert hall are also heard, with Elvira Madigan’s sublime borrowing from Mozart’s Piano Concerto No.21 and rousing and lyrical themes befitting their Shakespearean settings by William Walton from the Laurence Olivier starring and directed Richard III and Henry V. Iain Sutherland’s previous SOMM releases include the “impressive... fully recommended” (Musical Opinion) Bernstein: Broadway to Hollywood (Ariadne 5002) and In London Town (SOMMCD 0117) with its “sparkling performances of some of the cream of light music” (MusicWeb International).

SOMM Recordings is delighted to announce the label debuts of two exciting young Slovenian soloists – flautist Boris Bizjak and violinist Lana Trotovšek – and 2015 Wigmore Hall String Quartet Competition winners, the Piatti Quartet. They come together for revelatory performances of six pieces for flute, violin and string quartet elements by Frank Anton Hoffmeister, all receiving their first recordings. Now overshadowed by his illustrious contemporaries, Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven (music by all whom, including the Diabelli Variations, he published), Hoffmeister was himself a prolific composer in every form. Although the flute is often placed centre-stage in these six works, all demonstrate Hoffmeister’s eloquently proportioned, life-enhancing and integrated feeling for chamber music. The two most substantial works here are a taut, dramatically urgent Quartet for flute, violin, viola and cello in C minor, and an E-flat major Quintet for flute, violin, two violas and cello of Mozartian mien and mood. With echoes of Gluck, Mozart and Haydn, two Trios for flute, violin and cello (in B-flat major and D major) and a Duetto in G major for flute and violin offer superbly expressive examples of Hoffmeister’s music at its most effusive and engagingly virtuosic. Hailed in his native Slovenia for his “musicality [and] captivating performance”, London-based Boris Bizjak has won several international flute competitions and is in growing demand around the world. Lana Trotovšek, praised by The Washington Post for her “clean, refined tone with musical sense of phrasing and impeccable intonation”, is also a Professor at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance. The Piatti Quartet – Nathaniel Anderson-Frank and Michael Trainor (violins), Tetsuumi Nagata (viola), Jessie Ann Richardson (cello) – have gained growing recognition for their “ferociously fine form” (BBC Music) and playing of “absolute authority and conviction” (Gramophone).

SOMM Recordings announces the launch of a major six-volume series of Franz Xaver Scharwenka’s transcriptions of Beethoven Symphonies featuring the label debut of the Tessa Uys and Ben Schoeman Piano Duo. Formed in 2010, the Duo began their in-concert exploration of Scharwenka’s four-hand Beethoven transcriptions in 2015 and now bring that experience to disc for the first time. Volume 1 includes the premiere recording of Scharwenka’s piano duet transcription of Symphony No.3, the ever-popular Eroica, and Debussy’s two-piano arrangement of Robert Schumann’s Six Studies in Canonic Form. As Robert Matthew-Walker’s booklet notes reveal, Scharwenka had a direct line to Beethoven, having been taught by Franz Kullak, who was tutored by Carl Czerny whose own teacher, in turn, had been Beethoven himself. A composer of no mean stature in his own right, Scharwenka’s transcriptions were once widely admired, making masterpiece symphonies available to every home with a piano. Possessing, says Matthew-Walker, “significant qualities which are often overlooked today”, his Eroica transcription receives ardent, eloquently persuasive championing by Schoeman and Uys. Scharwenka wasn’t alone in exploiting new developments in piano technology. Robert Schumann’s Six Studies in Canonic Form made use of the then novel ‘pedal-piano’ (a standard piano with an additional bass pedal-board) even as he was looking back stylistically towards his idol, Bach. Debussy’s arrangement for two pianos adroitly accommodates Schumann’s original to “rescue this fine music from the obscurity of the pedal-piano repertoire.” Born in Cape Town and a Royal Academy of Music Associate, Tessa Uys has an impressive reputation as a concert and broadcasting performer, appearing at major venues throughout the world. Her multi-prize-winning South African compatriot Ben Schoeman also has a busy international profile and is currently a senior lecturer in piano and musicology at the University of Pretoria.

SOMM Recordings continues its acclaimed championing of neglected British composers with Dame Ethel Smyth: Songs and Ballads – 17 vocal works with piano and chamber orchestra accompaniment composed between 1886 and 1913. Contralto Lucy Stevens has a long relationship with Smyth, portraying the composer, political activist and writer in her widely admired stage show Ethel Smyth: Grasp the Nettle. She is joined by her long-time stage companion, pianist Elizabeth Marcus, and Odaline de la Martinez conducting the Berkeley Ensemble. All four are making their debuts on SOMM. Published in 1886 and receiving their first recordings in English are the five Op.3 Songs and Ballads. Dedicated to Livia Frege, the singer to whom Mendelsohn and Schumann dedicated some of their finest songs, they blend images of the natural world with themes of lost love to reveal Smyth as a songwriter of already considerable gifts. Dedicated to Smyth’s mother and exploring themes of motherhood while shot through with images drawn from troublesome dreams, the five Op.4 Lieder, settings of German texts, exalt in an emotional palette that ranges from tenderness to trenchant emotion. Three Songs from 1913, composed during the period of Smyth’s suffragette activity – which saw her jailed for two months for throwing a stone through a cabinet minister’s window – deftly combine the political and personal. With lyrics by the suffragist Ethel Carnie Holdsworth, Possession is dedicated to Emmeline Pankhurst, On the Road: a marching tune to Pankhurst’s daughter, Christabel. The Clown sets a text by Maurice Baring, whose biography Smyth wrote in 1938. Written for voice and chamber orchestra, the Four Songs from 1908 boast exquisite orchestrations that revel in Smyth’s associations with artistic circles in France and were hailed by Debussy as “tout à fait remarquables”. Stevens, who devised the album’s programme, Martinez and Christopher Wiley provide informative booklet notes.

SOMM Recordings pays tribute to the remarkable flourishing of British Violin Sonatas in the 20th century with a collection of music for violin and piano by six key figures of the modern chamber music renaissance in Britain. Making her debut on SOMM, violinist Clare Howick’s championing of this repertoire prompted iClassical to declare “the record-buying public owe [her] a debt of gratitude”. She is accompanied by pianist Simon Callaghan. From the middle of the century, and commissioned for Yehudi Menuhin, William Walton’s Violin Sonata is unique in the composer’s oeuvre with its almost constant sense of nervous uncertainty. Composed the same year (1948), Kenneth Leighton’s youthful First Violin Sonata is the product, as Robert Matthew-Walker comments in his authoritative booklet notes, of “a deep-thinking musician of whom everything he was to write, from his earliest compositions onwards, is genuinely felt and unaffectedly original”. William Alwyn’s beautifully proportioned Sonatina (1933) receives only its second appearance on album here. Composed the following year, Alan Rawsthorne’s Pierrette: Valse Caprice is best remembered from its quotation in the composer’s soundtrack for the 1947 film Uncle Silas. The contrasted Elegy and Toccata from Lennox Berkeley’s 1951 Op.33 reveal a master craftsman in miniature, while three pieces by Gordon Jacob – Little Dancer (1959), Caprice (1969) and Elegy (1972) – all make their first appearances on album here. Somm gratefully acknowledges the support of the William Alwyn Foundation, the Lennox Berkeley Society, the Delius Trust, the Rawsthorne Trust and the RVW Trust in making this recording.

This release is the third and final installment in the critically-acclaimed recording of the complete Piano Sonatas of Sergei Prokofiev by pianist Peter Donohoe. This album is dedicated entirely to the ‘War Trilogy,’ which are three piano sonatas that Prokofiev composed consecutively during World War II. The pieces show the horrors and reflections of what Soviet Russia referred to as the “Great Patriotic War.” The central sonata in the trilogy, No. 7, is regarded by many as his most famous and brilliant piano work. The finale of the piece depicts the grit and ferocity of the Russian attacks on the Nazi army. Peter Donohoe has long been a masterful interpreter of Russian music. He first recorded the Seventh Sonata in 1982, then again in 1991. “Prokofiev was creating these major works throughout his career- all of them are major and some are still underrated and I am delighted to have had the chance of recording the complete cycle at last.” (Peter Donohoe)

A recording of piano music by Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco: What an original and fascinating way for a young pianist to embark on a career which in a short time grew to span Europe, the US, North Africa and the Far East! Mark Bebbington recorded this stunning debut album for SOMM in 2003, now newly available. Even before embarking on a series of recordings for SOMM now running to over 30 albums, Mark had been looking for fresh and unusual repertoire, both for recording and concert performance. Guided by his cherished teacher and mentor Aldo Ciccolini, he was already becoming known as a passionate advocate of unjustly neglected composers. A fifteen-concert European recital series several years ago featured premieres by Sir Malcolm Arnold and Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Judith Bingham, Toru Takemitsu and Julian Anderson. Hi sErik Satie Cafe Concert, featuring the UK premiere of 'Sprts et Divertissements' in its original version for narrator and piano toured festivals in this country before playing two sold-out performances at 'le chat blanc' cabaret club in Paris. In typical late-romantic style, Castelnuovo-Tedesco's music can be tender, rhapsodic and passionate and presents formidable challenges for the pianist as it was often conceived in orchestral terms. It also reveals his fondness for the music of Rachmaninov, Granados and Albeniz and Ravel.

Grieg was the first great composer in the late 1880's to travel around Norway collecting folk tunes from the rural population and these proved to be a genuine source of inspiration to him. For John McCabe, as his original note for these recordings makes clear, Grieg was a far more significant figure than popular appreciation would suggest and these recordings came as quite revelatory in the early 1980's to wider audiences outside of the inner circle of specialists in Norweigian music.

SOMM RECORDINGS is delighted to announce the release of Elgar from America, Volume I featuring historic recordings by a legendary cellist, two American orchestras and a trio of the 20th century’s greatest conductors. The results offer a fascinating transatlantic perspective on a titan of British music and includes two masterpieces and a symphonic study which Elgar considered his best orchestral piece.

Elgar visited America annually from 1905-07 and again in 1911 where his music found articulate champions and a place in the country’s affections, the trio of his Pomp and Circumstance March in D an essential, long-established part of ceremonies accompanying America’s graduation tradition. The featured recordings date from the 1940s and have been restored and remastered by the multi-award-winning audio restoration engineer Lani Spahr, who also provides informative booklet notes.

The Enigma Variations were, by far, America’s favourite Elgar work in the first decade of the last century. The “fleet, error-free performance” by the NBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Arturo Toscanini in New York’s Radio City Studio on November 5, 1949 appears here on album for the first time. New in any form is Artur Rodzin´ski’s never-before released October 10, 1943 Carnegie Hall account of Falstaff Symphonic Study in C minor with the New York Philharmonic-Symphony Orchestra.

Cellist Gregor Piatigorsky joined the NYP-SO under John Barbirolli for a November 10, 1940 Carnegie Hall performance of the Cello Concerto. Piatigorsky never recorded the work commercially and this is the only known existing recording of him playing the piece. Lani Spahr’s previous restorations of historic Elgar recordings for SOMM Recordings include Elgar Rediscovered and the four-disc set Elgar Remastered which featured recordings from the composer’s own collection and was hailed by Audiophilia as “a fascinating achievement which will have you wishing for more”.

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REVIEW:

Elgar enthusiasts will find it intriguing, not least because it offers performances by some performers who one does not normally associate with Elgar’s music. This particular Toscanini performance of ‘Enigma’ is new to CD and Rodzinski’s Falstaff has never been issued commercially in any format. It’s also healthy and stimulating to hear performances from outside the English performing tradition. There is some surface noise at times but in general Lani Spahr’s transfers seem to me to have been extremely successful. There is applause after each work but otherwise the audiences are commendably quiet.

– MusicWeb International

SOMM Recordings is delighted to announce 17 world premiere recordings of Songs by Hamilton Harty in a ravishing recital by one of today’s most exciting young partnerships – mezzo-soprano Kathryn Rudge and pianist Christopher Glynn. Although best known today as a composer of orchestral music, Hamilton Harty was also one of the most accomplished accompanists of his generation, forming especially notable partnerships with the sopranos Agnes Nicholls and Elsie Swinton. It prompted, in turn, his increasing activity as an accomplished song writer. The 23 featured songs include settings that speak eloquently of Harty’s abiding engagement with his Irish heritage and point, in the technical demands made of vocalist and pianist alike, to his innate understanding of the song form in all its concentrated, emotional power. Favourite Harty songs such as Sea Wrack, The Blue Hills of Antrim and My Lagan Love are heard alongside settings of Walt Whitman (By the Bivouac’s Fitful Flame), Thomas Campion (Come, O Come, My Heart’s Delight) and two texts by the composer himself (My Thoughts of You and Adieu, Sweet Amaryllis). Also included are two early, unpublished works for solo piano – Idyll and Arlequin and Columbine. Five songs are heard in new editions created from original manuscripts by British music authority Jeremy Dibble who also provides informative booklet notes.

The acclaimed Italian guitarist Gianluigi Giglio makes his debut on SOMM Recordings with The 19th Century Guitar, a scintillating recital of music by Fernando Sor, a pioneering champion of the guitar in the vanguard of raising it's profile out of the tavern and into the concert hall. Giglio's wide-ranging recital explores Sor's innate feeling for the guitar and charts the increasing demands he placed on the instrument in a body of work that transformed it's standing with public and pundits alike. From the early Op. 9 masterpiece that charted a new and expressive landscape for the guitar - Introduction and Variations on a Theme by Mozart - to the late Elegiac Fantasy (Op. 59) with it's leanings towards newly-emerging Romanticism, this is a textbook display of the instrument's many abilities given eloquent voice by a master guitarist. Other notable pieces include the Introduction and Variations on 'Malbrough s'en va-t-en guerre' (Op. 28), a deliciously knowing exercise in re-creating 18th-century style, the possibly unique programmatic caprice Le calme (Op. 50) and the no less singular étude The movement of a religious prayer from the Op. 31 24 Progressive Lessons for Beginners which is distinguished by it's beautiful sense of polyphony. Gianluigi Giglio plays a guitar made by the noted Parisian luthier René Lacôte in Paris in 1834. SOMM's previous recordings of Fernando Sor include Eros Roselli's recital Studies for Guitar (SOMMCD 021) and 12 Seguidillas performed by Craig Ogden on a disc of Spanish Songs featuring soprano Patricia Rozario (SOMMCD 078).

SOMM Recordings announces the first complete survey on album of George Dyson’s music for solo piano including five premiere recordings performed by Simon Callaghan in a specially priced two-album set. Callaghan is joined by Clíodna Shanahan for the first recording of the two-piano version of Concerto Leggiero, a mature work originally composed for piano and string orchestra. Almost classical in its sense of economy, the two-piano arrangement boasts a remarkable lyricism. Born in Halifax in 1833, Dyson studied with Stanford and Parry before becoming one of the most prominent British composers and distinguished teachers of his generation. Best known for his choral work, his piano music spans his career. Heard in its entirety, it provides valuable new insights into his development as a composer. Other first recordings include the seven-year-old Dyson’s first work for piano, Untitled Piano Piece, the exam board commission for young pianists, Twelve Easy Pieces, and The Open Window and Six Lyrics, character pieces designed to help develop technique and musical imagination in young pianists. Among other works included are the Debussy-accented Primrose Mount, the dazzling set of fugues Bach’s Birthday and so-called War Epigrams, inspired by Dyson’s experiences on the Western Front before being invalided home. Dyson biographer Paul Spicer provides the authoritative booklet notes. Simon Callaghan’s recent SOMM releases include British Violin Sonatas with Clare Howick, and a survey of Roger Sacheverell Coke’s piano music, of which MusicWeb International said: “The commanding and virtuosic musicianship of Simon Callaghan allows this quirkily individual music to register with maximum effect – a fascinating and compelling album”. Making her debut on SOMM, Clíodna Shanahan has a busy performing and recording schedule for TV, radio, symphony and chamber concerts. A pianist and organist, she also records film soundtracks, most notably Howard Shore’s The Hobbit.

SOMM RECORDINGS announces a major new recording of songs by Charles Villiers Stanford including the first complete recording of Songs of Faith and 12 first recordings of other distinctively vital songs. Songs of Love, Faith and Nonsense continues SOMM’s widely acclaimed commitment to Stanford’s music with baritone Roderick Williams, tenor James Way (making his SOMM debut) and pianist Andrew West throwing revealing new light on his gift for word setting and the variety of his responses to matters of emotional ardor, spiritual fervency and the sublime nonsense poems of Edward Lear. Setting poems by Tennyson and Walt Whitman, Songs of Faith demonstrates Stanford’s ability to give unique expression to the profound and the arcane with music of dramatic force and harmonic ingenuity. Three songs by Robert Bridges (librettist for Stanford’s oratorio Eden) and four songs from the opera Shamus O’Brien tap into Stanford’s Irish roots to colorful and evocative effect. Composed to mark his 25th wedding anniversary and receiving its first recording, The Triumph of Love sets five sonnets by his close cousin, Edmond Gore Alexander Holmes, in richly executed settings. The delightful Nonsense Rhymes taken from Edward Lear’s inimitably playful, poignant and pointed limericks show a different side to Stanford, a “highly articulate, dry humor like many literary Irishmen of his era”, as Jeremy Dibble says in his authoritative booklet notes.

SOMM RECORDINGS announces the release of Kathleen Ferrier in New York, historic performances of Mahler and Bach by the much-loved contralto during her triumphant visits to the United States in 1948 and 1950. Recorded live on Ferrier’s only appearances in Carnegie Hall in January 1948, four months after her acclaimed performance at the inaugural Edinburgh International Festival, Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde reunited her with the conductor Bruno Walter and saw her making first appearances with tenor Set Svanholm and the New York Philharmonic Orchestra. Re-mastered by Norman White and Adrian Tuddenham, this remarkable account pre-dates Ferrier’s often-reissued 1952 recording by four years and finds her in exhilarating fresh voice – a vivid, vital display of a great artist at her peak. Accompanied by pianist John Newmark in New York’s Town Hall in 1950, three songs by JS Bach – Vergiss mein nicht, Ach dass nicht die letzte Stunde and his arrangement of Gottfried Stölzel’s Bist du bei mir – are taken from Ferrier’s final visit to the US. Also included are excerpts from a revealing 80th birthday interview with Bruno Walter in which he discusses his friendship and collaborations with Mahler and recalls his first meeting and subsequent association with Kathleen Ferrier. Illuminating booklet notes are provided by Ferrier authority and discographer Paul Campion, who also compiled the disc. SOMM’s previous Ferrier releases include Bach’s Mass in B minor, songs by Brahms, Chausson and Mahler and Kathleen Ferrier Remembered, a first release of BBC Radio recordings of Lieder and British songs. Kathleen Ferrier in Celebration of Bach was acclaimed by Gramophone as “an important addition to Ferrier’s discography... one of the most beautiful things she ever committed to album”.

Russia produced three renowned composer-pianists at the end of the nineteenth century: Medtner, Rachmaninov, and his fellow student at the Moscow Conservatoire, Alexander Scriabin, a unique figure in Russian music as he seemed to follow a musical path all his own, completely different to that of either of his contemporaries. He created an original, exotic soundworld which progressed from Chopinesque romanticism in the First Sonata to a world of fantasy, inhabited by uncompromising, audacious dissonances in the later Sonatas which make overwhelming demands on any performer who dares to tackle them. In his third Sonata Scriabin provided descriptions of the four movements under the heading ‘States of the Soul’. In the Fourth he experimented with Wagner’s Tristan harmonies. By the Sixth Sonata Scriabin’s harmonic tonality had completely broken down and dissipated – “frightening...dark and mysterious, impure, dangerous” as he himself wrote. The Seventh Sonata (White Mass) instructs the performer to play ‘with a heavenly voluptuousness’, ‘with a dark majesty’... Through the music he wanted to express an ecstatic disorder creating a trance-like effect on performer and audience. The Ninth (Black Mass) represents the Satanic but the Tenth has an opening marked ‘very sweetly and pure’. He said of this, ‘My Tenth Sonata is a sonata of insects. Insects are born from the sun, they are the kisses of the sun.’ These works are performed by legendary pianist Peter Donahoe.

This new SOMM release features two perennial favorites, the Glazunov and Dvorak Violin Concertos. They are often recorded together, deriving their inspiration from Russian Bohemia's musical heritage whilst still remaining close to Brahmsian Viennese traditions. Greek-born violinist Efi Christodoulou has been reviewd by The Strad as "a powerful violinist, demonstrating a high level of technical achievement" Efi is developing a career in the UK where she has recently given recitals at St. John's, Smith Square and Wigmore Hall.

Incomparable composer and pianist John McCabe, who passed away in February 2015, had recorded Nielsen's Piano Music on LP for Decca's Ace of Diamonds back in 1975. More recently, the SOMM label was approached by John's wife, Monica McCabe, to ask if they would consider issuing it on CD. From an early age, John loved to explore little-known works and considered Nielsen's Suite, Op. 45 a true masterpiece. The piano music of Nielsen, whose 150th anniversary is celebrated this year, is overshadowed by his six symphonies but his piano music has always had a special place in the hearts of music lovers worldwide. These recordings have been unavailable for many years; now newly re-mastered, they are given a new lease on life and serve as a timely reminder of McCabe's unique interpretations.

This new release of American Piano Sonatas from SOMM reminds the listener of 20th-century America's achievements in music as in so much else. SOMM's new collaboration with pianist Nathan Williamson who has been steeped in American music since his years as a student of piano and composition at Yale has produced an exhilarating album brimming with dynamism and energy. The release includes sonatas by four very different American composers writing under very different circumstances: Leonard Bernstein, a charismatic, ambitious all-round musician in his student years; Aaron Copland, an established master at the height of his powers; Lou Harrison, an inveterate experimentalist setting himself a new problem; and Charles Ives, a dogged individualist insisting on his own way of doing things. In each case, the composer chose not to fit his music into conventional forms, but to rethink the whole idea of the sonata. America is after all the land of the clean sheet, the fresh start – of making things fresh, exciting and new. Nathan, who leads a diverse and varied career as pianist, composer and artistic director studied at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama with Joan Havill and Malcolm Singer, at Oxford University with Robert Saxton, and at Yale with Martin Bresnick and Joan Panetti and American composer Ezra Laderman Dean of the Yale School of Music and President of American Academy of Arts and Letters, who died in 2015 at the age of 90. Nathan has dedicated this recording to Laderman as a tribute to a great teacher whose far-reaching influence has inspired him to study the work of American composers in great depth.

SOMM Recordings is proud to announce the premiere recording of Ian Venables’ exquisite and moving Requiem with the Choir of Gloucester Cathedral conducted by the Cathedral’s of Music Adrian Partington and Assistant of Music Jonathan Hope playing the organ. Completed in 2018, the Requiem received its first performance in the imposing surroundings of Gloucester Cathedral, where this recording was made in 2019. Widely acclaimed for his songs and chamber music, the Requiem is Ian Venables’ most substantial choral work to date and is a compelling piece full of fine melodies and gorgeous harmonies. Adrian Partington describes the Requiem as “a significant addition to the choral repertoire. The music is eloquent, resourceful and exerts a strong emotional appeal”. Ian Venables comments: “Composing a Requiem is a daunting creative challenge because so many great settings have been written in the past. However, as a composer of songs, words are always crucially important to me and I found that the words of the Mass for the Dead came to appeal to me strongly. I felt an overwhelming desire to set them to music. I am delighted that Adrian Partington, his excellent choir and Jonathan Hope have brought my music so vividly to life.” The album also includes first recordings of Ivor Gurney’s God mastering me (arranged by Venables), John Joubert’s O eternal God and Venables’ O Sing Aloud to God alongside John Sander’s Dedication. SOMM’s long relationship with Ian Venables includes his chamber music (SOMMCD 0101), of which Gramophone declared: “Lovers of the 20th- century English music renaissance will derive much pleasure from this enterprising and rewarding SOMM anthology”.

Following Great American Sonatas, his admired debut on SOMM RECORDINGS, pianist Nathan Williamson turns to British piano music of the 20th century in Color and Light, a revealing exploration of how the past influences the present and the new. A century-spanning programme from Delius's quixotic 1887 Nocturne (more familiar as An Nacht, the Florida Suite's finale, here in Robert Threlfall's 1986 transcription) to Anthony Herschel Hill's combustible Toccata of 1985 also lights on three other distinctive but highly contrasted composers. Modernity makes itself felt in Elisabeth Lutyens' The Ring of Bone (1975), which strikingly employs the use of spoken text in what Williamson describes in his booklet notes as "a bold and heartfelt gesture". William Alwyn's Twelve Preludes (1958) pay a glancing nod to Lutyens' serialist techniques even while displaying "a peculiarly English combination of both tonality and modality" characteristically his own. Peter Dickinson's "postmodern, poly-stylistic" Paraphrase II (1967) is the work of a composer open to the broadest influences, it's seven sections inventively re-working an earlier three-part motet and receiving here their first studio recordings. Slowly emerging into the light, Anthony Herschel Hill's Litany (1992) and Toccata (1985) - heard here in first recordings - are the product of a wholly individual compositional voice, boasting, says Williamson, "some of the most gorgeously idiomatic and exhilarating piano writing of any late-20th century composer". Delius's Prelude and Duet from his one-act opera Margot la Rouge, composed in 1902 yet un-performed until 1983, are distinctive for their delicate harmonic textures and colors, masterfully transcribed for piano by Maurice Ravel. Featuring music by Bernstein, Copland, Charles Ives and Lou Harrison, Great American Sonatas, Nathan Williamson's 2017 SOMM Recordings debut was hailed by Gramophone as "a release of distinction".

Somm Recordings celebrates the sublime choral music of Richard Rodney Bennett – best known to a wider audience for his Academy Award-nominated scores to Murder on the Orient Express and Far from the Madding Crowd – with 11 first recordings and a vivid new recording of his choral masterpiece, The Glory and the Dream. Performed by the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire Chamber Choir, directed by Paul Spicer and with dexterous support from organist Nicholas Morris, The Glory and the Dream features 12 varied and vivacious choral pieces composed over more than 50 years. The album’s striking title work sets Wordsworth’s ode Intimations of Immortality to music that conjures childhood rapture and adult fears with the utmost finesse and feeling and features a fearsomely complex and challenging organ accompaniment. Dating from 1961, the earliest pieces here are Two Madrigals in which Bennett treats the rich ornamentations of the 17th century to a wholly modern perspective. The most recent work, One Equal Music – a sinewy, austere anthem with a serene ending – was completed in February 2012, just 10 months before the composer’s death at the age of 76. Bennett’s fascination with the Elizabethan and Jacobean eras is also to be found in the elegiac partsong A Contemplation Upon Flowers, the vocal fanfare This Day and Time, a somber meditation on the finality of life and lasting effulgence of Christ’s eternal being, and the simple but affective carol I wonder as I wander. Other seasonal pieces include the early, plainchant-infused The Sorrows of Mary, the gentle ‘hush song’ Lullaby Baby and late, substantial Remember, O thou man, a fervent and heartfelt prayer ending in quiet contemplation. Previous Royal Birmingham Conservatoire Chamber Choir recordings on SOMM have included admired recordings of choral music by Herbert Howells, Samuel Barber and John Joubert, together with partsongs by Ireland, Delius and Stanford.