“Inspirations and imaginings, evolving, changing English usage, landscapes, friendships and passings lie behind this album... Loosely, the songs we’ve selected embrace multiple interpre- tations and nuances of ‘divine’. As well as, I could argue, that sentiment of English song and English speaking composers embodying the [Blake/Parry] ‘Jerusalem-Builded-Here’ trope. The world I came from (singing in choir stalls), along with how countertenors are perceived generally, has been hard to escape. So here perhaps I’m taking on the challenge. As well as an opportunity to include songs written for me that for some while I’ve been needing to put down on disc.” (Iestyn Davies) ‘Divine Music’ marks Iestyn Davies’ third recital album on Signum Classics. The ‘Four Songs’ (Purcell/ Adès), Spoons Aria (Adès), Four Traditional Songs and Old Bones (Muhly) are world premiere recordings. Muhly’s Four Traditional Songs were also written dedicated to Iestyn Davies.

REVIEW:

It’s lovely to hear Butterworth’s Shropshire Lad songs in this pairing, a countertenor voice adding a wan fragility to ‘Is my team ploughing?’ and a wistful sense of perpetual youth and innocence to ‘The lads in their hundreds’.

-- Gramophone

For his second album for Chandos, the flute virtuoso Adam Walker explores the music of British composers with pianist Huw Watkins. Vaughan Williams’s Suite de ballet was commissioned by the French flute virtuoso Louis Fleury (who had given the première of Debussy’s Syrinx). The work uses eighteenth-century French dance forms, a common practice in ‘neo-classical’ composition. Bax’s Four Pieces rescue music from an abandoned ballet originally conceived for Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. Sir Lennox Berkeley’s Sonatina was originally written for treble recorder; James Galway’s championship of the piece made it a staple of the flute repertoire. Howard Fergusson’s Three Sketches were composed intermittently over a period of twenty years. The theme of the third piece is a Hindu melody, ‘Koyalinya bole ambuvan’ (Cuckoos sing in the mango tree). Sonatas by York Bowen and William Alwyn complete this varied and engaging program.

REVIEW:

Seventy-seven minutes of British music for flute and piano might at first glance seem like 40 minutes too much. But that ’s without taking on board the nimble and dazzling skills of flautist Adam Walker, or the individual strengths of the works presented...a new pleasure is never far away in this most accomplished recital, full of the sounds of spring.

-- BBC Music Magazine

To mark the Coronation of King Charles III, we have brought together the most famous pieces of music from the coronations of James II in 1685 and George II in 1727. The masterpieces by Purcell and Handel display an extraordinarily evocative force: their “Grand Style” put a magnificent stamp on the Ceremonial of the Crown of England. Drum rolls and glorious trumpet fanfares herald the acclamations of Westminster: God Save the King!

In partnership with Oxford University Press and authorized by the Vaughan Williams Charitable Trust, this major new initiative brings the incredible catalog of Ralph Vaughan Williams to the wind band community, with scholarly transcriptions by leaders in wind band composition. Titles in the Symphonic Series come from treasured major orchestral works by Vaughan Williams that have never before been available for wind band.

The first of two releases to mark the 150th anniversary of Ralph Vaughan Williams's birth presents two of his major song collections, while bringing to light a substantial number of songs by the composer's student Elizabeth Maconchy. Her works here are almost all unpublished and virtually unknown since their original first performances from manuscript, and span several decades of the composer's career from the time of her studies with Vaughan Williams in the mid-1920s though to her committed espousal of the British modernist aesthetic by the 1960s and 70s. The songs are performed by tenor James Geer and pianist Ronald Woodley in this continuation of their long-standing partnership.

William Byrd was one of the greatest composers of the Renaissance. He was widely admired in his own time both at home and abroad and the influence he had on future generations of composers was immense. This programme explores the music of his influences, his colleagues and his pervading faith. In his 400th anniversary year, Byrd’s legacy is marked by the commission of two new pieces from acclaimed composer Dobrinka Tabakova, bringing his musical heritage firmly into the modern day. The two premieres, Arise Lord into thy rest and Turn our captivity, highlight the beauty of modern polyphony and showcase The Sixteen in a new light. The programme also features works by Van Wilder, de Monte, Clemens Non Papa and, of course, Byrd himself.

Two classic court operas are brought together to tell the stories of love, be it between gods or royalty in the historic Confidencen Theatre, Sweden. Venus & Adonis, composed in 1683 by John Blow, is considered the earliest example of English opera. It tells the enchanting story of two mythical lovers and their cruel fate in scenes reaching from light-hearted comedy to heartfelt despair. Henry Purcell’s Dido & Aeneas from 1689 has become one of the most famous and beloved operas from the Baroque era, with its sumptuous music, dramatic plot and its themes of love, friendship, jealousy, and cruelty. The opera is perhaps best known for Dido’s painfully beautiful lament When I am Laid in Earth.

Charlie Siem returns with a new recording of Violin Sonatas, accompanied by his regular recital partner Itamar Golan – featuring Vaughan Williams' Violin Sonata in A Minor and Grieg's Violin Sonata No. 2 in G Major, Op. 13. Charlie Siem is one of today’s foremost young violinists, with such a wide-ranging diversity of cross-cultural appeal as to have played a large part in defining what it means to be a true artist of the 21st century. Siem has appeared with many of the world’s finest orchestras and chamber ensembles, including the Bergen Philharmonic, Camerata Salzburg, Czech National Symphony, Israel Philharmonic, London Symphony, Moscow Philharmonic, Oslo Philharmonic, Rotterdam Philharmonic, and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. He has worked with top conductors such as Charles Dutoit, Edward Gardner, Zubin Mehta, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Sir Roger Norrington, Libor Pešek and Yuri Simonov. International festival appearances to date include Spoleto, St. Moritz, Gstaad, Bergen, Tine@Munch, Festival Internacional de Santa Lucía, and the Windsor Festival.

This keenly anticipated album from Sinfonia of London and John Wilson features two of the greatest British works for string orchestra: Ralph Vaughan Williams’s Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis, and Sir Edward Elgar’s Introduction and Allegro. Elgar’s ground-breaking work, commissioned for the newly formed London Symphony Orchestra and premièred in 1905, is inspired by the baroque concerto grosso, and features a solo string quartet contrasted with the full symphonic string section. These orchestral forces were also adopted by Herbert Howells in his Concerto for String Orchestra, from 1938. Delius’s Late Swallows is the only piece not originally composed for string orchestra; it was arranged (from the slow movement of Delius’s String Quartet) by his amanuensis, Eric Fenby. Recorded in Surround Sound and available as a Hybrid SACD, and digitally in Spatial Audio.

REVIEW:

As ever, the brilliance of the playing makes this essential listening, the precision and attention to detail alive and exhilarating. The entire disc holds the listener in its grip, but the last movement of the Elgar, urgent and impassioned, has you on the edge of your seat: a tour de force.

-- Guardian (UK)

A MusicWeb International Recommended Recording

I think that this is tenth disc to be issued by Chandos in their series of recordings by The Sinfonia of London under John Wilson. All are Super Audio CDs recorded at 24 bit/96 kHz, and in order to appreciate the full glory of the sound, it is necessary to play them through an SACD player, although I hasten to add that they will reproduce at CD quality when played through a standard CD player. If you have multi-channel Hi-Fi, the extra fullness of surround sound can also be experienced.

Given that the Sinfonia of London was re-established in 2018 as a recording orchestra, staffed by top players from British and international ensembles, the superb ensemble playing is not surprising, and the Chandos recording engineers have given it the very fullest of service...A mildly reverberant acoustic provides a perfect cushion for the orchestra, and, as elsewhere, the strings in the vigorous outer movements of the Howells Concerto are splendid in their unanimity and fullness of tone. The necessarily less aggressive playing in the slow movement has a lovely bloom to the playing.

The disc closes with a fine performance of Elgar’s Introduction and Allegro, and as in the Tallis Fantasia, I soon became aware of the extremes of dynamic achieved. This lovely, utterly memorable work is so familiar that I just sat back and let it wash over me.

The presentation of the SACD is up to Chandos’ normal high standards, with a detailed analysis of the gestation and structure of each work (particularly of the Howells) and a history of the orchestra, accompanying a brief biography of John Wilson, all in English, French and German.

-- MusicWeb International (Jim Westhead)

Founded in 1951, the Orchestra Sinfonica Siciliana has been directed by charismatic maestros of international renown from the Romanian Sergiu Celibidache in the 60s to the Venezuelan Diego Matheuz and Duncan Ward in the present era. Now Gianna Fratta joins their ranks with a unique showcase of 20th-century orchestral masterpieces. Gianna Fratta opened the 2021-22 season of the OSS in Palermo with a concert featuring Martha Argerich as soloist in Schumann’s Piano Concerto; she has herself won acclaim as a pianist, and now conducts leading ensembles across Italy. That program concluded with an explosive account of the suite from Stravinsky’s Firebird ballet. Fratta likewise draws a full palette of orchestral color from the Sicilian orchestra in this studio account of the Rite of Spring, Stravinsky’s radical sequel to the Firebird.

Completed in 1908, Scriabin’s Poem of Ecstasy makes such an instructive companion on disc that it is surprising to find the pairing is almost unique. Where Stravinsky uses jarring rhythmic dislocation and his command of an orchestra to paint tableaux in sound of a pagan rite, Scriabin places a no less quintessentially French-Russian harmonic palette in the service of sensual pleasure, building wave upon wave of melodic intensity to crash over the listener and ultimately overwhelm them. Both contrasting styles owe much to the innovations of Debussy, whose rhythmic suppleness in the evocation of wind and water would come to have a profound influence over 20th-century composers in the orchestral seascapes which punctuate his first opera, Peter Grimes. In the years after its premiere in 1945, Grimes established a place on the world’s lyric stages for British opera thanks to the universal power of its storytelling, not only through the ordinary characters at its heart, but through the translation of their complex feelings into surging orchestral textures.

400 years ago, in 1623, England lost two of its greatest composers: William Byrd and Thomas Weelkes. In a program marking this double anniversary, The King’s Singers and Fretwork turn their focus to the bold personalities of these two men, Will and Tom. Featuring well-known gems by the two composers, alongside works which had never been recorded before and which are rarely heard live, Tom and Will unlocks some of the humanity behind these two giants of Elizabethan music. Presented in The King’s Singers’ unique style, this program is filled with beauty, drama and storytelling. As part of this project, The King’s Singers and Fretwork have commissioned two new works for their joint forces, by two of Britain’s great living composers: Sir James MacMillan and Roderick Williams. These works only feature in the version performed by The King’s Singers and Fretwork, but represent a commitment to keeping the spirit of Byrd and Weelkes alive in today’s musical landscape.

REVIEW:

Hand it to the King’s Singers for having been in existence since 1968 and still keeping it fresh after 55 years. Performances of madrigals and other pieces by Byrd and Weelkes are not new, but this one is a standout. Start with the group’s trademark vocal blend, which has never been better, and there is top-notch instrumental backing from Fretwork. The King’s Singers may be entertainers first and foremost, but here, they have brought listeners deeply into the world of the madrigal in a beautifully executed effort that rightly landed on classical best-seller charts in early 2023.

-- AllMusic.com (James Manheim)

Early music ensemble Ceruleo presents an album of music from restoration-era England. Featuring works by Henry Purcell, John Blow, Francesco Corbetta, and John Eccles, the album looks at the dramatic character of English Restoration music and its relationship to the theatrical tradition of the time. Providing a snapshot of the music that might have been heard in English theatres and concert halls, Ceruleo creates a performance – like the stage works of Purcell and Blow – which freely flits between deep emotion, humor and melancholy, all interspersed with instrumental dance music.

SOMM Recordings is delighted to announce a thrilling first collaboration between long-time SOMM stablemates, baritone Roderick Williams and the Coull Quartet, joined by tenor James Gilchrist and soprano Sophie Bevan. With six world premiere recordings, On This Shining Night is a ravishing recital focusing revealingly on a 20th-century phenomenon: works for voice and string quartet. It takes its title from a James Agate setting by Samuel Barber (whose masterly "Dover Beach" is also heard), here in a sublime arrangement by Roderick Williams. Williams also provides arrangements of Barber’s "Sleep Now" and three Frederick Delius pieces from his Seven Songs from the Norwegian: the evocative "Twilight Fancies," vivacious "Young Venevil" and exotic "I-Brasil." They serve, as Robert Matthew-Walker’s erudite booklet notes observe, as companions to 11 songs by Delius’s close friend and associate, Peter Warlock, including the gentle intimacy of "Corpus Christi," the “mini-cantata” "Sorrow’s Lullaby," and unique free-recitative of "My gostly vader."

Composed for Williams and the Coull Quartet, Sally Beamish’s five-part Tree Carols offer striking, variegated settings of poems by Fiona Sampson in their premiere recording. Roderick Williams’ SOMM catalogue include the acclaimed three-volume Twelve Sets of English Lyrics by Hubert Parry (SOMMCD 257, 270, 272), Sally Beamish’s Four Songs from Hafez (Birdsong, SOMMCD 0633), and the classic English song cycles A Shropshire Lad and Maud (SOMMCD 0615), which MusicWeb International declared a “game changer… in terms of our appreciation of Arthur Somervell’s songs”. The Coull Quartet has recorded a wide repertoire for SOMM. Their recording of Nicholas Maw and Benjamin Britten quartets (SOMMCD 065) was a Gramophone Editor’s Choice and a BBC Music Magazine Benchmark Recording. Gramophone declared their recent SOMM release with Clélia Iruzun, Treasures from the New World, featuring piano quintets by Amy Beach and Henrique Oswald (SOMMCD 0609), “a delight”.

Daniel-Ben Pienaar continues his campaign of performing early music on a modern piano with an abundant selection of Pavans & Galliards, Variations & Grounds by William Byrd. The 16th-century composer’s finest sets of dances and variations, featuring some of the Elizabethan era’s most popular tunes, set the standard for English keyboard music for generations to come. With astonishing virtuosity, Daniel-Ben elicits a wealth of color and textures from his Steinway model D. Two-and-a-half hours of music spread over two albums, this is most substantial survey of Byrd’s keyboard music ever recorded on a modern piano, and ranges from frequently-heard works such as the First Pavan and Sellinger's Round to little-known gems like Callino Casturame and the late, great Quadran Pavan and Galliard.

REVIEWS:

With Bach, pianists have ever determined his music too important to be left just to harpsichord or other period instruments. Not with Byrd. Daniel-Ben Pienaar’s 2-CD set of 28 keyboard pieces appearing in the quatercentenary year of Byrd’s death is its largest album presentation on piano, with 13 items, noted in the contents list at the end of this review, recorded on piano for the first time. Its title, ‘Pavans & Galliards, Variations & Grounds’ shows Pienaar concentrates on the two categories in which Byrd was most prolific.

Pienaar’s Pavan & Galliard in C minor (CD1, tr. 1) begins with a Pavan of majestic beauty and breadth, the opening four chords spaciously arpeggiated...The Galliard (tr. 2) is livelier and more robust, with more bounce from Pienaar and clipped shorter notes.

The Pavan & Galliard in A minor is surprisingly gorgeous: the Pavan of underlying sadness with enough gleams of light to allow also a calmness, breadth and sublimity in Pienaar’s presentation...The Galliard is from Pienaar rampant verve, the repeats of all three strains with constant running quavers in either treble or bass.

The Pavan, Galliard & Second Galliard, The Earl of Salisbury is well-known, perhaps because short and straightforward. Pienaar plays the Pavan with an easy familiarity, like welcoming an old friend. It manages to be both dignified and convivial, its first phrase confidently shaped...In the Galliard the emphasis of its first phrase is on bold, rising motifs in constant interplay between treble and tenor voices.

Go from my window (CD2, tr. 10) is simple, cheery and folksy. Pienaar presents it with an attractive lilt and feel of cheekiness as the short theme gradually rises in sequences to climax and then quickly recover its opening position...Pienaar makes it enchantingly effective.

[In the Walsingham Variations] Pienaar conveys a new airiness and sense of fantasy extension of the dance...Pienaar breathtakingly conveys this work’s ever new discoveries and dimensions around the theme’s secure return as mantra in, as Pienaar has written, “its range of mood from sober exposition to ecstatic culmination.”

My Lady Nevell’s Ground (CD2, tr. 3) is another where the melody above is the chief feature...lengthy semiquaver flourishes [are] deliciously lightly realized by Pienaar, like chancing on a byway of imaginative fantasy. I love the sparkle of his fast arpeggiation of the final chord, the byway terminated.

-- MusicWeb International

Following their successful Dvořák cycle with Signum Records, Albion String Quartet are back with a selection of string quartets by Walton and Shostakovich, recorded in 2021. The concept: to juxtapose two masterpieces written in the same year in the immediate aftermath of war (1946) by composers inhabiting two entirely different social and political worlds in the Soviet Union and Britain respectively.

Formed in 2016, the Albion Quartet brings together four of the UK’s exceptional young string players who are establishing themselves rapidly on the international stage. Recent engagements from the 2017-18 season included performances at the Louvre in Paris, Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, Robert Schumann Gesselschaft in Frankfurt, Båstad Festival in Sweden, Festival of Music in Franconia and Rhine Valley Music Festival in Germany, as well as the Hay Festival in the UK. The members of the quartet play on a fine collection of instruments, including a Stradivarius and Guarnerius.

REVIEW:

Founded in 2016 and led by Tamsin Waley-Cohen, the Albion Quartet pace, phrase, point and color Walton’s volatile textures and agile rhythms with all the sensitivity and energy they require. Yet they are equally successful in the fiercer, more unpredictable contrasts in the Shostakovich, all the way from the deadpan perkiness of the opening to the searing outburst in the middle of the finale that sounds like some hysterical lament for the fallen.

-- BBC Music Magazine