An award-winning English composer of international standing, and one of the leading composers of his generation, whose music has been performed, recorded, and broadcast in many countries, Edward Gregson celebrates his eightieth birthday in 2025. He continues to compose and perform as actively as ever. This album presents three major concertos, interspersed with two shorter works for piano and orchestra. A Song for Bram was written in memory of his great friend and advocate, the conductor Bramwell Tovey. A Song for Sue, re-working the central Nocturne from his Concertante for Piano and Brass Band (1966), is a 2024 tribute to his wife. One of the most performed of all his works, the Tuba Concerto was written for John Fletcher, who gave the first performance in 1977. Gregson's Concerto for Viola and String Orchestra 'Three Goddesses' was given it's first performance in 2023 by Rachel Roberts. The goddesses depicted in the three movements are Morrigan (Celtic warrior queen and earth mother), Aphrodite (Greek goddess of love and beauty), and Diana (Roman goddess of the hunt). First performed by these forces in 2020, the Oboe Concerto 'A Vision in a Dream' is inspired by Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poem Kubla Khan. In following the narrative, Gregson comes closest in his series of concertos to producing a descriptive symphonic poem.

The First Symphony was largely inspired by the composer's tempestuous love affair with the widowed Baroness Imma von Doernberg, whom Walton met in 1929 and with whom he was living on the Continent in the early 1930s. Although the work was long in gestation, with a particular delay in the composition of the finale, the result was universally acclaimed as an outstanding success, with John Ireland commenting "unlike any other English symphony, this is in the real line of symphonic tradition. It is simply colossal, grand, original, and moving to the emotions to the most extreme degree... It has established you as the most vital and original genius in Europe". Walton's star was in the descendent through the 1950's, with a poor reception to his opera Troilus & Cressida, and equally negative comments for his Cello Concerto, which was widely considered to be embarrassingly old-fashioned in it's essentially neo-romantic idiom. Commissioned by Gregor Piatigorsky (at the suggestion of Heifetz), the work was first performed in Boston under Charles Munch in January 1957, with the UK premiere under Sir Malcolm Sargent following a month later. Walton was unable to attend that concert as he was hospitalised following a car accident on the journey to London from his home in Italy. Now widely perceived as one of Walton's most important late scores, the work is performed here by Sinfonia of London's principal cellist Jonathan Aasgaard.

The ARC Ensemble's Music in Exile series continues with this exploration of chamber works by Ernest Kanitz. Born into a wealthy Viennese family in 1894, he was encouraged in music by his mother, started piano lessons aged seven, and was composing within a year. Persuaded by his parents to study for a degree in Law, Kanitz also studied piano, music theory, and composition (with Franz Schreker, who also served as a mentor). His reputation grew steadily, his works promoted by conductors such as George Szell and Clemens Krauss. In 1922 he gained a position as a teacher at the New Vienna Conservatory, and in 1930 established the Vienna Women's Chamber Choir, which quickly gained a reputation across Europe for it's performances of Kodaly, Honegger, and Stravinsky (as well as Kanitz!). Although he had converted to Christianity in 1914, his Jewish ancestry necessitated emigration from Austria in 1938, following the annexation of Austria by National Socialist Germany. After a short spell in New York, Kanitz and his wife, Gertrude, moved to Rock Hill, South Carolina, where he had secured a teaching position. Following Gertrude's early death from cancer, Kanitz moved to California, where he established a successful teaching career at the University of Southern California. Retirement from USC in 1960 gave him much more time for composition (although he was still teaching and lecturing), with successful premieres given by the Philadelphia Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, and San Francisco Symphony, among many others. Following his death in 1978, his music, like that of so many emigre composers, has been forgotten.

A project some six years in the making, Latin Connections was originally conceived as a collaborative project with the multi-instrumentalist, singer, and composer Clarice Assad. Global Covid restrictions forced us to postpone the recording, by which time Clarice was unavailable. Disappointed though we were, we were delighted to refresh a friendship with the award-winning jazz singer, cellist, pianist, and composer Sara Dowling who brings all these skills and instruments to our new recording. Latin music encompasses a colossal range of styles, many of which have become popular the world over: salsa, samba, tango, cumbia, bossa nova, choro, merengue, rumba, candombe, and baiao, to name but a few. Born out of the cultural trinity of the Spanish and Portuguese presence in South America, African music (courtesy of the slave trade), and the indigenous music and traditions of Latin America, Latin music is as rich and varied as any other musical tradition globally. It's incorporation into rock, pop, and jazz, notably in the USA, has further popularised and developed the many styles which are such a rich part of the cultural identity of South America. - Aquarelle Guitar Quartet.

Perhaps now overshadowed by his earlier ballet Checkmate, Miracle in the Gorbals was a tremendous hit for Bliss and the Sadlers Wells Ballet company. First performed in 1944, it was repeated in every season through to 1950. Based on a scenario by Michael Benthall (inspired by Jerome and Dostoyevsky), the ballet features the appearance of a Christ-like figure amid Glasgow's most infamous slum. This mysterious Stranger performs a miracle, reviving the Girl Suicide, who in despair had earlier thrown herself into the Clyde. The locals rejoice, but an Official (Benthall had in mind a priest) is jealous and, after a failed attempt to cast doubt on the virtue of the Stranger via the local Prostitute, has him slashed to death by a razor gang. Bliss's score employs a wide range of styles and harmonic language, and also exploits Leitmotifs for the principal characters. Originally titled Variations for Orchestra, Bliss' Metamorphic Variations was composed towards the end of his life, during a late surge of creativity. Two of the 16 movements were dropped at the first performance (given by the LSO and Vernon Handley in 1973) and for some reason were not re-instated at any of the work's later performances until that given by Michael Seal and the BBC Philharmonic in February 2025, the day before they made this recording.

This 11th volume completes the juvenile concertos with these three concertos from 1771/2, all re-writes of sonatas by J.C. Bach. Bach had been something of a mentor to Mozart whilst they were living in London (1764-65) and these three concertos not only draw on Bach's thematic material, but are very much in the gallant style of which Bach was a leading proponent. Making these sonatas into concertos presented Mozart with numerous challenges, as both forms had relatively strict conventions that were markedly different. Mozart overcomes these challenges with great imagination and lightness of touch. The Overture to Mitridate was composed for the Duke of Lombardy in 1770 when Mozart was 14, and just a year before the concertos. The opera was a great hit, and consequently Mozart was commissioned by Empress Maria Theresa to write a serenata for the wedding of her son Archduke Ferdinand. Ascanio in Alba was the result. Mozart started the comedy Lo sposo deluso in 1785, but only composed 5 numbers including the Overture heard here. The five pieces written for Thamos, Konig in agypten represent the only set of incidental music that Mozart composed for the theatre.

Both these violin concertos have been long-neglected for the same reason: their composers were much better-known for their achievements in musical theatre rather than for their works for the concert-hall. Robert Russell Bennett studied composition in Paris with Nadia Boulanger, and his output includes seven symphonies. He also orchestrated some of the highest-profile musicals in Broadway history, including works by George Gershwin, Cole Porter, and Rodgers and Hammerstein. (Richard Rodgers modestly claimed that Bennett's skills in instrumentation had made his music 'sound better than it was'). Vladimir Alexandrovich Dukelsky changed his name to Vernon Duke at the suggestion of his friend Jacob Gershovitz - better known as George Gershwin. Duke received a rigorous training in classical music at the Kyiv Conservatory; was friends with Prokofiev and composed ballet scores for Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes in Paris, as well as three symphonies. He remains better known as the creator of hit shows, such as Cabin in the Sky, and as the composer of numerous songs that became jazz standards, including 'April in Paris'. Chloe Hanslip, Andrew Litton, and the Singapore Symphony Orchestra perform both concertos with aplomb, and Andrew Litton also takes the role of pianist in Bennett's Hexapoda.

John Wilson comments: My Fair Lady is the quintessential American London musical. There is not a semiquaver or a semi-colon in the wrong place. Steven Wilkie, one of the fiddle players in my orchestra, describes it as The Marriage of Figaro of the twentieth century. And when I asked the great opera conductor Richard Bonynge what the finest post-World War Two operas are, he said, 'My Fair Lady, Oklahoma!... they're the great operas that will live on'. We have recorded every note, including underscoring, plus all the music written but cut before opening, with the instrumentation exactly as it was on opening night. Also, thanks to recent research, we have the restored original orchestrations. The reason I want to record everything the composer, lyricist, book-writer, and orchestrator did is that I believe it is a piece of significance by people who were masters of their art and craft. This was not written in an afternoon; it was chiselled away for months. They were ruthless in excising anything they felt would not make the grade. We have a duty to set down as closely as we can their final thoughts on what they created.

Matilda Lloyd and Richard Gowers, recital partners for more than a decade, present a diverse programme of music for trumpet and organ. Transcriptions of baroque works are interspersed with four world-premiere recordings of new works by British composers commissioned for the album. Matilda writes: 'Welcome to our world of Fantasia - an imaginative exploration of the long-established combination of trumpet and organ. Featuring five types of trumpet in seven different keys and the newly refurbished organ of the Abbey Church at Waltham Abbey, this album explores a myriad of sounds that will ignite the imagination and enchant the ear!'

Dame Sarah Connolly and Joseph Middleton present a richly rewarding programme of art songs from a variety of composers. The recital opens with Chausson's Po�me de l'amour et de la mer, which took almost a decade to compose and shows Wagner's influence on the younger composer. Composed in 1935 on a study trip to Rome, Barber's Three Songs set poems by James Joyce and portray three love affairs. Debussy's Trois Chansons de Bilitis set the erotic poems of Pierre Lou�s, which were all the rage in Paris at the turn of the century. Aaron Copland completed his Twelve Poems of Emily Dickinson in 1950, but declared that they should not be seen as a set but as twelve individual works. Connolly here includes 'I've heard an organ talk sometimes' and 'The world feels dusty', the latter giving the album it's title. The programme concludes with the premi�re recording of Errollyn Wallen's Night Thoughts: a cycle of four songs commissioned by Leeds Lieder, and first performed by Dame Sarah and Joseph, the cycle's dedicatees. Setting two of her own poems alongside one by Emily Dickinson and lines from Shakespeare's MacBeth, the cycle took it's inspiration from Howard Hodgkin's painting Night Thoughts.

Edward Gardner's series of Nielsen symphonies with the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra continues with this recording of No. 5, complemented with the overture Helios and the Clarinet Concerto, featuring Alessandro Carbonare as soloist. Nielsen composed Helios in 1903 on a trip to Greece, as his wife, Anne Marie, a sculptor, had won a grant to copy sculptures on the Acropolis. Over it's ten-twelve-minute duration, the work depicts sunrise, noontime, and then sunset over the Aegean Sea, and is one of the composer's most performed works. The Clarinet Concerto dates from 1928 and is cast in one long movement falling into four sections. It is dedicated to Nielsen's friend Aage Oxenvad who gave the first performance. Composed between 1920 and 1922, the Fifth Symphony is unusually laid out in just two movements - the only piece by Nielsen to adopt this structure. Unlike his other mature symphonies, the fifth lacks a subtitle, and so could be considered to be more 'pure music' compared to the descriptive nature of the others. Nielsen described the symphony as 'the division of dark and light, the battle between evil and good' and the opposition between 'Dreams and Deeds'. Considered by many as a "war symphony", Nielsen insisted that he had not been thinking of World War I whilst he was composing the work, but also commented "not one of us is the same as we were before the war".

International sensation Federico Colli continues his personal exploration of the music of Mozart with this second volume of works for solo piano. Colli opens his programme with the Adagio in B minor, K. 540, from 1788, toward the end of Mozart's short life. The only piece on the album not to involve variation form, this Adagio instead adopts sonata form, and is an extremely rare case in Mozart's output of it's chosen key. The two sets of variations that follow (from the seventeen sets that Mozart composed) use a similar approach in their method of constructing variations on the theme - 'Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star' in the first instance, and Gluck's smash hit 'Les Hommes pieusement' (or 'Unser dummer Pobel meint') in the second. Colli concludes his programme with the rather extraordinary Sonata in A major, K. 311. Instead of the expected sonata form, the first movement is a theme with (six) variations. Following the second movement (a minuet and trio), Mozart finishes with a rondo - arguably one of his most famous pieces, the 'Alla turca'.

For this, the fifth instalment of his Shostakovich symphony cycle, John Storgards turns to some of the earliest of the composer's orchestral output, works which Shostakovich largely wrote during his student years. The orchestral scherzo was a favourite task set by composition tutors of the time: the relatively simple form still demands that the student produce contrasting material for the outer and central sections, and manage the transitions effectively. Unsurprisingly, the form looms large in the early works of Shostakovich, as well as Stravinsky, Bartok, and many others. The two examples recorded here show the young composer's ability and style, although not yet perhaps a distinct compositional voice. They do both share links with the later First Symphony, however, which was composed as a graduation test in composition from the Petrograd Conservatoire. Shostakovich spent two years working on it, but the Symphony he eventually produced was an instant success, marking him out as a Boy Wonder among Soviet composers. Written four years later, the Third Symphony evidences not only the rapid development of Shostakovich as a composer, but the equally rapid change in the world he inhabited. He passed the newly required examination in Marxist ideology in December 1926, and managed to extend his registration as a postgraduate student at Leningrad Conservatoire until early 1930. He submitted the symphony with the explanation that it 'expresses the festive spirit of peaceful construction'. At this early stage of the first of Stalin's Five-Year Plans, he already demonstrated his realisation that political spin would be crucial to his creative survival.

Hailed by The Daily Telegraph as 'a voice of real distinction', Nicky Spence possesses unique skills as a singing actor and a rare honesty of musicianship, all of which has earned him a place at the top of the classical music profession. Admired in particular for his interpretation of the music of Jan�cek, he has appeared worldwide in the composer's operas. Performing here with the outstanding pianist Dylan Perez, he presents a varied programme of Czech and Slovak art song. Bela Bartok found his lifelong enthusiasm for folk music sparked whilst on holiday in Slovakia in 1904, when he heard a nursemaid singing. Village Scenes sets five folksongs from a large Slovakian collection published in 1915, and depicts various aspects of a country wedding. Jaroslav Kricka became a central figure in Czech musical life, occupying the posts of chorus master of the Czech Philharmonic and professor of composition at the Prague Conservatory, amongst others. His Three Fables are settings of traditional fairy tales. Vitezslava Kapr�lov� was a composer of great promise who died of TB in 1940, aged just twenty-five. She studied conducting with V�clav Talich and composition with Vitezslav Nov�k before moving to Paris where she was taught by Bohuslav Martinu. Her song cycle Sparks from Ashes deals with themes of love - found, flourishing, and lost - as do the eighteen numbers of Dvor�k's song cycle Cypresses. Written by Kapr�lov� four years later, the haunting Waving Farwell was inspired by having to leave Prague for her new life in Paris.

Sir Andrew Davis was a talented keyboard player as a child and teenager, and after study with Peter Hurford, at St Albans, he spent four years at the University of Cambridge as organ scholar at King's College, under Sir David Willcocks. It was this period of his life that sparked his love for and appreciation of the organ works of J.S. Bach, which remained a lifelong passion. Sir Andrew made all the transcriptions on this album for the BBC Philharmonic, and four of them were recorded in November 2023. Sadly, Sir Andrew died before the final recording sessions for the album could take place (September 2024): we are immensely grateful that he completed the arrangements, and very thankful to Martyn Brabbins for completing the recording with the sense of style, love, and affection that Sir Andrew would have admired.