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.

Madeline Dring was born into a musical and theatrical family, and gained an exhibition scholarship to the junior department of the Royal College of Music aged nine. Her focus changed from violin to piano and composition, which she studied with Herbert Howells, Gordon Jacob, and Ralph Vaughan Williams. Her dedication to the theatre opened up a career writing music and songs for Revues & sketch-shows for theatre, radio and television: she had a facility and wit that some contemporaries compared to Gershwin. It is perhaps because of the nature of her work (commissions and performance-specific compositions) that a great deal of her output has been lost. Dring was married to Roger Lord, long-time principal oboe of the London Symphony Orchestra, for whom she wrote a number of works and arrangements that have been collected here. Nicholas Daniel OBE has long been acknowledged as one of the world's great oboists and is one of Britain's best-known musicians. He has significantly enlarged the repertoire for his instrument with the commissioning of hundreds of new works. He is joined here by Antonio Oyarzabal (piano), Adam Walker (flute) and Amy Harman (bassoon).

Brahms's Third Piano Quartet gestated for a long time - the first sketches were made in 1855, whilst the work was not completed until 1875. Numerous commentators tie the work to Brahms's infatuation with Clara Schumann, who certainly heard many of the various iterations of the piece before it's final version. But Brahms did not write programme music, and whatever his motivations may or may not have been, the result is, like the rest of his output, pure music. Louise Heritte-Viardot was a French singer, pianist, conductor, and composer. She was born in Paris, the eldest child of Pauline Viardot-Garcia and Louis Viardot, and sister to the violinist and conductor Paul Viardot. Her singing career was cut short by illness, but with the help of Clara Schumann she found a second career as a singing teacher at the Hoch Conservatory, in Frankfurt. In contrast to Brahms's quartet, Viardot's work is extremely programmatic. Titled I'm Sommer (In Summer), it comprises four movements which also carry evocative titles: 'Morning, in the Woods', 'Flies and Butterflies', 'Sultriness', and 'Evening, under the Oak-tree'.

John Wilson and Sinfoina of London complete their set of Rachmaninoff symphonies with this recording of the First Symphony and the Symphonic Dances. Rachmaninoff hoped that the First Symphony, composed in 1895, would build on the reputation of his graduation opera Aleko, which had proved a great success. The premiere, in St Petersburg in March 1897, was, however, a disaster. Rumour had it that the conductor, Alexander Glazunov, was drunk: true or false, it seems clear that he had little interest in the piece, leading to a raft of scathing reviews. This setback hit Rachmaninoff very deeply, and is considered by many to be the reason for the following three-year creative block only lifted by a course of hypnotherapy. Rachmaninoff left the score in Russia when he fled the revolution in 1917, and it was subsequently lost. Two years after his death it was reconstructed from a set of orchestral parts in the Leningrad Conservatory, and given it's second performance, in Moscow, in October 1945, since when it has gained it's place as standard orchestral repertoire around the world. The Symphonic Dances were written towards the very end of the composer's life, and started out in a version for two pianos, which Rachmaninoff performed with Vladimir Horowitz. He then set about orchestrating the work, which was first performed by the Philadelphia Orchestra and Eugene Ormandy in January 1941. Set in three movements, the Symphonic Dances reference the theme from the final movement of the First Symphony. In this recording, Sinfonia of London plays from John Wilson's own performing edition of the work.

Oscar Wilde's play Salome was conceived for the actress Sarah Bernhardt and was originally planned for performance in London, in 1892. The play was blocked by the sensor (it was forbidden at the time to depict biblical characters on stage) and so first given in Paris instead, in 1896. Wilde never saw his play performed, as he was serving a prison sentence for homosexual acts whilst the only two performances in his lifetime occurred. Subsequently the play gained popularity in Germany, and having attended a performance in Berlin in 1902, Strauss determined that this would be the subject for his third opera. First performed in 1905, Strauss's Salome has gone on to become much better-known than Wilde's play, and is regularly performed at opera houses around the world. This live recording was made at a performance at the Usher Hall, in Edinburgh, as part of the Edinburgh International Festival in August 2022. Edward Gardner and the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra are joined by an outstanding cast of soloists, led by Malin Bystrom in the title role, Gerhard Siegel as Herod, Katarina Dalayman as Herodias, and Johan Reuter as John the Baptist.

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'.

The Arcadia Quartet reaches the penultimate release in it's acclaimed complete Weinberg string quartets series with this volume, featuring Quartets Nos 3, 9, and 14. As in previous volumes, the works are taken from contrasting periods of Weinberg's compositional development, and so present a varied programme that works in it's own right. Quartet No. 3, composed in 1944, could be considered as the first 'mature' quartet, and is set in three movements. The Ninth Quartet, composed in 1963, dates from his self-described 'starry decade', when his work was championed by a significant group of enthusiastic performers, including Emil Gilels, Leonid Kogan, Kirill Kondrashin, Rudolf Barshai, and the Borodin Quartet. Quartet No. 14 dates from 1978, three years after the death of Weinberg's great friend and mentor Shostakovich: a time when Weinberg was questioning and renewing his artistic identity. The album also includes the short Improvisation and Romance, from 1950.

The passage of time has perhaps been unkind to the English composer Maurice Greene. By 1730 he was one of the most senior musicians in England: Organist at St Paul's Cathedral, Organist and Composer to the Chapel Royal, and Professor of Music at the University of Cambridge. When he was appointed Master of the King's Music, in 1735, he held every significant appointment in the Kingdom. Of course, the overwhelming presence of Handel in London at the time most certainly played a significant part in Greene's relative obscurity. His second attempt at oratorio, Jephtha, in 1737, marks the first successful foray by an Englishman in this genre. Brimming with attractively varied airs and choruses, powerfully emotive accompanied recitatives, and spirited orchestral movements, it is an engaging work. Taken from the Book of Judges, chapter 11, the account of Jephtha tells the story of a fearless Israelite warrior recalled from exile to fight for his people, a man not only of great valour but, as it transpires - thanks to an impulsive and fateful pledge - of profound honour, too, destined to assume his place as their worthy ruler. Christian Curnyn directs his Early Opera Company forces with a dazzling cast of soloists: Andrew Staples takes the part of Jephtha, joined by Mary Bevan, Michael Mofidian, and Jeremy Budd.

Trio Gaspard continues it's acclaimed series of Haydn Trios with this programme of middle and later quartets, designed to be played (and enjoyed) as a standalone programme. As with the previous volumes, the trio include the world premier recording of a piece commissioned to compliment the Haydn's work - in this instance, Trance, by Sally Beamish. The performers note: we should like to highlight just a few examples of the ways in which the inventiveness of his musical materials continues to astound us. The Trio in B flat major for example, opens with a striking combination of opposites: a legato falling scale beginning from what was the highest note on Haydn's piano (F) and a rising arpeggio in short staccato notes climbing up from the bass. After two bars the elements swap places, the staccato arpeggio rising up in the right hand of the piano, while the legato elements continue in the bass. Together, these four bars form a perfectly balanced opening phrase. The character of this beginning feels completely natural and beguilingly elegant, yet it already contains all the main elements out of which Haydn goes on expertly to craft the rest of the movement. In the second movement of this trio, the song-like theme at the beginning is presented with an accompanying bass line. However, Haydn instructs the pianist to play both lines with 'the left hand alone' - a seeming finger-twister which actually lies surprisingly comfortably in the hand. It is an audacious idea and pianistically unique in Haydn's keyboard music.

Pablo de Sarasate was born in Pamplona, Spain, and became an acclaimed virtuoso of the violin by the tender age of twelve. The child prodigy was sent away to study at the Paris Conservatoire, and Sarasate spent the rest of his life in Paris. In demand nationally and internationally as a soloist, he was the dedicatee of a large number of important concertos by composers ranging from Max Bruch to Henryk Wieniawski. Lalo's Symphonie espagnole was composed for Sarasate, who gave the Paris premiere, in 1875. The work is laid out in five movements and bristles with Spanish themes, rhythms, and influences, which were very much the vogue in France at that time. Also composed for Sarasate, Saint-Saens' Third Violin Concerto was composed in 1880. Written in his usual clear, refined, almost classical style, the work has endured as the most played of his three violin concertos. The album is completed with Sarasate's own fantasia on Bizet's Carmen - a virtuosic tour de force for the soloist, brilliantly played here by James Ehnes.

Sinfonia of London and John Wilson start a new series of recordings of works by Sir William Walton with this album featuring Charlie Lovell-Jones as soloist in the Violin Concerto. Lovell-Jones has soloed with major orchestras internationally, broadcasting on radio and television. As leader of the multi-award-winning Sinfonia of London, he has performed at the BBC Proms and recorded numerous albums, and is the winner of a number of significant international competitions. Commissioned by Jascha Heifetz, the Concerto was premiered in 1939, in America, and was enthusiastically received. Inspired by Walton's friend and lover Alice Wimborne, the work is extremely lyrical and passionate in nature, sporting a wild, virtuosic Tarantella as the second movement. Alice was also a driving force behind the inception of Walton's first grand opera, Troilus and Cressida, composed over almost a decade, largely after her untimely death. Here we hear the four-movement orchestral suite compiled in 1987 by Christopher Palmer, at the instigation of Lady Walton and his lifelong publisher OUP. Walton's overture Portsmouth Point is the earliest work on the album, premiered in 1926.

The Gramophone Award-winning Silesian Quartet present a double-album of the complete works for string quartet by compatriot Henryk Gorecki. All three of his numbered string quartets were written late in life - the first in 1988 - and all three were commissioned by the Kronos Quartet. The First Quartet is a single-movement work, based on a sixteenth-century song by Waclaw of Szamotuly. The Second, double the length of the First, is subtitled 'quasi una fantasia' and follows a classical four-movement form, subtly referencing Beethoven. Gorecki completed the Third Quartet (double the length of the Second!) after the Symphony of Sorrowful Songs had catapulted his music to much wider acclaim. It extends to five movements and is considered by many to be one of his greatest compositions. In the 1980s and 1990s, Gorecki composed several collections of choral songs. Five Kurpian Songs is based on folksongs from Kurpie, a region north-west of Warsaw. The composer himself suggested that these works would be effective when performed by a string quartet, and here the Silesian Quartet gives us the world premiere recording of that version.

Born in 1984, Krzysztof Meisinger is one of the most fascinating and charismatic classical guitar players of our time, his artistic development having benefited from the profound influence of such teachers and music authorities as Aniello Desiderio (Italy) and Christopher Parkening (USA). His talent compared to that of the pianist Piotr Anderszewski and fellow guitarist Pepe Romero, he has performed all over the globe. Nigel Simeone notes: 'Ranging from traditional songs to one of the leading flamenco composers of the present day, through music inspired by the sights and sounds of Spain from the 1700s to the early 1900s, Meisinger: The Spanish Album presents the guitar as the main protagonist in a programme of arrangements accompanied by strings and percussion: reworkings that are perhaps no more surprising than the music itself, much of it filtered through the creative imaginations of composers from Boccherini to Falla. The string accompaniments on this recording add warmth, colour, and sustaining harmonies to support the guitar, and to these have been added improvised percussion parts - from red-blooded castanets to the delicate, atmospheric sounds of bar chimes. Through all this, the guitar is the eloquent soloist, and the musical embodiment of Spain.'

Edward Gardner's Schubert cycle concludes with the 'Great' Symphony No. 9 in C major. Having (remarkably) composed a symphony a year between 1813 and 1818, the onset of syphilis and it's intrusive treatment seemed to shake the composer's confidence as a symphonist - the Ninth is the only symphony after those first six that he actually completed. This is attributed by many to a wonderful holiday with friends in the high Austrian Alps that seems to have re-ignited his enthusiasm. The nickname 'Great' may originally have arisen to distinguish it from the 'little' C major Symphony (No. 6), but is apt, as the Ninth is on so much greater a scale than any symphony before it, which can run to almost an hour in some performances. The soprano Mary Bevan joins Edward Gardner and the CBSO in a selection of orchestral songs that complete the album. One was orchestrated by Schubert himself, the others are settings by Britten, Berlioz, Brahms, and Reger.

Born in Belfast and raised in Greater Manchester, the world-renowned trombonist Peter Moore gained international attention at the age of twelve when, in 2008, he became the youngest winner of the competition BBC Young Musician. His early involvement in the brass band culture in Northern England was crucial to his rapid development. Appointed Co-Principal Trombone of the London Symphony Orchestra aged just eighteen, he departed after ten years to focus on his solo career. He has performed concertos with leading orchestras, including the BBC Symphony Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra, and Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, and given recitals at venues such as the Koninklijk Concertgebouw, in Amsterdam, Wigmore Hall, in London, and Wiener Musikverein. This album celebrates Peter's life-long association with the brass band movement, with a diverse programme that includes major works such as Gordon Langford's Rhapsody (written for Don Lusher) and the world premiere recording of Simon Dobson's Shift - a trombone concerto written for Peter Moore. Peter also pays tribute to other great trombonists: Arthur Pryor was a soloist with the Souza band, whilst I'm Gettin' Sentimental over You was a huge hit for Tommy Dorsey.

Composed between 1865 and 1868, Brahms's Ein deutsches Requiem has become a repertoire staple for choirs around the world, amateur and professional alike, possibly because it relies so much more on the choir than it's soloists to convey the texts than other works. Brahms chose not to set the Requiem Mass, but rather a collection of biblical texts of his own selection, taken from the Lutheran Bible (hence the 'deutsches'). Rather than a prayer for the dead, Brahms's concern is much more with offering comfort to the bereaved, still on earth. When challenged about the lack of a single reference to Christ in the entire work, Brahms responded, 'I would gladly omit even the word German and simply put Human'. This adds credence to the view that he saw the work in an entirely humanist way, and that the religious overtones of the title and text selection are much more a result of the avowedly Christian culture of his times than a specific decision to express personal belief. Edward Gardner and his Bergen forces are joined by the soloists Johanna Wallroth and Brian Mulligan in this exciting new recording.

Praised by BBC Music magazine for his 'lucid, velvety tenor and pop-star charisma', the Lebanese-American Karim Sulayman has garnered international attention as a sophisticated and versatile artist. He joins the Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective for this album of works by Reynaldo Hahn. The founder members Tom Poster and Elena Urioste write: 'Kaleidoscope has championed many unjustly neglected composers, but in the case of Reynaldo Hahn the neglect seems particularly puzzling to us. His music is immediately approachable, soaringly beautiful, and speaks directly to the heart; audiences, on the rare occasions that they get to hear it, seem to adore it. His life story is fascinating, too: born in Caracas, to a Jewish-German father and a Catholic-Venezuelan mother of Spanish / Basque origin, the handsome and urbane Hahn charmed high-society Paris, enjoying great success as composer, conductor, singer, writer-lecturer, and music critic. The Piano Quintet had been on our programming wish list for some time: it was lauded as Hahn's greatest work at it's 1922 premiere, and the powerful intensity of it's first two movements in particular acts as a firm rejoinder to those who criticised Hahn as a lightweight salon composer. By the time he finished his Piano Quartet, in 1946, Hahn was a man out of place in the world; this is music which bears no trace of modernism, instead looking back nostalgically to Hahn's heyday in la belle epoque. A number of years ago, our dear friend Karim Sulayman joined Tom in several performances of a set of Hahn songs, and a shared love for the music led to a discussion about how beautifully some of the piano parts could work in chamber arrangements. Karim had first discovered Hahn through the touching recordings on which the composer simultaneously sings and plays his own songs; and we, in turn, have always been deeply touched by the direct channel which Karim seems to have to Hahn's heartfelt expressive world. For all of us, it has been a profound joy to put these new song arrangements down on disc for the first time.'

Peter Donohoe's first album devoted to Busoni was enthusiastically received by the critics, and nominated for a BBC Music Magazine award. This second volume offers playing and musicality of the same high standards. His programme opens with two of Busoni's finest Bach transcriptions, widely seen as a pinnacle of the repertoire for pianistic virtuosity, and much more widely played than Busoni's own compositions. This is followed by the Variations on Chopin's Prelude in C minor - a work in which Busoni demonstrates his innate skill of re-interpretation, and his mastery of counterpoint, and a piece he reworked several times. The following works are 'all Busoni' - the first and second sonatinas, and the Fantasia contrappuntistica, in the composer's later adaptation for two pianos. The first Steinway Artist of Indian origin, Karl Lutchmayer is equally renowned as a concert pianist, a lecturer, and a broadcaster. He joins Peter Donohoe in the Fantasia, and also performs the Second Sonatina.

For this third instalment in his survey of orchestral works by Ruth Gipps, Rumon Gamba, conducting the BBC Philharmonic, is joined by the horn soloist Martin Owen. The album opens with Gipps's Coronation Procession. The piece depicts the journey of the Crown(s), perhaps as observed from the Royal Coach, culminating in the entry to Westminster Abbey. Written in January 1953, the piece was not used at the coronation, and instead first performed in September 1954 in Melbourne, Australia. Ambarvalia is a memorial tribute of 1988 by Gipps to the composer and colleague Adrian Cruft, who had died in February 1987. Gipps wrote the Horn Concerto in 1968 for her son, Lance Baker. The piece was later championed by Frank Lloyd, who gave a BBC broadcast in 1982. Here the virtuoso Martin Owen brings the work vividly to life. The Lake District was the inspiration for the 'Impression' Cringlemire Garden, a pastoral miniature for string orchestra. Dated September 1942, the First Symphony is a direct reflection of the horrors of war. The work demonstrates Gipps's personal voice, and features some wonderful writing for winds.

This volume of modern premieres of works by Johann Friedrich Fasch (1688 - 1758) was recorded in concert, the programme opening the 2023 International Fasch Festival, in Zerbst, the city in which he was Capellmeister to the princely court. Tempesta di Mare has had an ongoing love affair with the orchestral music of Fasch that goes back to 2007, when the band received images of manuscript part books for several as-yet unpublished orchestral works held at the Dresden Library. They have been investigating, discovering, and performing works by Fasch every season since then, and recording those that have not already been recorded - this album is the fourth volume of such discoveries. One of the things that fascinate Tempesta di Mare about the music of Fasch, which goes beyond the craftsmanship, expressivity, inventiveness, and wit, is his very distinctive voice. Plenty of other central European composers of his time were content if their music could sound like that of Vivaldi, Corelli, or Telemann. Those influences remain clearly present in his music, but Fasch does not sound like any of them - nor, for that matter, like Bach, Handel, or any other of his contemporaries familiar to us.

Barry Douglas's acclaimed survey of Schubert's piano sonatas continues with this programme pairing the Sonata in E flat major, D 568 with the Sonata in G major, D 894. Published posthumously, the E flat major Sonata is a revision and completion of the D flat major Sonata, D 567. The original was written in June 1817, the revision soon afterwards. This sonata stands out in the canon for it's light-hearted, easy-going character in contrast to the more serious nature of the other sonatas. The G major Sonata, the last to be published in Schubert's lifetime, was completed in 1826. The work holds a special place for many pianists, including Imogen Cooper, Sviatoslav Richter, and Paul Lewis; the latter two have declared it their favourite, whilst Robert Schumann described it as 'the most perfect in form and conception' of any of Schubert's sonatas. Douglas completes his programme with two Liszt transcriptions of Schubert songs: 'Gretchen am Spinnrade', and 'Wohin?' (from Die schone Mullerin).

Edward MacDowell was the most highly regarded American composer of his generation, and the first to acquire a truly international reputation. Born in New York, he briefly studied piano as a teenager at the Paris Conservatoire, but quickly left to explore what he regarded as the more congenial musical environment in Germany. He studied piano and composition in Stuttgart, Wiesbaden, and then Frankfurt. After graduating in 1880, he remained in Germany for four years, before returning home, first to Boston, for eight years, and then finally to New York where he became Columbia University's first Professor of Music. The various romantic influences that shaped the style of the First Concerto include the music of Liszt, Tchaikovsky, Schumann, and Grieg, whilst the technical demands on the soloist reveal MacDowell's prowess as a pianist. MacDowell's enthusiasm for the symphonic poem is reflected here by the inclusion of Lancelot und Elaine and Lamia. The former was inspired by the Arthurian legend as told by Tennyson in his Idylls of the King. The work is extremely narrative, and employs Wagnerian Leitmotifs to depict each of the characters. Lamia, written some two years later and based on the poem by John Keats, was neither published nor performed in the composer's lifetime. MacDowell had planned another symphonic poem, based on the French mediaeval tale La Chanson de Roland, but the work was never completed, and the two fragments included here are all that remain. Woodland Sketches, a set of ten piano miniatures, were inspired by the idyllic environment of the MacDowells' farm, in New Hampshire. The first of these - 'To a Wild Rose' - is by far the composer's most famous piece, and made MacDowell a household name in both America and Europe.