To mark the 50th anniversary of Noël Coward's death, celebrated musicians and regular Signum artists Mary Bevan, Nicky Spence and Joseph Middleton join forces for this album of works by Coward and his contemporaries. Featuring songs such as Parisian Pierrot and The Man I Love, the album comprises of a collection of solos, duets and instrumental songs by composers such as Ned Rorem, Liza Lehmann, William Walton, and Benjamin Britten.

Pavans and galliards by the Elizabethan master of melancholy, complemented by a new recording of Benjamin Britten’s magnificent Nocturnal inspired by both Dowland’s music and by the playing of Julian Bream. After the success of ‘The Golden Age of the Guitar in Europe’ (2CD, 96157), Brilliant Classics releases a second album by the French guitarist Pascal Boëls, a unique collection of music by 17th and 20th-century English masters. In a booklet introduction, the guitarist explains how he sees Dowland as ‘a universal genius, eternal wanderer who – already! – knew how to rub shoulders with all facets of the human soul.’ Pascal Boëls plays a personal selection of Dowland’s piece originally written for solo lute, pieces which embody a spirit of introversion such as the ‘Forlorn Hope’ Fancy and the ‘Lachrymae’ Pavan which became famous across Europe, much imitated and adapted by other composers of the day.

Lightening the mood are also the kind of courtly dances and romances which delighted the composer’s aristocratic patrons such as the Earl of Essex and King Christian of Denmark. The English guitarist Julian Bream played Dowland’s pieces on the guitar from an early stage of his career, and made a best-selling album of them for RCA. It was this antique palette of gentle, musing expression that inspired Benjamin Britten to write a Nocturnal for guitar which builds as a sequence of eight variations towards (rather than away from) the Dowland song on which they are based. The resulting work, according to Bream, was the greatest solo work ever written for guitar, exploring a slippage between wakeful and dream states with a subtle ambiguity between major and minor harmonies and a language that bridges the divide between the 17th and 20th centuries.

Scott Robert Shaw's debut "The English Tenor" takes us on a beautifully performed journey through a who's who of great English composers and their vocal works. The names Ivor Gurney, Benjamin Britten, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Gerald Finzi and Roger Quilter are synonymous with English Song, and a Golden Age of British music. The wide variety of accompanying instruments and artists, the broad range of text settings and the mix of cornerstone works of the repertoire alongside lesser-known cycles make "The English Tenor" a thrilling debut album.

A product of the English church music tradition, Australian born Scott Robert Shaw has been performing works in this oeuvre since childhood. Whether on the operatic or oratorio stage, as an ensemble singer or soloist, his deep cultural roots to the British music world are laid bare for all to see. This deeply personal album stands as testament to his background, and as a homecoming to his earliest steps as artist.

Beginning his career and training as a boy soprano at the St George’s Cathedral Perth Choir, Scott attended the McDonald College of the Performing Arts in Sydney, studying music and acting in the Stanislawksy/Laban tradition, awarded a full scholarship for Excellence in Performance. He then attended the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, and was given the Most Exceptional Contribution to the Arts award from Wesley College, University of Sydney. In London he continued his studies with the English National Opera’s Baylis Programme for young performers and was regularly engaged to perform as a recitalist and operatic tenor in festivals and opera companies in both the United Kingdom and France. He then completed his studies at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague where he studied Early Music and Classical Singing, and now based in Düsseldorf, is regularly engaged as a soloist in The Netherlands and Germany, with a particular focus on Bach oratorios and Evangelist roles in the Passions.

Glyndebourne’s production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream is pure magic. Brilliantly adapted from Shakespeare’s play, the opera follows the adventures of four lovers and a group of naïve rustics who, in a wood on a moonstruck midsummer night, fall foul of Oberon and Tytania, the quarrelling king and queen of the fairies. In Peter Hall’s remarkable staging, the very wood comes alive as logs and trees move and rustle, creating ambiguous silhouettes in the dark mysterious woodland, lit only by designer John Bury’s wonderful rising sun and moon.

Recorded 1983.

After an acclaimed Respighi recording, Alessandro Crudele makes his second appearance on Linn, this time teaming up with violinist Michael Barenboim who makes his Linn debut, and the Philharmonia Orchestra. The programme offers a glimpse of two contrasting, yet defining figures of British music. Depicting an outsider within an isolated community – very much reflecting Britten’s situation at the time of its composition – Peter Grimes remains his most performed opera. Following its success, Britten extracted four ‘interludes’: brilliantly orchestrated portraits of the North Sea, performed here with Crudele’s distinctive mastery of orchestral colours. The self-taught Elgar was somewhat reluctant to compose a concerto for violin, but after meeting the great Fritz Kreisler he came to create ‘an immortal work’, the Austrian violinist’s own words. Benefiting from recent live performances, the execution brings all the facets of the work to light and successfully blends the solo part with the orchestral accompaniment in a show of perfect symbiosis.

Bella Adamova can shortly be characterised through her triumphs at competitions (e.g. laureate of the International Robert Schumann Competition, Zwickau, 2021; winner of the Franz Schubert and Modern Music Competition, Graz, 2022; Oratorio Prize at the International Vocal Competition, ‘s- Hertogenbosch, 2022). Or as a young Chechen woman who left her country as a child shortly before the war and found a new home in Prague. She has learned from many acclaimed singers (e.g. von Otter, Hampson, Prégardien) in England, Switzerland, and Germany. She speaks several languages, but she never learned Chechen. She could also be described as a contralto with an extraordinary sensibility in the song repertoire and with a deep, beautifully coloured voice. Or as an improviser who – in rare harmony with pianist Michael Gees – creates spontaneous compositions on texts of their favourite poets. The theme of this album is the search for home and the knowledge of a place where one belongs. Bella Adamova narrates the songs as her own story, at the same time accentuating the life stories of the composers as well as their relationship to their home or their feeling of being outcast. Rather than a typical song recital, this recording is an invitation to the musicians’ own world where every word, no matter what language it is sung in, has its deep meaning. Songs as Bella Adamova’s real home.

Benjamin Britten’s comic opera, which is gently laced with moments of farce, is a jocular parody on life in East Suffolk at the turn of the 20th century. Albert Herring is a quaint, nostalgic journey to a bygone England and the journey has come full circle back to Glyndebourne where this piece was premiered in 1947. The ensuing antics are brilliantly characterised by a strong British cast in this production, which is infused with freshness and limitless charm. Expertly conducted by Bernard Haitink, this archive recording showcases some of Britain’s finest singers in this landmark production by Peter Hall.

The first CD recording of the duo Benjamin Beck (viola) and Marie Rosa Gunter , released by GENUIN, extends beyond all horizons – namely, from a perspective that links this world with the hereafter and that asks about the possibilities of eternal love. Beck's velvety yet pithy viola tone coaxes out the nuances that make the thoughtful compositions of Robert Schumann, Ralph Vaughan-William, Sergei Prokofiev and Benjamin Britten so appealing. And with music from three centuries, this CD is by no means monotonous since it is about artistic realizations of borderline human experiences. Among these, a composition by Francois-Hugues Leclair, which is available on this CD as a world premiere recording and is dedicated to Benjamin Beck, is of particular importance.

On his second album for Alpha Classics, rising star violinist Kerson Leong juxtaposes the Violin Concertos of Bruch and Benjamin Britten. This unusual pairing is a reflection on the journey from one extreme of expression to another. Bruch’s In Memoriam is the perfect bridge between them. “The Britten expresses a raw and exposed experience, while the Bruch is comforting and uplifting. After the last few years in which the world has experienced much difficulty and uncertainty due to pandemic, war, and crisis, recording this album in London in January 2021 with the Philharmonia Orchestra and Patrick Hahn was a profoundly cathartic moment. It is in the spirit of catharsis that I offer this album.” - Kerson Leong

REVIEW:

The clincher for me was the lead work on the disc, Britten’s Violin Concerto, which actually has enjoyed a rash of recent recordings by “name” players, but none that has managed to make sense of the piece for me – or even particularly to like it. Leong changed that for me, and when an artist can overcome my resistance and make me hear a work in a different perspective, one that illuminates its beauty and elucidates its soul, that is worthy of a Want List entry.

-- Fanfare

Kerson Leong’s splendid account of the Bruch comes hot on the heels of [other recordings, but] Leong’s take on the piece is more outgoing in expression. Leong’s generosity of phrase and tone, for instance, comes unashamedly from the chest in the songful reaches of the slow movement, and in the finale where the big tune bears down on the G string he really tugs at our emotions.

The bonus addition here is Bruch’s littleheard but substantial tribute to Joseph Joachim, In memoriam, which is as turbulent as it is reflective, as befitting the legendary violinist’s fighting spirit, and gives Leong further opportunity to sing from the heart. My thoughts occasionally turned to Elgar and the more than a hint of nobilmente that it proffers.

But it is the coupling of the Britten Violin Concerto (gratifyingly becoming more and more core repertoire these days) which...sets this disc apart. The inspiration here was another violinist, Antonio Brosa, but more self-evidently, through the Spanish inflections in its material, it’s a meditation on that most divisive of civil wars – something which clearly distressed and exercised Britten, the pacifist. This is the composer at his most elegiac and unsettled (is it major or minor?) and Leong is clearly at one with its inner tussles – but also with all the extraordinary sparks of originality which make it unmistakably Britten: like the powerful coda of the first movement which pits the soloist’s abrasive pizzicato against deeply meditative strings only to have him grow more and more prayerful with the music’s ascendancy.

The kinship with Shostakovich is startling in the trenchant Scherzo, which Leong digs into with great resilience, but again the entry of the tuba with violin and piccolo in extremis high above the stave is pure Britten, as is the emotive orchestral climax.

But Leong really makes his mark with the concluding Passacaglia, a form so beloved of both Britten and Shostakovich as a metaphorical anchor in times of great stress. Suddenly psychological ambiguities are set aside and in the wake of one war Britten becomes contentious objector of all. The tragedy catches in his throat and the music of those closing pages – movingly projected by Leong – chokes on the soloist’s final utterances. With outstanding collaboration from Patrick Hahn and the Philharmonia Orchestra I can’t recall a better account of the piece than this.

-- Gramophone

The fruitful exchange between harp practice and composition – The harp is a unique instrument in many ways. With its unmistakable sound and specific playing technique, the expertise of harpists is indispensable for composers, many of whom are not harpists themselves. In the best-case scenario, both sides win from this exchange — the composer is inspired by the possibilities of the instrument, and the composition reveals new facets of the instrument. For this recording, Julia Wacker has gathered a number of felicitous examples of such exchanges between performer and composer, as each of these 20th-century pieces presents the many facets and often surprising aspects of the harp.

Coronation – Music for Royal Occasions spans 500 years of royal music – for celebration, for prayer and for commemoration – varying in scale from private devotion to full state coronation. The collection, featuring Tallis, Byrd, Gibbons, Purcell, Tippett and Britten, looks forward to the coronation of Charles III, and back to the ancient rituals of royal ceremonial. It also presents a new work, commissioned by the Genesis Foundation, from celebrated composer Cecilia McDowall commemorating the life of Queen Elizabeth II and celebrating her remarkable reign. Of course no such collection would be complete without examples from the four anthems Handel wrote for the coronation of George II at Westminster Abbey in 1727, of which Zadok the Priest has been performed at the coronation of every British monarch since. Much has changed since their first performance almost 300 years ago. Yet their dramatic impact and grandeur, underlined by mighty choral acclamations and regal trumpets and drums, remains supremely fit for the coronation of a new king.

In her third recital album for Signum Records, celebrated soprano Mary Bevan returns with a selection of French songs, featuring works by composers including Britten, Ravel, Debussy and Faure

“Over the years since the release of my debut album Voyages with Joseph Middleton in 2017, my passion for French mélodie has grown and deepened...The texts that composers of mélodie have set to music contain a depth and a mystery that I find fascinating and a source of repeated inspiration... My idea for the album began sim- ply with a desire to record Britten’s Les Illuminations, a work I feel closely connect- ed to, having performed it many times over the years and each time having found something new in it to interest me”

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.

In 2018, Aksel Nielsen, cellist and chairman of the Chamber music society BRAGE in Randers, started a dialogue with composer Hanne Tofte Jespersen about a new string quartet. He wished to commission her to write a quartet for BRAGE. They both liked the idea of the new work to be composed for a historical theme which would also be relevant for a present audience, incl. youth. They soon agreed on a context of a late Haydn quartet from the 1790s and Benjamin Britten's 1st string quartet from 1941. BRAGE invited Nordic String Quartet to take up the task and involved four other chamber music societies in the project. Neither Aksel nor Hanne had imagined how relevant it would prove to call the project TIMES OF UNREST. But she completed her quartet in spring 2020 when Covid-19 had caused a pandemia and lockdowns preventing any cultural event.

Ensemble Allegria presents here a combination of works as an invitation to enjoyment as well as reflection. We are offered variations, metamorphoses and fragments, three different artistic working concepts. Variation and metamorphosis are similar artistic tools inasmuch as the material to be used is workable and encourages modification. At the same time, the basic material is recognizable or, in any case, reconstructible. Music cannot be created out of nothing. Whether deliberate or not, we find metamorphosis and variation in all compositions of a certain scope.

Of course in the works heard here the motif of transformation is intended. And whereas musical variations — as with Benjamin Britten — typically retain a theme’s form and length more or less unaltered, a metamorphosis — as Richard Strauss calls his work — can by contrast pertain to everything from the shortest motifs to entire movements. A fragment — a form often associated with Romanticism — is on the other hand an idea that has not reached a final form and remains an intimation of something more. Lars Petter Hagen’s Strauss Fragments were commissioned by Ensemble Allegria.