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.

Voices of Thunder features a range of spectacular choral pieces that showcase Magdalen College Chapel’s new Eule organ. Following on from Peace I Leave with You, this new album combines the sublime voices of The Choir of Magdalen College, Oxford, with the new and exciting sonorities of the Eule organ. The recording includes music from Joseph Haydn to Judith Weir, as well as Arvo Pärt’s atmospheric Beatitudes, Libby Larsen’s playful I Will Sing and Raise a Psalm, and Hubert Parry’s thunderous Blest Pair of Sirens. The Eule organ was built by Herman Eule Orgelbau of Bautzen in Germany and is the first Eule organ of its kind to have been built in the UK for almost 100 years.

REVIEW:

The installation of a new pipe organ, like any long-awaited new arrival, is always best marked with some kind of celebratory fanfare such as this splendid, generously filled disc. This disc is a triumph for the Magdalen musicians and an equally enjoyable experience from both choral and organ points of view.

— Gramophone

This album marks the culmination of two special Hallé collaborations and includes four major pieces from one of the most distinctive of current British compositional voices. Delyana Lazarova (Hallé Assistant Conductor 2020-23) and composer Dobrinka Tabakova (Hallé Artist in Residence 2022-23) were both born in the historic city of Plovdiv, Bulgaria. Working together for the first time during their time with the orchestra they formed a strong musical connection in which the Hallé musicians displayed a close understanding of the intricacies and dialect of Tabakova’s musical language. This album contains two of Tabakova’s major orchestral works. The three-part Earth Suite, which the composer says was inspired by ‘the overwhelming force of Nature’, recently drew ‘exquisite playing’ from the Hallé (Bachtrack, April 2023).

Orpheus Comet features fast rhythmic material combined with atmospheric transparent orchestrations and a glorious climax featuring quotations from Monteverdi. The two significant concertos for strings and soloists included on this album solidified Tabakova’s reputation as an outstanding contemporary voice and display the composer’s close affinity with string instruments. Ukrainian-British Maxim Rysanov, is one of Tabakova’s longest collaborators who premiered the Concerto for Viola and Strings in 2004, a piece described as being ’saturated with an inner, captivating and natural energy’ (Culture Magazine, Nov 2004). The Concerto for Cello and Strings (whose score was described as ‘gorgeous’ by the Daily Telegraph, Australia) is here performed by Guy Johnson, one of the most exciting British cellists of his generation.

A decade in the same formation - unfortunately, fewer and fewer ensembles manage that. But the Goldmund Quartet is one of them and their new album "Travel Diaries" shows which personalities of today's music scene have influenced them and with whom they have worked over the last ten years. Ten years is a long time. As a musician, you get to know many composers during this time, interpret their works, or even work on these together with them. The Goldmund Quartet has done this with a number of well-known composers: Fazil Say, Dobrinka Tabakova or Wolfgang Rihm. They are all well-known names in contemporary music culture with whom the ensemble interpreted, rearranged or even reinvented works. The close collaboration with some of these composers played a big part in this: "While we’re working on the music we can sense how the work evokes memories and emotions in Fazil, which in turn gives new impetus to our interpretation. For instance, in the third movement he describes a cantilena in unison between the first violin and the viola as a fateful flirtation that is disturbed by the second violin using Bartok pizzicati and loud, accentuated notes emulating a hysterical voice of jealousy. The psychological essence of the work can, up to a point, be figuratively transferred to the music-making and interaction between the members of a string quartet. We strive among ourselves in order to achieve the expression of profound emotions. We go through our ups and downs too."

A glorious collection of Christmas music spanning over 900 years, centered around Britten's A Ceremony of Carols – a work seen as both a signal of Britten’s turn back towards English musical and cultural traditions and as a distinctly modern composition. Owen Rees and the Choir of The Queen's College, Oxford present this alongside works that alternate between the early 17th century – by that most prolific composer and arranger of Lutheran Christmas music, Michael Praetorius – and the present: music by Judith Weir (1984), David Blackwell (2011), Jonathan Dove (2000), Dobrinka Tabakova (2018), Toby Young (2017), and Cecilia McDowall (2007). At one point we interrupt the pattern of alternation to look back half a millennium further than Praetorius, with Hildegard of Bingen’s O virga ac diadema. ‘An undoubted jewel in Britain’s choral scene’ (BBC Music Magazine), the Choir of The Queen’s College Oxford is among the finest and most active university choirs in the UK. Previous releases with Signum A New Heaven (2017) and The House of the Mind (2018) both went straight to no. 1 in the Specialist Classical Chart in their first week of release.

Awarded the title Young Steinway Artist in 2020, the Bulgarian pianist Marina Staneva received the 2019 Sam Hutchings Piano Prize and was a 2018 Britten-Pears Young Artist. She has been praised for her serious talent, outstanding musicianship, extraordinary instinctive artistry, and fine technical command. For this her début recording, she presents works by two contrasting Bulgarian composers.

Pancho Vladigerov was arguably the most influential Bulgarian composer of all time. He was one of the first successfully to combine idioms of Bulgarian folk music and classical music. He was also among the founding members of the Bulgarian Contemporary Music Society (1933), which later became the Union of Bulgarian Composers. The British-Bulgarian composer Dobrinka Tabakova studied composition under Simon Bainbridge, Diana Burrell, Robert Keeley, and Andrew Schultz. Her composition Praise was sung at St Paul's Cathedral to celebrate the Golden Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II, and she has received commissions from the Royal Philharmonic Society, BBC Radio 3, Cheltenham Music Festival, Britten Sinfonia, Three Choirs Festival, Wigmore Hall, and, in 2014, the PRS Foundation's first UK New Music Biennial.