This recording is a choral tribute to the sacred music of two visionary composers who, among their other achievements, made distinctive, lasting and much-cherished contributions to the musical repertory of the English Church: Charles Villiers Stanford and Herbert Howells. It is a newly remastered set of the Cambridge Singers’ 1992 Stanford and Howells recording, which has been expanded with almost twenty minutes of previously unreleased material including Stanford’s resplendent Latin Magnificat. John Rutter and the Cambridge Singers are joined by star organist Wayne Marshall in the magnificent acoustic of Ely Cathedral.

Leonard Bernstein was certainly not surrounded by an aura of aloofness. He enjoyed his immense popularity, although he never consciously attempted to be “everybody’s darling” and to be hailed as “Lenny” by everyone on the street. His parents had officially named him Louis, but tended to call him Leonard. Serge Koussevitsky, his teacher and elder friend- with whom he not only shared an outstanding musical talent but also an Eastern European Jewish family background- called him Lenyusha. This release is being presented in honor of Bernstein’s 100th birthday. A high caliber artist roster led by Wayne Marshall is playing most of Bernstein’s Piano and chamber music which is not at all known to most connoisseurs of his music. A great part of these short pieces have until now only been available on vintage albums, making this release even more special.

Lisa Delan and Luna Pearl Woolf write of their new release: “We were dreaming of lullabies. Each of us, unbeknown to the other, imagined creating the kind of recording we wanted to hear as we tucked our children in at night. Meeting in this shared land, our commingled dreams sowed the seeds of Angel Heart. Buds broke through in the farm of songs that we gathered from disparate corners of the world, with vastly differing musical languages. Delighted with the landscape, what, we wondered, would it look like in full bloom? When we laid our seedlings at the feet of Cornelia Funke, the flowering began. Her words took root around the songs to form a single story: a tale told by voices in speech and in song, suspended above a rich bed of cellos. Bringing pictures in to play, our nursery blossomed with contrast and color. Come, lay a blanket down among the stalks and petals and experience Angel Heart through music, story, sight, and touch. Join us!”

The first recording in our cpo SYMPHONIC JAZZ SERIES with the WDR Radio Orchestra of Cologne is entitled American Connection. Concertos for jazz clarinet by Jorge Calandrelli, Daniel Freiberg, and Jeff Beal are heard in performances with the world-famous clarinetist Andy Miles. Andy Miles is one of the youngest representatives of a guild whose members received posts as solo clarinetists in German orchestras (in his case with the Hamburg Philharmonic). Later he made his way to Cologne as the principal clarinetist of the WDR Radio Orchestra. Thanks to his "wild past" as a saxophonist in rock bands, a tin whistler in folk bands, and a clarinetist in jazz bands, Miles is able to exercise his activity in many musical fields. He numbers among the few genuine crossover musicians who succeed in mediating between classical and jazz music because they feel at home in both of them. The press has called him »the Marco Polo of the Clarinet.« It should also be mentioned that the famous Alan Silverman was in charge of an additional mastering of our recording in the United States. Alan has worked for artists like Norah Jones, Chaka Khan, The Rings, Dolly Parton, and Keith Richards and received more than fifty Grammy Awards. His Art! Mastering, one of the largest and best-equipped mastering studios in New York City, offers first-class analogue and digital outboard equipment and an excellent monitoring system.

Grammy Award Nominee 2006 'Best Classical Contemporary Composition' Composed in 2005 as a specially commissioned ballet score fo New York City Ballet, 'Piano Concerto No.2' comprises three movements: cumnock fair, shabards and shamnation. The work here receives its world premiere recording. It is a highly energetic work - a frenzy of folksong and dance; the first movement, cumnock fair, is a whirling fantasy of eighteenth-century Scottish dance melodies; shambards makes use of Burnsian folksong with fragments of the Mad Scene from Lucia di Lammermoor drifting in and out of focus; shamnation is heavily influenced by Scottish folklore, often quite devilish. 'For sheer excitement...this half-romp, half tantrum of a work is hot stuff', wrote The Times. 'A Scotch Bestiary' was commissioned by the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the BBC Philharmonic to inaugurate the new organ in the Disney Hall in Los Angeles. This is a conertante work for organ (an instrument rarely used by contemporary composers) and orchestra, in two parts, and follows in a tradition of musical portraiture to which Elgar, Saint-Saëns and Mussorgsky have made significant contributions.

A mid-price reissue of the popular 'Fancies' album, collecting together John Rutter's best-known concert works. As well as the virtuosic 'Suite Antique' (for flute, harpsichord and strings), this disc contains the three choral song-cycles 'Five Childhood Lyrics' (for unaccompanied choir), 'When Icicles Hang' and 'Fancies' (both for choir and orchestra).