This new release is a full album of hymn favorites written by Charles Wesley. Wesley is one of the greatest hymn writers in history, penning over 6,000! Included are titles such as 'Hark! the Herald Angels Sing," "Jesus, Lover of My Soul," and "O For a Thousand Tongues to Sing." The Choral Arts Society of Washington, founded in 1965, has experienced monumental success, performing with the national Symphony Orchestra, the London Symphony, the Mariinsky Orchestra, and many more. The Chamber Singers is a small ensemble of thrity, launched on the Society's fiftieth anniversary. Scott Tucker, artistic director for the chorus, has prepared choruses for Christoph Eschenbach, Vassilly Sinalsky, Marin Alsop, among others. J. Reilly Lewis, a graduate of Oberlin Conservatory and The Julliard School, is a world renowned organist and is the Music Director of the Cathedral Choral Society.

Johann Schneider was a German organist, violinist and composer (1702, Lautertal–1788, Leipzig). He was a pupil of Nicolas Mueller in his hometown and continued his studies with Johann Hartmann Reinmann in Saalfeld between 1717 and 1720. Around 1720, he became Johann Sebastian Bach's organ and harpsichord pupil in Köthen. In conjunction with his keyboard work with Bach, he studied violin with Johann Gottlieb Graun in Merseburg and with Johann Graf in Rudolstadt. In 1721, Johann Schneider became court organist and first violinist (concertmaster) in Saalfeld in his native Coburg. From 1726 he was employed as violinist in the court chapel in Weimar (Weimarer Hofkapelle), and he was later appointed organist of the Nicolaikirche in Leipzig in 1729, holding this position for the rest of his career. Schneider achieved a commendable reputation as a truly great organist, as Lorenz Mizler quotes: 'His organ preludes are of such good taste in this field, with the exception of Mr. Bach, whose pupil he was, that one cannot hear better in Leipzig'. A small number of his works are contained in the manuscript Mus. Ms. 30377, preserved in the Berlin State Library. His style shows a correlation with that of J.S. Bach, but the influence of the Galant style is also detected in various moments of his music. Johann Philipp Kirnberger was born in Saalfeld in 1721 and died in Berlin in 1783. He received his first training in harpsichord and violin within his family and then continued his studies with the organist Johann Peter Kellner in Gräfenroda. In 1738, he was an organ pupil under Heinrich Nikolaus Gerber in Sondershausen, then pursued further studies with Johann Sebastian Bach in Leipzig between 1739 and 1741, which proved pivotal to his development. More than a composer, he is remembered as a 'witness' to Bach's work: he took charge of copying much of his master's music. He kept the manuscript of the Brandenburg Concertos and collected several chorales known today as the 'Kirnberger Chorales' in which we find BWV numbers 690 to 731a – sincerely feeling himself vested with the mission of divulging Johann Sebastian Bach's greatness. His personality was that of a didact, and his compositions are predominantly the consequence of his treatises (L'arte di comporre bene, 1774/79). This attitude is exemplified in the Clavierübung compiled between 1762 and 1766 containing pieces structured in order of increasing difficulty and carefully fingered according to the precepts of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach. He wrote only a handful of pages for organ: a few sporadic preludes to chorales, the eight fugues for organ or harpsichord (featured on this CD) and a 'Clavierfuge mit dem Contrapunct in der Oktava'. His figure is thus summed up not so much in an innovative spirit as in that of a person careful to pass on the inheritance he received.

This album showcases sacred Scottish choral music, much of it little known, from the repertoire of the University of Glasgow Chapel Choir. From reformation psalms to contemporary motets, this selection illustrates the rich and vibrant choral music of Scotland.

This CD presents Violin Concertos from Vivaldi’s La Stravaganza Op. 4, transcribed for organ. These are contained in the collection known as Anne Dawson's Book and kept at the Henry Watson Music Library in Manchester (UK). The collection, compiled around 1720, contains, in addition to arias for voice and basso continuo, a number of compositions for keyboard instrument along with several transcriptions of concertos by various composers, including 10 by Vivaldi. They are closely related to the original score and show an evident process of adaptation to the possibilities and idiom of the keyboard instrument.

Organist Luca Scandali is one of Italy’s foremost scholars and keyboard players. For Brilliant Classics he recorded the complete organ works by C.P.E. Bach (nominated for the Preis der deutschen Schallplattenkritik), Galuppi, Pasquini, Pellegrini and Padovano. He plays the Gaetano Callido organ from 1774 at the Church of San Venanzo, Albacina, Italy.

David Ponsford is an organist, harpsichordist, musicologist and conductor, and an authority on keyboard music of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. He was extremely fortunate to be able to study organ with Peter Hurford, Lionel Rogg and Piet Kee, and harpsichord with Kenneth Gilbert and Gustav Leonhardt. Since 2021, he has taught organ and harpsichord & organ continuo at the Royal Academy of Music, London. The present CD is volume 8 in the series ‘French Organ Music from the Golden Age’, performed by David Ponsford on French historic organs.

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.

Since 2010 the Associazione La Cantoria has dedicated its energies to the rediscovery of unpublished musical compositions from Rome, transcribing, studying and performing these both live and recording them under the Tactus record label. This cd is dedicated to the musician, composer and organist Francesco Giovannini who was chapelmeister at the Church of Santa Maria in Portico in Campitelli in the 18th century, and whose works are conserved in the archives of the Order of the Clerics Regular of the Mother of God in Rome. The best way to understand and appreciate a liturgical musical composition is to savor it the very same context where it was born and for which it was conceived. This is what this cd intends to do.Composer: to allow us to live the sonorous experience of an ancient mass of the Roman rite. These late-Baroque compositions by Francesco Giovannini shine like precious gems set in an antique piece of jewelry made of Gregorian chant, readings, and orations where the organ is heard almost fleetingly in those moments when the sound of the voice and other instruments is superfluous or even prohibited.

The organ works of Axel Ruoff, born in Stuttgart in 1957, constitute one of the most important contributions to the literature for the instrument by any composer since Messiaen, with Ruoff often using its unparalleled resources to write music of extraordinary power and dramatic flair. This fourth volume in Jan Lehtola’s complete recording presents three large-scale compositions: a set of chorale variations, a sardonic suite and a monumental organ symphony, all displaying the wild sweep of Ruoff’s imagination.

SOMM Recordings announces Canticle of the Sun, an album dedicated to choral works by Stephen Dodgson. This recording adds to SOMM’s growing discography of music by this unjustly neglected and richly deserving British composer (the label last year launched an ongoing three-volume series embracing Dodgson’s rich and varied output of songs) on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of his birth.

The performances are given by the chamber choir Sonoro, one of the UK’s foremost vocal ensembles. Described as “outstandingly refreshing” (BBC Music Magazine) and “abundant in vibrant colour” (The Guardian), they are tonally immaculate and technically astounding in Dodgson’s tuneful, yet challenging choral writing. They are joined in one work by Michael Higgins at the organ and in another by Katherine Bicknell on flute, while the remaining pieces feature the choir in stunning a cappella with soloists drawn from the choir throughout, and the entire programme is led by conductor and Co-Artistic Director of Sonoro Neil Ferris.

The selection of works, all of them first recordings, reveals in Dodgson a genuine composer for voices – one of abundant gifts, and special among them a sensitive approach to word-setting. The album’s titular piece, Canticle of the Sun (2008), one of Dodgson’s last vocal compositions, sets a text by the prolific English poet John Heath-Stubbs (1918–2006). The cantata Four Poems of Mary Coleridge (1987) sets the texts for the unusual and striking combination of mixed voices and solo flute, played by Katherine Bicknell, a flautist of “sumptuous tone” (The Straits Times, Singapore) and “striking musical ability” (MusicWeb). Incredibly effective throughout, the contrast between voices and flute is particularly evocative in the wonderfully dark “Nocturne I: (The Fire, the Lamp and I)”, with its interplay between almost recitative-like flute and solo bass interspersed with choir playing the characters of the fire and lamp.

’Tis Almost One (1984), is a short cantata for mixed voices and organ to words by Robert Herrick (1591–1674). The organ accompaniment is provided by pianist, organist, composer and arranger, and Co-Artistic Director of Sonoro Michael Higgins.

Following three undated but likely quite early shorter works for a cappella upper voices on anonymous texts (Winter, Lullaby and All Bells in Paradise), the programme concludes with Lines from Hal Summers, a setting for unaccompanied mixed choir. Dodgson chose three poems from Smoke After Flame (1944) by the English poet Henry (known as Hal) Summers (1911–2005), excerpting from them and setting to music carefully selected lines, as referenced by the title. It is difficult not to feel the growing sense of expected war-time victory in these texts – the music reflecting an unstated hopefulness for peace and rebirth.

This recording is supported by the Stephen Dodgson Charitable Trust.