James Newby wished to dedicate his second disc on BIS - a recital of English song - to his sister Laura who passed away in 2015, her daughter, and his mother.

After singing Gerald Finzi’s ‘Fear no more the heat o’ the sun’ at her funeral, he felt it fitting that the cycle from which it is taken, Let us Garlands Bring, would form the centerpiece of the program. Alongside this cycle, pianist Joseph Middleton and Newby have designed a program of English songs that reflect on themes of loss, grief and death – but also joy, love and healing with varying styles, sound worlds and atmospheres. George Butterworth, Rebecca Clarke, Edward Elgar, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Benjamin Britten, Liza Lehmann and Errollyn Wallen are just some of the composers who complete the program, including Arthur Somervell with his cycle ‘A Shropshire Lad’. Like Heinrich Heine’s poems that Schumann used for his famous cycle Dichterliebe, these poems by Alfred Edward Housman deal with unrequited love in first person lyrics. This disc ends on a lighter note with the whimsical song, ‘The Green-eyed Dragon’ by Wolseley Charles, which often concludes live performances as an encore.

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

Their second Christmas album on Signum Records, Armonico Consort and Christopher Monks return with a new album featuring a collection of carols both old and new. They have created the perfect soundtrack for those who love an atmosphere at Christmas. Featuring world premiere recordings by Composer Toby Young and the first ever recording of ‘Star Song’ by Jonathan Dove on a Christmas album, there are also exquisitely sublime versions from ‘Silent Night’ to ‘Away in a Manger’.

"It is ten years since our last carols recording, and we have collected some incredible works we have been so keen to record, including several commissioned from our composer in residence. Christmas somehow manages to inspire composers to write the most imaginative, both in terms of creativity and melodiousness, and Toby is an expert at making Christmas music sound just as we want it to be!" -- Christopher Monks

The sublime Choir of St. John’s College, Cambridge return with the second volume in their Advent series - celebrating the advent season from within the Christian tradition; a season celebrated since at least the sixth century. This splendid live recording, from within the Chapel of St. John’s College itself, features Christmas favorites, including Britten’s Deo Gracias from A Ceremony of Carols as well as gorgeous performances of lesser known works by modern composers including Jonathan Dove, Arvo Pärt and Paul Manz. The Choir of St John’s College, Cambridge (link is external) is one of the finest collegiate choirs in the world – known and loved by millions from its broadcasts, concert tours and over 90 recordings. Founded in the 1670s, the Choir is known for its rich, warm and distinctive sound, its expressive interpretations and its ability to sing in a variety of styles. Alongside this discipline, the Choir is particularly proud of its happy, relaxed and mutually supportive atmosphere. The Choir is directed by Andrew Nethsingha following in a long line of eminent Directors of Music, recently Dr George Guest, Dr Christopher Robinson and Dr David Hill.

REVIEW:

‘Advent Live, Vol 2’ is a real album, the mystery and expectation of Advent coursing through a repertoire that never stoops below this ensemble’s judicious idea of what constitutes high-quality music, whatever the century. There is unhackneyed Telemann, Wolf, Goldschmidt, Britten and some poised works, new to me, by McCabe, Milner and Manz. Cecilia McDowall’s A Prayer to St John the Baptist brilliantly unifies otherwise autonomous organ and choir. Judith Bingham’s introduction to Hark, the glad sound! is like a modernist narthex to an ancient cathedral. The qualities of the choir hardly need repeating. It sounds like a string quartet flexing as much as an organ breathing, with no room for show or antiquated ‘look at us’ habits.

– Gramophone

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.

In 2018 I was delighted to accept the challenge of writing a Christmas song for clarinet and higher voices and decided to set one of my favorite medieval poems, I Sing of a Maiden that is Makeless. The poem tells of the miracle of the divine birth and is a paean to the mother of Christ. I became so fascinated with composing for clarinet and upper voices that I found myself writing three more songs, all celebrating the Christmas story. All four songs are grouped under the title, Songs of Celebration and they can be performed separately or as a suite. Oddly, the lyrics for Precious Gift, came to me whilst waiting in an NHS hospital waiting room. Perhaps influenced by my surroundings, I focus on the pain inherent in baby Jesus’ story! An epilogue from the clarinet expressing grief completes the story and turns the mood around in readiness for the final carol. There is No Rose of Such Virtue is another early 15th century poem equating Mary with a vigorously growing rose, a popular metaphor of the time. It was very gratifying to see the children in Gloucester cathedral choir singing this carol with gusto, relishing its beat boxing and glissandi which felt at once incongruously modern and yet perfectly apposite in the cathedral surroundings. (Emma Johnson)

The idea of writing a cello concerto for Raphael Wallfisch was first mooted more than ten years ago at the Banff Arts Centre, Canada, where Jonathan Dove was composer-in-residence. The two men spoke of Dove’s interest in writing a piece for cello and orchestra, and after further meetings in London, the work began to take shape. Given the composer’s extensive experience of writing for the voice, it was decided that the score would be written for baritone singer and solo cello with orchestra with texts taken from poems by various writers. The subject matter was suggested by the Wallfisch family history. Raphael’s father fled, together with his mother and brother, to Palestine from Breslau in 1937, and his mother, Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, is a concentration camp survivor. She has written of the persecution of her Jewish family during the Second World War and her own incarceration in Auschwitz and Belsen, where her skill as a cellist saved her life.2 Knowing of these events, Jonathan Dove was inspired to base the work’s theme on the universal experience of refugees being exiled from their homeland.

Jonathan Dove writes of the piece, ‘In Exile moves through a day in the life of an involuntary exile: waking alone in a foreign land; remembering the moment of banishment, the moment of departure, the voyage; remembering the homeland. The Exile feels the pain of being so far away in his country’s time of need, unable to help his own people. He remembers all the names he has been called in this strange land. He thinks of all he has lost, and longs for home. In Raphael Wallfisch’s words: ‘the cello represents the soul and spirit of the Exile, the baritone is that person and sings the dramatic and often challenging texts. Jonathan’s lyrical style lends itself so naturally to the cello. He exploits every register from the lowest to the highest notes. The cello comments on the sung texts”. [Paul Conway] Night Song, a short piece for cello and piano is derived from the final section of ‘In Exile’. In the calm closing moments of the work the baritone sings of his loss in the words of the poet Douglas Hyde : My grief on the sea, / How the waves of it roll - / For they heave between me / And the love of my soul. Night Song was written partly at the request of the Rachel Baker Memorial Charity – who commissioned the orchestral work – and partly in response to the strong reaction of the first audiences who connected with this uncomplicated musical expression.