The piano was Lennox Berkeley's own instrument and his piano works represent a microcosm of his very best compositional talents. Influenced harmonically by French models, his music is suffused with lyricism and subtle harmonies. The Sonata, Op. 20 possesses a particularly haunting beauty in it's slow movement, while simple but distinctive melodic and rhythmic ideas permeate the Six Preludes, Op. 23 and Five Short Pieces, Op. 4. The Theme and Variations, Op. 73, recorded here for the first time, offers a favorite Berkeley vehicle for conveying a highly individual and personal language.

Alun Hoddinott dominated musical life in his native Wales for over half a century. One of themost versatile and gifted composers of his generation he excelled in all genres, from operas andsymphonies to piano sonatas. This recording brings together all of his songs for high voice andpiano, revealing the vivid atmosphere he was able to evoke in each setting. It includes his SixWelsh Folksongs and his last vocal work, Towy Landscape, for soprano, baritone and piano duet,Hoddinott’s epilogue to a lifetime of writing for the voice.

Kenneth Leighton's distinctive gifts as a composer were apparent as early as the premi�re of his Cello Concerto, when he was barely 26. It was an instrument for which he wrote with particular subtlety and often from an inner compulsion. The Elegy, Op. 5 is full of brilliance, lyricism and mystery whilst by the time he wrote the rhapsodic and expressive Sonata for Solo Cello, Op. 52, his position as one of Britain's leading composers had long been cemented. The beautiful Alleluia Pascha Nostrum, Op. 85 was first performed by the soloist on this disc, Raphael Wallfisch.

British music for the cello flourished in the first decades of the Twentieth century and created a fertile seed bed for the gifted generations of composers to come. +The four composers heard on this recording never achieved widespread fame, owing to early death or a reluctance to promote their music, but their contribution to the repertoire is substantial and very personal. +Two of the works – by Busch and Leighton – were composed for the well-known cellist Florence Hooton. +The programme is played by one of the most admired duos of recent times, Raphael Wallfisch and Raphael Terroni.

Kaikhosro Shapurji Sorabji is known as a composer whose pursuit of extremes resulted in vast works such as his Opus Clavicembalisticum which, for many years, was acknowledged as the world's longest non-repetitive piano work. More important is his music's unique and satisfying beauty. From the mystical impressionism of earlier 'nocturnal' pieces to the awe-inspiring energy and massive climaxes of his later work, Sorabji's legacy is one which is increasingly appreciated as a unique contribution to 20th century music. Michael Habermann's now legendary recordings gained Sorabji's exclusive approval, breaking through the notorious ban he had placed on performances of his own work.

John McCabe was a composer-pianist who excelled internationally in both fields. For his own instrument he wrote a distinguished series of works in which variation form is a recurrent feature. Seventeen years separate the Variations, Op. 22, described by John Ogdon as standing “closer to Rachmaninov’s use of variation technique than to Brahms’s”, and the masterly, unorthodox and original Haydn Variations, McCabe’s longest solo piano work. The evocative Bagatelles and Studies are notable for their unceasing exploration of pianistic and compositional techniques.

This collection brings together several significant recordings of the music of John McCabe, none ofwhich has appeared before on CD. The First Symphony, heard here in its only recording to date, is awork of striking emotional directness and explosive energy. The Fantasy on a Theme of Liszt wasdescribed by Harold Truscott as ‘wonderfully organic… a concert piece which should interest anypianist worth his salt’. Scored for very large orchestra, Tuning develops layers of texture and sonorityof overwhelming richness. This is the only recording of John McCabe as conductor.

When Arnold Cooke died in 2005 at the age of ninety-eight, he was the last survivor of a great generation of British composers that included Michael Tippett, Alan Rawsthorne and ConstantLambert. A distinguished student of Paul Hindemith in Berlin, he slowly established a national reputation in the 1930s, writing a series of significant Symphonies and other orchestral works. His chamber music, however, is no less important, and the three string sonatas on this recording reveal his approachable, idiomatic, and technically eloquent writing for all three instruments.

Maurice Jacobson was regarded in his lifetime as a “musician extraordinary” such was his versatility as a composer, performer and music administrator. +His works are fundamentally classicist, varying from the timeless austerity of The Lord is my shepherd, the popular accessibility of The Music Room and the virtuoso Carousal, to the concentrated and deeply felt Lament. +The Theme and Variations is a rich and wide-ranging work originally written for large orchestra. +These interpretations with the composer’s pianist son Julian Jacobson reap the benefits of access to original manuscripts and an unparalleled intimacy with the composer’s intentions.

This unique recording owes its existence to Malcolm Smith (1932-2011), who was a leading and popular figure in London’s musical life. He was a stalwart of numerous organizations and festivals, a friend of the greatest composers and a tireless advocate of British music. A Vice President of the British Music Society, Smith bequeathed a sum of money to facilitate this recording, which includes Robin Holloway’s six-handed Grand Heroical March, Leslie Howard’s Sullivan-inspired Ruddigore Fantasy, and Humphrey Searle’s Sonata, described by The Times in 1951 as ‘suffused with darkling, elegiac poetry and commanding thought’.

This survey of British cello music focuses on three composers whose critical fortunes have never quite matched their undoubted musical gifts. William Wordsworth always displayed independence of mind and considerable melodic invention, and his cello works reflect a kinship with the music of Bartók and, later, Shostakovich. The short-lived William Busch is represented by his Suite, both a passionate oration and a brilliant dance. Much earlier in the twentieth century the prolific Josef Holbrooke composed a Fantasie-Sonata that is irresistibly lively and virtuosic.

Schonberg, insisting on the legitimate interest that attaches to every aspect of the life and person of a great man, once said he would have liked to see how Mahler tied his tie.

Described by USA Today as 'one of Penderecki' most colorful and extroverted ', the Credo is a sweeping, lavishly scored and highly Romantic setting of the Catholic profession of faith.

The first movement of the Serenata is a stately March, in which the smaller and larger groups of instruments are contrasted. There follows a Minuet, and a Trio played by the concertino, leading, after the repetition of the Minuet, to a final Rondo that includes episodes of possible topical reference. Within the framework of the repeated principal theme comes a solemn Adagio, the music of a country dance and a brief and unexpected plucking of strings, before the lively conclusion. The Divertimento in F major is scored for two horns and strings, and was completed in June, 1776, for Countess Antonia Lodron's name-day It starts with a lively movement in all the clarity of classical first movement form. This is followed by a C major Andante grazioso and a first Minuet returning to the key of F, with a contrasting D minor Trio. The next movement, marked Adagio and in the key of B flat, is scored only for strings, the first violin taking the lead. The second Minuet, in F, with a B flat Trio for the strings alone, leads to a final movement with a slow introduction and a varied concluding rondo, all well suited to the occasion of the composition Eine kleine Nachtmusik, the Serenade in G, K 525, comes from a later period of Mozart's life. In 1781 Mozart, who had returned from Mannheim and Paris to the service of the Archbishop of Salzburg, accompanied his patron on a visit to the Imperial capital, Vienna. There he finally broke with his employer and secured his dismissal from the archiepiscopal court. In Vienna there seemed every opportunity, which it seemed his patron was deliberately preventing him from seizing.

The Naxos Deutsche Schubert-Lied-Edition: Schubert set the poetry of over 115 writers to music. The Deutsche Schubert-Lied-Edition presents all Schubert' Lieder, over 700 songs, grouped according to the poets who inspired him.