Sir Arthur Bliss contributed two staples of the brass band repertoire - Kenilworth and The Belmont Variations, whose enduring success inspired arrangers to turn to his other compositions, for example Eric Ball and Four Dances from the ballet Checkmate or Phillip Littlemore's suite from the film score for Things to Come. Three new arrangements have been made especially for this album: Robert Childs' suite from the ballet Adam Zero, and Michael Halstenson's arrangements of Music from the Royal Palaces and Welcome the Queen. Collectively this program reflects the essence of Bliss's compositional style: the inherent drama of his scores for film, ballet, and television and his flair for the ceremonial, especially in the context of his position as Master of the Queen's Music.

Black Dyke Band, tracing it's continuous history back to 1855, is the most recorded band in the world, having produced a discography of more than 350 recordings to date. It is also the most successful contesting band in the world, having won the European Championships thirteen times, the British Open thirty times and the National Championships of Great Britain twenty-four times. In 2023, they appointed conductor John Wilson as their Honorary President.

REVIEW:

The ensemble balance is superb, the internal voicing clear and detailed, the execution punchy, delicate, breezily confident and heartfelt by turn. This is a wonderful album in every way, highly recommended.

— Gramophone

The program is well put together and demonstrates the essence of Bliss’s style.

— British Music Society Journal

José Serebrier (b.1938) established himself as a significant composer as far back as the 1950s, with over 100 published works. Serebrier composed music and conducted orchestras since early childhood, conceiving his Opus 1 - Sonata for solo violin at the age of 9, and making his conducting debut at age 11. Serebrier’s Symphony No.1 (written in just 2 weeks at age 17), was world-premiered by Stokowski, who later also conducted two other works by Serebrier. For 2 consecutive years, George Szell named José Serebrier Composer-in-Residence of the Cleveland Orchestra, where Serebrier composed important experimental works (such as his avant-garde concerto Nueve, written for double bassist Gary Karr). Starting with his first-ever work, his Sonata for Solo Violin, Op. 1, José Serebrier has been a major composer of historical importance, whose oeuvre is complex, multi-layered, sophisticated and endlessly inspiring. This album presents seven chamber works by José Serebrier, five of which as world premiere recordings. Serebrier’s luminous lyricism, resplendent melodic language and fascinating harmonies are already evident even in his Op.1 violin sonata, a veritable masterpiece. In addition to Serebrier’s Violin Sonata and the Fantasy for Solo Flute at dusk, in shadows... this album also presents the world premiere recording of Serebrier’s Sonata for Solo Viola, as well as the world premiere recording of his Suite for Solo Cello in 5 movements. Three other world premiere recordings of works by Serebrier are also included: If I Can Stop One Heart From Breaking for Horn, Violin and Narrator (after Emily Dickinson’s poem), M.M.P. for Flute and Cello (a delightful short duet) and Nostalgia (transcribed for Solo Violin by Elmira Darvarova).

The spectacular sound of trumpet and organ playing in a generous acoustic is captured in this concert. The “infamous” is represented by the wickedly difficult Jericho: Battle Music, by William Albright, written as a virtuoso piece for both players. More famous tunes include the timeless Prince of Denmark’s March by Jeremiah Clarke and Trumpet Tune by Henry Purcell, Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor, and Cesar Franck’s Chorale in E Major. The concert ends with the encore Rondeau by Mouret, more famously known as the theme of Masterpiece Theatre. A soloist with an international career including Principal Trumpet positions with several major orchestras, Fred Sautter’s performance on this recording is both authentic and engaging. Roger Sherman is Associate Organist Emeritus of Saint Mark’s Cathedral, Seattle, and host of the popular radio program, The Organ Loft. He is also the president of The Gothic Catalog.

This album pays homage to the composer Adele Hugo (1830-1915), the fifth child of the great poet Victor Hugo. Suffering from lifelong psychological instability, she spent half of her tragic life in mental institutions, from the age of 42 until her death aged 85. Hers was an exalted and sensitive temperament; she became passionately fond of music from an early age, studying the piano and then composition. Her musical manuscripts were recently rediscovered, and the Director of the Victor Hugo Museums in Paris and Guernsey entrusted them to composer Richard Dubugnon, so as to research and reconstruct the jigsaw of these often quite fragmentary scores, which had been lying forgotten for more than a century. What has emerged is a set of fourteen of her songs on poems by Victor Hugo and verses taken from his great novel Les Miserables, as well as five songs without words. Appropriately, the Orchestre Victor Hugo and it's Music Director Jean-Francois Verdier have been involved in the project, and they invited Dubugnon to orchestrate the pieces, presented here by a multi-generational team of leading singers.

Star-violinist Christian Tetzlaff, the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra and conductor John Storgards present in this album two major British violin concertos written between a century, in 1910 and 2005. Elgar's passionate violin concerto, completed in 1910, is a classical-romantic violin concerto in three movements. This huge and highly emotional work was in the wake of modernism neglected for several decades before entering into standard concerto repertoire. Here Christian Tetzlaff follows the model of the early recordings of Elgar's concerto with substantially quicker tempos compared to most modern recordings, and having a great influence on the impact of the piece. Ades' violin concerto 'Concentric Paths', is already a modern classic and no doubt one of the most important concertos written during this century. With it's very demanding violin part the work has all the elements of a true concerto, allowing the soloist to sing with his instrument. The beauty of this music lies that everything is written so clearly.

Another discovery unearthed by Brilliant Classics, and another name to add to the library of French-Baroque masters, from the voraciously inquisitive mind and virtuoso hands of Fernando de Luca. Who was Hubert Renotte (1704-1745)? He was born and died in the Belgian city of Liege, and for the last decade of his life served as the titular organist of the cathedral there. Accordingly he wrote a good deal of church music, which remains as overlooked as his output for keyboard. This in itself encompasses not only organ music but the distinctively Franco-Italian style of the harpsichord pieces presented for the first time on record in the present album. The C major Suite is launched in dazzling style with 'Les Roulades et Harpeggio', living up to it's title with cascades of sequences up and down the keyboard. Renotte must have been quite the technician, as well as a composer of great taste and refinement. Perhaps he had a sense of humour, too, to judge from the third movement of the suite: 'Les Bagatelles Ou Les Folies de Liege & Menuet en Suite Des Bagatelles'. Again, true to the title, Renotte presents a series of sharply etched, fantastical sketches, which we might now hear as proto-Beethovenian in their oblique and disconcerting wit. The Suite concludes with, literally, 'Le Torrent', another sparkling cataract of notes. Whether or not Renotte ever intended them to be played in sequence this way - the music survives in manuscript, and there is no sign that they were published - the other pieces are also gathered up by key signature. There are 17 such pieces in D major, including a 'Pastorella' whose charming character belongs to the association of the key with country manners. On this new recording, Fernando de Luca plays a modern copy by Claudio Capone of a Blanchet harpsichord from 1754. While Jos van Immerseel recorded an LP-length selection of Renotte's works, this is the first time that the composer's surviving keyboard music has been recorded complete. The album represents another feather in the cap for a musician who has done a great deal to revive forgotten names from 18th-century music with complete surveys of their music on Brilliant Classics, among them Dufour, Foucquet, Jollage and Siret. '[De Luca] thinks outside of the box, and he clearly is a man with discerning tastes. These extend to his playing, which is clear-headed and disciplined, but never rigid. "Charm" is such an overused word, but I cannot think of a better one to describe this music and these performances.' (Fanfare on the Jollage album, January 2024)

SOMM Recordings presents an intriguing pairing of chamber works that share the unusual and expressive instrumentation of piano, violin, viola, cello, and double bass: Johann Nepomuk Hummel's 'Military' Quintet in C major and Franz Schubert's Piano Quintet�in�A major, his Trout Quintet. Extraordinarily, this is a first recording of Hummel's 'Military' Quintet.' It is an amazing find by the virtuoso double-bass player Leon Bosch, Artistic Director of the mixed-instrument chamber ensemble I Musicanti,�with whom he performs here. They're joined by Peter Donohoe, laureate of the Tchaikovsky Competition and acclaimed as one of the foremost pianists of our time. Johann Nepomuk Hummel's gift as a composer was matched by his excellence as a pianist. A child prodigy, Hummel was taught and housed by Mozart for two years, and he studied further with Clementi, Haydn, Albrechtsberger, and Salieri. Hummel's mastery as a pianist and his compositional personality, admired by Liszt, shine through in his two piano septets featuring winds, brass, and strings, which he also arranged for a combination not uncommon at the time of piano, violin, viola, cello, and double bass. It was in October 1829, nearly a year after Schubert's death, that Hummel completed�his 'Military' Piano Septet No. 2. For publication in Vienna the following year, he also prepared a piano quintet version, again arranged for that ensemble of piano, violin, viola, cello, and double bass.�The Septet's scoring-for piano, flute, clarinet, trumpet, violin, cello, and double bass- already included four of the five of those instruments, so in effect�the alternate version redistributes the wind and brass parts among four strings with added viola. It is this version that receives it's premiere recording on this release. Franz Schubert's Trout Quintet came about during a walking holiday in the Alps in 1819, when he made the acquaintance of Sylvester Paumgartner, an amateur cellist who promoted chamber concerts in his home. He greatly admired Schubert's lied, Die Forelle ("The Trout"), and he commissioned a set of variations based on the song's melody. At the time, Paumgartner had brought together a group of musicians to perform Hummel's Piano Quintet in E flat minor-the arrangement Hummel made of his first piano septet-and suggested that Schubert write his new variations for that same quintet ensemble of pianist, violinist, violist, cellist, and double bass player. Schubert being Schubert, he not only composed a set of five variations on Die Forelle, but he created a five-movement quintet that featured the variations as the fourth movement of a work that has become one of the most renowned and beloved in the chamber repertoire. It is Schubert's first mature chamber work. He was twenty-two years old.

This captivating new release from PENTATONE celebrates the glittering world of 19th-century opera and the timeless beauty of the golden age of bel canto. Featuring music by Gaetano Donizetti, Gioacchino Rossini, Georges Bizet, Leo Delibes, and Giuseppe Verdi, the album showcases soprano Erin Morley and tenor Lawrence Brownlee two of today's most exciting voices joined by the Munchner Rundfunkorchester under the baton of conductor Ivan Repusic. Together, they bring fresh brilliance to the French and Italian repertoire with performances that balance vocal agility, lyrical finesse, and emotional power. This carefully curated collection of operatic gems highlights iconic duets and arias that continue to resonate with modern audiences through their passion, beauty, and dramatic flair. It marks an exciting PENTATONE debut for both Lawrence Brownlee and Ivan Repusic, while Erin Morley returns following her acclaimed performance in the label's recording of Handel's Alcina (2024). The Munchner Rundfunkorchester also makes a welcome return, having previously appeared on PENTATONE's release of Gordon Getty's Plump Jack (2012).

Classical Music

"A beautiful, rich, exciting brass sound...a fine tribute to one of the UK’s best brass bands." -- BBC Radio 3

When the American composer Jack Stamp was appointed International Composer-in-Association to the Grimethorpe Colliery Band in 2019; he conceived a recording project focused on works specifically written for the GCB; including compositions by himself and Liz Lane; the other GCB Composer-in-Association; alongside other pieces which have played a prominent role in the Band’s recent activities. The kaleidoscopic range of styles to be heard here displays the extraordinary virtuosity of one of the world’s best-known brass bands.

New York-based early music ensemble Concordian Dawn presents Veni Redemptor Gentium, a joyful and introspective musical celebration of the Christmas season centred around songs spanning the thirteenth through the fifteenth centuries. The album includes beautiful and rarely heard repertoire from the medieval holidays alongside seasonal and traditional jewels, plus two world-premiere recordings of works by Australian-born composer David Yardley, whose music has been described as “transcendent medieval-inspired music for modern times.” The resplendent sound world of Veni Redemptor Gentium offers moments of peace, reflection, and enjoyment throughout the holiday season and beyond.

A new and strikingly effective
arrangement of a modern
minimalist classic.
Canto Ostinato is a familiar
landmark of modern Dutch art
music. Known affectionately and
simply as the Canto, it receives
many performances each year in a
plethora of arrangements, whether
with the two or four pianos which
Simeon ten Holt had in mind when
he wrote the work in 1976, or
performed by soloists and
ensembles. This flexibility is
inherent in the form of the piece.
Ten Holt supplies a sequence of 106
rhythmic cells which may be
repeated one or many more times,
thus potentially creating a duration
of one or many more hours. The
simple and repetitive patterns blur
the listener’s sense of time, which
becomes space: space for the
performers, space for creation, but
also space for the listeners, space
for imagination.
At the invitation of Orgelpark
Amsterdam, the organist Aart
Bergwerff has been giving annual
performances of Canto Ostinato,
always in a new instrumentation, in
company with different musicians.
This groundbreaking version for
trumpet and organ arose as the
result of a chance meeting
backstage between Bergwerff and
the trumpeter Eric Vloeimans. The
recording captures a concert given
in October 2023 at the Orgelpark,
presenting Canto Ostinato as a kind of
monody for trumpet and organ, like a
long-spun solo with basso continuo.
Bergwerff and Vloeimans had known each
other as students at the conservatoire in
Rotterdam, and so this artistic partnership
was a renewal of friendship as well as a
synthesis of common musical values.
Relying as it does on the stamina of a solo
trumpeter, this version of Canto Ostinato
is necessarily shorter than most of the
canonic versions, but it illuminates the
piece with a fresh perspective, more
melodically focused than keyboard-centric
instrumentations, and evolving more
rapidly through Ten Holt’s cycle of
harmonic change.

Ruth Gipps made her musical talents apparent from an early age, and they were encouraged by her very supportive mother. She entered the Royal College of Music in 1937, aged 16, studying oboe and piano, in addition to composition (with Ralph Vaughan Williams and Gordon Jacob). Whilst at college, she performed Brahms's Second Piano Concerto, and her tone poem Knight in Armour (CHAN 20078) was presented by Sir Henry Wood at the Last Night of the Proms in 1942. As the war continued, Gipps left London to become principal oboe with the City of Birmingham Orchestra, where she also performed as pianist and had several of her works programmed. Returning to London after the war, Gipps found fewer opportunities as a performer, and less interest in her orchestral scores. She concentrated on composing more chamber music, alongside a successful teaching career. This album of her chamber music for oboe (and cor anglais) features works composed from 1938 to 1990, representing Gipps's entire compositional life. In demand as a soloist all over Europe, Juliana Koch was appointed Professor of Oboe at the Royal College of Music, London, in 2018 and is Principal Oboe of the London Symphony Orchestra.

The fourth and final volume in Gilbert Rowland's acclaimed Froberger series completes the landmark recording project on specialist early music label Athene. This double album is the latest instalment of Rowland's authoritative traversal of the complete Harpsichord Suites by Johann Jakob Froberger - a composer of profound influence whose innovations shaped the very form of the Baroque suite later adopted by Bach and Handel. Praised for it's "glorious sound" and "energy and a good forward drive", the series has garnered widespread critical recognition. Recorded in the sympathetic acoustic of Holy Trinity Church, Weston, in October 2024, the album reunites Rowland with engineer John Taylor, whose audiophile-standard production has underpinned the previous volumes. Rowland's playing combines historical insight with expressive vitality, delivering performances marked by "impeccable clarity, flawless articulation, and period-perfect embellishments". His interpretations illuminate the elegance and inventiveness of Froberger's writing, making this collection an essential reference for enthusiasts and scholars of early keyboard music. This release is a vital addition for fans of Froberger, Bach, Handel, Scarlatti, and historically informed performances, offering both continuity for collectors and a compelling entry point into one of the Baroque's most fascinating keyboard oeuvres.

In the Poet's Garden: Choral settings by John Rutter of Shakespeare, Wordsworth, James Weldon Johnson, Charles Causley and others. John is joined by The Cambridge Singers, Melanie Marshall, Roderick Williams, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Taplow Young Voices, Catrin Finch and Matthew Jorysz (solo piano) in this recording of choral works by John Rutter. I'll make me a world; London Town; Dancing Tree; Three Shakespeare Songs; When music sounds. John Rutter writes: Any composer interested in vocal and choral music is both inspired and nourished by poetry. Second only to music, words are my great love, and from my earliest years I have enjoyed seeking out poetry that seems to invite musical setting. This album brings together some of my recent choral music where the words provided the first inspiration and the music followed.