Following the BBC Music Magazine Opera Award for his recording of Malcolm Arnold’s The Dancing Master, conductor John Andrews returns with the world premiere professional recording of John Frederick Lampe’s operatic comedy The Dragon of Wantley. With librettist Henry Carey, Lampe combines a first-rate score with a quintessentially English plot, told in a tone of earthy satire, pastiching opera’s conventions with skill and affection, but also a razor wit. A rapacious dragon has been terrorizing a Yorkshire Village. Gubbins and his daughter Margery, together with Mauxalinda decide to seek the help of Moore of Moore Hall. Moore needs persuading away from his beer but succumbs to Margery’s pleading, and her promises of love. Unfortunately, he had already promised to marry Mauxalinda and so the love triangle has to be resolved in dramatic fashion before Moore heads out and defeats the dragon, restoring harmony and prosperity to the village.

A close contemporary of Buxtehude, Johann Pachelbel was, by all accounts, an outstanding keyboard player himself, and his compositions provide a fascinating stylistic bridge between early-Baroque composers such as Frescobaldi and Froberger (both of whom influenced him) and the later music of J.S. Bach and his contemporaries. Organist Matthew Owens continues his major exploration of the many extant organ works of Pachelbel with this second volume, recorded on a recent instrument by the renowned French organ builder, Bernard Aubertin. The recital includes Pachelbel’s largest set of Magnificat Fugues – 23 in total – alongside free works and chorale-based works.

Devoted to the music of Ivan Klinger, this album of premiere recordings from guitarist James Akers highlights works from this relatively unknown composer. Klinger’s seeming anonymity belies the composer’s substantial and high-quality oeuvre. Born in 1818 in Seltz near Kherson (today’s Ukraine), Klinger was one of the few guitarists to devote himself to the Western style six-string guitar. Featuring both original compositions and arrangements of other works, Klinger’s playful and serious, virtuosic and challenging music here receives the attention that is long overdue.

Composer Phillip Wilby has built his reputation on writing for brass band and music for the Christian liturgy, for which he composes extensively. The three works presented on this album were all composed between 2014 and 2019, the earliest of which is the Knaresborough Service, commissioned by the Parish Church of St John the Baptist in Knaresborough, North Yorkshire. The anthem God’s Grandeur was written in 2017 and is a setting of Gerard Manley Hopkins’s poem of the same name. Wilby’s An English Passion According to Saint Matthew was written in 2018, for Matthew Owens and the choir of Wells Cathedral. One important characteristic of the work is the congregational hymns are taken from the collection of English tunes, published by Vaughan Williams in his English Hymnal of 1906. These hymns, with their timeless melodies, anchor the Passion in a very English setting.

Making their recording debut on Resonus Classics is Sonoro, one of the UK's newest and most impressive chamber choirs, founded in 2016 by Neil Ferris and Michael Higgins. Noted for their warmth of tone, rich blend of colours and vibrancy in performance, for their first recording Sonoro presents sacred music by Frank Martin and James MacMillan, with a programme featuring Martin's iconic Mass for Double Choir and a selection of works from MacMillan's considerable contribution to the choral repertoire, including his powerful setting of the Miserere. Sonoro's distinctive sound has propelled the ensemble to secure engagements from some of the UK's most prestigious venues and promoters, including the London Chamber Music Series at King's Place, and the Wimbledon International Music Festival. Sonoro has also performed live on BBC Radio 3 'In Tune' and been featured on London Live television. The choir's unmistakably rich and full sound has been realized by allowing each singer to be free to use all of their voice, matched with careful blending, creating warmth and resonance.

Cello and piano duo Robin Michael and Daniel Tong return to Resonus with this dazzling collection of the complete works for cello and piano of Ludwig van Beethoven. Written across his productive life, they contain much that is considered pioneering and innovative within the genre. The five sonatas and three sets of variations form a considerable contribution to the cello and piano repertoire, from the formative early Op. 5 sonatas composed as a young man, to the much later Op. 102 sonatas, penned following his infamous hearing loss. Rarely heard on disc performed on period instruments, Michael and Tong record these celebrated works using a cello after Matteo Goffriller from 1695 and a fortepiano after Anton Walter from c.1805.

Already hailed as his country’s foremost composer, Sibelius completed what was to be his only concerto in early 1904, and its spellbinding and instantly recognizable opening can surely be counted amongst the most iconic of any. A virtuosic violinist himself, Sibelius beautifully evokes Finland’s natural landscape and ancient folklore, which continues through Sibelius’s 1917 work for violin and orchestra – the Six Humoresques – demanding a considerable level of technique. Violinist Fenella Humphreys joins with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales and conductor George Vass to present these formidable works with a world premiere recording of a new work for violin and orchestra by the American composer Nors S. Josephson – Celestial Voyage.

1629 was a remarkable year for new music in Venice. Heinrich Schutz, came to the city to learn of the latest music from Claudio Monteverdi and his contemporaries, publishing the seminal first volume of his 'Symphoniae Sacrae' during his visit. With the publication of further landmark collections from Dario Castello, Alessandro Grandi and Biagio Marini, this particular year provided a key moment in the development of the Italian Baroque style. Acclaimed period ensemble The Gonzaga Band makes its Resonus debut with a fascinating programme of works from this period that chart the journey through this incredible year for music. The Gonzaga Band was formed by cornettist Jamie Savan in 1997, with a mission to explore the intimate relationship between vocal and instrumental performance practice in the early Modern period. The ensemble takes its name from the ducal family of Mantua: the Gonzagas were powerful and influential patrons of the arts in the late Renaissance, who employed Claudio Monteverdi as their maestro della musica at the turn of the seventeenth century. Monteverdi wrote some of his most innovative music for the Gonzagas: his third, fouth and fifth books of madrigals, the operas Orfeo and Arianna, and the Vespers of 1610.

Orchestra Nova under respected conductor George Vass return to Resonus with a recording of major works for soloists, choir and orchestra by contemporary British composer James Francis Brown. In an album of world premiere recordings, this enterprising ensemble is joined by Benjamin Nabarro , Rachel Roberts and Gemma Rosefield for the exquisite Trio Concertante, while Catriona Scott and The Choir of Royal Holloway vividly bring to life Brown's Clarinet Concerto (Lost Lanes – Shallow Groves) and his inspired trio of psalm settings The Heavens and the Heart. James Francis Brown studied composition at the Royal Academy of Music in London. He has made significant contributions to chamber music, and has arranged several well-known pieces for the Royal Opera House and the City of London Festival. He has held multiple fellowships and composer-in-residence titles, including at the International Musicians Seminar, Prussia Cove, and Ulverston Festival.

Resonus Classics is proud to release the world premiere recording of Giles Swayne’s epic organ work Stations of the Cross with acclaimed organist Simon Nieminski. Recorded on the Matthew Copley organ of St Mary’s Metropolitan Cathedral in Edinburgh, this extensive solo work is at the pinnacle of virtuosic organ repertoire, with each of its fourteen movements representing an episode in the story of the Passion of Christ. Composed during autumn 2004 and early 2005, and one hour in length, Stations is one of the most significant and substantial organ works composed in recent times. Focusing on those human aspects of the Passion most important to Swayne, he has created an intensely powerful and descriptive work.

The Profumo Affair is one of the most notorious British political scandals. It ultimately contributed to the end of both a prime ministerial career and a Conservative government, as well as creating a security risk with a Russian diplomat at the height of the Cold War. Composer Thomas Hyde and librettist David Norris explore this extraordinary tale from the point of view of Stephen Ward, teh unfortunate society osteopath who served as a scapegoat for his prominent ''friends'' at the root of this infamous affair in a captivating one-man opera, That Man Stephen Ward. Taking on the role of Ward, baritone Damian Thantrey is joined by renowned conductor George Vass and his superb Nova Music Opera Ensemble in this world premiere recording.

As one of the most celebrated composers of his generation, Mark-Anthony Turnage has written a great number of large- scale orchestral works and operas. His contribution to the chamber genre is equally impressive and significant, and Chamber Domaine, with their conductor and artistic director Thomas Kemp, here present a selection of world premiere recordings of Turnage’s chamber works composed in recent years. Included in the programme is the characterful piano quartet Three for Two, the compelling piano trio A Slow Pavane, the varied Four Chants for violin and piano as well as the energised Grazioso! for ensemble. Tenor Nicky Spence features in the title work of the album: A Constant Obsession.

Bridging the end of Romanticism and the beginnings of Modernism, Gabriel Fauré is considered to be one of the most important French composers of the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. His music is a testament to the seismic changes that he lived through, undoubtedly reflected in his distinctive writing. This collection of Fauré’s works for violin and piano are performed on period instruments: an 1890s Érard piano and a violin by Guaneri, recreating the composer’s sound world. Duo Jane Gordon (violin) and Jan Rautio (piano) here celebrate their significant milestone of two decades of musical partnership, having collaborated together on hundreds of artistic projects.

In succession to the Tudors, the flourishing court culture of the Stuart royal dynasty fostered one of the greatest periods in the history of British music. Director and organist Andrew Arthur unites his forces in this compelling program of works by three composers who flourished in the Jacobean period – Orlando Gibbons, Thomas Weelkes and Thomas Tomkins – around the theme of the Word of God. The choral items on this album exemplify a rhetorically-aware sense of what it means to sound the Word enriched with music in order to teach, move and delight.

In their second album for Resonus, the Gould Piano Trio returns with a recording of Schubert’s Piano Trios. Apart from a very early single movement written when he fifteen years of age, Schubert came to the piano trio late in his short career and left only two full-length works in the form, written in 1827–8. By the time Schubert came to write his piano trios, the form had taken on a new stature thanks to work from composers such as Beethoven. Here, Schubert’s Trios in B-flat major and the ‘Notturno’ in E-flat major are joined by the delightful Valses nobles D969, composed for solo piano and heard here in a world premiere recording in this arrangement for trio by Julius Zellner.