Relationships is an album formed from the various strands of familial, personal and musical connections between the composers and performers involved. Elizabeth Maconchy, was a cousin of Giles Swayne’s mother and a major influence on his musical development. Nicola LeFanu is Maconchy’s daughter and Swayne’s cousin. Violinist Malu Lin is married to Giles Swayne, and studied with violinist Christopher Rowland, for whom Swayne composed his 1975 Duo. The programme covers nearly a century of British music for violin and piano, connecting the sound-worlds of Vaughan Williams (who taught Maconchy), Bartók and Janácek (who influenced Maconchy), and Petrassi (who taught LeFanu). Completing this project is artwork by Malu Lin’s father, the artist Richard LIN Show Yu.

In this second album in his French series, pianist Mark Bebbington is joined by baritone Roderick Williams and flautist Emer McDonough alongside the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and conductor Jan Latham-Koening in a further program of music by Francis Poulenc. Featuring some of Poulenc’s most characteristic works, the program begins with his 1929 piano concerto Aubade originally written with a choreographed ballet element for a private fancy-dress party. The following year saw the composer set Surrealist poems by his friend Max Jacob in his work Le Bal Masqué, which Poulenc described as a ‘secular cantata’. Written in 1956 the Flute Sonata was described by the composer himself as being ‘simple but subtle’, while completing the album is the 1931 Sextet for piano and wind quintet.

Founded in 1982 in the former county town of Radnorshire in Wales, the Presteigne Festival has become a significant part of the Welsh cultural calendar and is internationally renowned for its commissioning of new work, support of living composers and with a long tradition for the encouragement of young artists. The festival’s orchestra, conducted by Artistic Director George Vass, explores a selection of the many new works premiered by the festival in this volume of recent British music for string orchestra, including a set of variations on the folk song 'Lovely Joan' - with a movement contributed by one of eight composers, concertos by Martin Butler and Joe Duddell and music by the veteran composer Hugh Wood.

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 Bach and his contemporaries. Organist Matthew Owens embarks on a major exploration of the many extant organ works of Pachelbel beginning with this first volume recorded on the iconic 1965 Frobenius Organ of The Queen’s College Chapel in Oxford, considered a vital instrument in the classical organ revival in Britain. Demonstrating the huge range of his abilities as a composer, the diverse forms and styles Pachelbel used are revealed in this compelling recital.

Continuing their ongoing series with Resonus, the Saint Thomas Choir of Men and Boys, Fifth Avenue, New York and conductor John Scott release this compelling programme of choral works by Henry Purcell which also features the acclaimed New York period ensemble Concert Royal. Recorded on period instruments, this collection of sacred works by Henry Purcell features some of the composer’s best-known choral works framed by the large scale works O sing unto the Lord, Z44 and the Te Deum in D major, Z232. Completing this collection is the organ Voluntary in G major, Z720, in a striking performance by John Scott.

For this new recording, violinist Peter Hanson, one of the most prominent period instrument players of his generation, turns his attention to Mozart’s extraordinary and innovative output of sonatas for violin and piano. Hanson is joined by acclaimed keyboard player and regular collaborator Andrew Arthur in this programme of four sonatas (K. 301, K. 304–5 & K. 454), each of which was dedicated to an exceptional woman of the time, with the aristocratic dedication of the ‘Kurfürstin’ sonatas for the Electress Maria Elisabeth Auguste of Sulzbach (K. 301–6) and K. 454’s dedication to Regina Strinasacchi – a performer of particular talent who gave the first performance with Mozart at the piano. For this album, a stunning copy of an original Walter fortepiano is used as well as a striking Guadagnini violin bearing pure gut strings.

A former organist of both York Minster and Guildford Cathedral, Philip Moore ranks among the most significant and prolific of British choral and organ composers of the late-20th and 21st centuries. With a unique and recognizable musical voice, his music is performed regularly around the globe. Organist Stephen Farr, himself a former organist of Guildford Cathedral, explores Moore’s considerable and growing body of organ works with this captivating album of music for the instrument containing several premiere recordings and recorded on the impressive Harrison and Harrison organ of St Albans Cathedral.

The name Elisabeth Lutyens is synonymous with music that is overtly serial, uncompromisingly modernist, and of daring and fearless individuality. Yet there is much to explore behind the naturally combative and provocative façade of this extraordinary composer, whose music is at various times sensual, thoughtful and delicate, as well as dark, turbulent and even violent. With a program of works all composed in the last decade of her life, and containing world premiere recordings, the first volume of pianist Martin Jones’s survey of Lutyens’s piano works includes five works at times startling in their stark beauty, and bursting with both vivid imagery and lyrical fluidity.

REVIEW:

Was there ever as unrepentant a lifelong modernist - or one so dedicated to the sensuous, poetic, emotive potential of atonal music - as Elisabeth Lutyens, the composer who coined the term "cowpat school", inveighed against "folky-wolky modal melodies" and chided her students for "boring tonal references" if she unearthed an accidental major or minor triad in their compositions? Boulez, maybe, but few others.

The works here on Vol. 1 are all relatively late, the earliest being Plenum I (signifying a silent space filled up with sound, emptied out, and refilled) of 1972. Notated without barlines and with some economically used extended techniques, the piece is representative of Lutyens greater freedom of notation in later years, though strictly organized with note-rows and in her favourite palindromic form. Notated silence is increasingly important in later works, especially the spare, though amply expressive, La Natura dell’Acqua, her last work for piano. Detached phrases and gestures - many delicate and bejewelled, some aggressive and strident - combine in an abstract but expressive way that the composer likened to the late, non-figurative paintings of Turner. An even better example of this is the marvelously descriptive The Great Seas, an 18-minute tone poem hailed by Michael Finnissy (who premiered it) for its "sensuality … delicacy and fluidity" but also "violence, darkness and pain", which predominantly gives the impression of vast, calm expanses illuminated by constantly changing lighting conditions, but intermittently and graphically hints at the extreme violence of deep currents and suddenly flaring storms. The Preludes are a perfect summation of Lutyens' piano writing; bearing evocative titles (three of them from Keats), they are highly expressive and descriptive, the shade of Debussy detectable in the background. Although the composer preferred French clarity, lucidity, and elegance to what she saw as heavyweight German Expressionism, two of these pieces - "Strange Thunders …" and "The Shifting of Mighty Winds …" are notable for their muscular, aggressive energy. The earlier Impromptus are the most unabashedly, dissonantly atonal works here; succinct and compressed, they sound like passionate, extrovert derivatives of Webernian economy.

Although a favoured student of J.S. Bach, Johann Ludwig Krebs didn’t see any substantial success in his own lifetime. More recent assessments have discovered a highly educated, enlightened and open minded musician who was clearly highly accomplished as a performer and demonstrating a fascinating synthesis of Baroque, Galant and Classical forms. Keyboardist Steven Devine begins a complete survey of Krebs’ significant contribution to the keyboard genre with this first of four volumes that shows the range of Krebs’ musical language.

Following their acclaimed debut release on Resonus Classics (The Waiting Sky, 2019), the award-winning vocal ensemble SANSARA presents an album of choral works and electronic refractions by their Associate Composer, Marco Galvani. Recorded in the midst of the global pandemic of 2020, Invisible Cities showcases Galvani’s distinct voice through a synthesis of contrasting soundworlds. This powerful sequence of new music features settings of well-known sacred texts, reflecting on the importance of community and hope in times of fear and uncertainty. SANSARA is an award-winning group of talented professional musicians, working as a collective to express a shared artistic vision. Winners of the 2015 London International A Cappella Choir Competition, performance highlights include Barbican Sound Unbound, Kings Place, St John’s Smith Square, V&A, Holy Week Festival, Temple Winter Festival, Newbury Spring Festival, Budleigh Festival and Winchester Festival.

Choral music has long been at the heart of the distinguished musical career of contemporary composer Martin Bussey – as a director, a singer, and in writing for the medium. Acclaimed London vocal consort Sonoro, with its co-artistic directors Neil Ferris (conductor) and Michael Higgins (organ), explores a broad range of Bussey’s sacred choral music with this captivating programme of world premiere recordings that at once presents a composer with passion and a unique voice, and whose works have contributed much to the genre. Sonoro, founded in 2016 by Neil Ferris and Michael Higgins, has attracted attention for its warm tone, rich blend of colors and vibrancy in performance. ‘Sonoro’ in Italian means ‘sonorous, voices that are rich and full’ and Sonoro lives up to that name as a choir with a distinctive and perfectly blended sound.

Berlin-based Dutch keyboardist Walewein Witten makes his Resonus Classics debut with this programme of piano sonatas from the golden period of the fortepiano in the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth century. The last of Joseph Haydn’s piano sonatas, is combined with a late period F major sonata by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Ludwig van Beethoven’s Op. 31 Sonata, ‘The Tempest’. Using a copy of an 1805 Walter fortepiano, Witten brings new energy to these outstanding works from the late-classical era. Witten writes: “I always search for new ways to get more intensity, more expression, and I seek the experiment, to find out how music really touches to me. Music to me is pure inspiration: ever changing and volatile. True authenticity to me means being open and receptive to this. Nobody knows what will come out of that process, and this is what makes it exciting.”

Some twenty years after the collection known as Das wohltemperierte Klavier, J.S. Bach finished his second collection of twenty-four preludes and fugues in all keys, completing one of the greatest achievements in keyboard music that today remains one of the crowning glories of the genre. Acclaimed harpsichordist Steven Devine returns to Resonus to complete his recording of J.S. Bach’s Well Tempered Clavier, once again exploring this great pinnacle of the Baroque keyboard repertoire on the stunning instrument featured in the first volume – a harpsichord by Colin Booth after an instrument by the eighteenth century maker Johann Christof Fleischer.

The decades around 1600 bore witness to the flourishing of a remarkable musical tradition: the art of diminution, in which simple melodies were given exquisitely virtuosic embellishments, effectively creating new works. One such creation, Francesco Rognoni’s ornamentation of Palestrina’s Io son ferito, was captioned ‘con arte e maestria’ – with art and mastery – referring to the consummate craftsmanship displayed in its invention and performance. Giving new life to this tradition was the inspiration for this unique programme: alongside iconic works from the diminution canon, Monteverdi String Band members Oliver Webber and Steven Devine present newly ornamented versions of a selection of sixteenth- and early-seventeenth-century works.

For this recording Organist Matthew Owens presents a diverse recital of some of the greatest Christmas music ever written for the instrument. Traditional tunes, whether Lutheran chorales, plainchant, French noëls, or medieval carols, have provided the inspiration for much Christmas organ music throughout the years, with much of this program made up of pieces based on such tunes, from J.S. Bach’s Canonic variations on Vom Himmel hoch to Louis-Claude Daquin’s Noël Suisse. This recital also draws on more contemporary sources and presents several world premiere recordings including Howard Skempton’s Christmas Bells and Gary Davison’s Seven Versets on Divinum Mysterium, both of which were written specially for this recording.