Featuring a stellar cast of performers, and curated by pianist Dylan Perez, this complete anthology of Samuel Barber's songs present those works published during his lifetime, together with those published posthumously, some of which are recorded here for the first time. Barber was clear as to what he wanted from very early in his life, and this strength of character and courage to follow his path is heard throughout Barber's significant contribution to the genre. At a time when American classical music was heavily influenced by experimentalism, Barber's inclination for 'traditional' harmony and melody helped set him apart. Barber's vocal music demonstrates the ease he finds in the marriage of text and music. The Navarra String Quartet join the line-up for Dover Beach, Op. 3.

Described by his teacher, J.S. Bach, as 'a musician of distinction, a player of the keyboard, violin and lute and a proficient composer', this second volume of Keyboard Works by Johann Ludwig Krebs demonstrates his diverse compositional style that represent a significant sea-change in musical taste of the time. Despite Krebs not seeing any substantial success in his own lifetime, recent assessments have shown the composer in a new light with a fascinating synthesis of Baroque, Galant and Classical forms. Keyboardist Steven Devine continues this complete survey of Krebs' significant contribution to the keyboard genre.

The first of two releases to mark the 150th anniversary of Ralph Vaughan Williams's birth presents two of his major song collections, while bringing to light a substantial number of songs by the composer's student Elizabeth Maconchy. Her works here are almost all unpublished and virtually unknown since their original first performances from manuscript, and span several decades of the composer's career from the time of her studies with Vaughan Williams in the mid-1920s though to her committed espousal of the British modernist aesthetic by the 1960s and 70s. The songs are performed by tenor James Geer and pianist Ronald Woodley in this continuation of their long-standing partnership.

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.

Ernest Moeran’s love for Ireland and absorption of its music and musicians led to the composer living on the island of Valentia for two years. He later made Kenmare his second home from around 1934 until his death there in 1950. Moeran’s experiences in Ireland appear to have influenced him melodically in the traditional folk dance-like textures he embraces, particularly throughout his early Piano Trio and Violin Sonata featured on this album alongside his Prelude for Cello and Piano and Sonata for Two Violins. With their own strong links to Ireland, the album is performed by the Fidelio Trio with violinist Nicky Sweeney. In the four chamber works on this album Moeran’s use of melodic and harmonic turns, his approach to instrumentation and command of the strings and piano writing, has gifted us a treasure trove of focus in repertoire, utterly connected, through him, with music of places and peoples.

REVIEW:

Especially valuable here is the superbly articulate and memorably affectionate advocacy lent to the disarming Piano Trio...this enterprising anthology yields copious rewards and can be welcomed without reservation.

-- Gramophone (Editor's Choice, March 2022)

As both musician and composer the violin was central to Sibelius’s career, and his output for the instrument spans much of his long life. Acclaimed violinist Fenella Humphreys and celebrated pianist Joseph Tong explore a tantalizing program of Sibelius’s music, from the youthful Andante cantabile in G major composed in 1887, through Opp. 78 and 81, written in the midst of the First World War, to his last works for the instrument – Four Pieces, Op. 115 and Three Pieces, Op. 116 both penned in 1929. Completing the program are the five Danses champêtres, Op. 106 from 1924–5.