Mixing iconic choral works with music by some of today's most exciting composers, this varied programme is centred around themes of rest. Joel Thompson's virtuosic new work is a particular highlight: written in 15 parts, A Prayer for Deliverance perfectly showcases Tenebrae's core values of passion and precision. The second half features Herbert Howells' Requiem - surely one of the most moving works in the English choral repertoire. Associated with the untimely death of Howells' young son Michael, the work remained unknown until it was finally published just three years before Howells' own death in 1983.

Classical Music

Modern guitar music, played by one of the best German guitarists with a particular preference for music of the 20th and 21st centuries

John Wilson conducts a series of orchestral works of his mentor and friend Sir Richard Rodney Bennett, which now reaches Volume 5, featuring three works composed between 1973 and 1989. Son of professional musicians, Bennett demonstrated musical talent from an early age and went on to study with Howard Ferguson, Lennox Berkeley, and later Pierre Boulez. He produced more than 200 works for the concert hall, and fifty scores for film and television. He was also a writer and performer of jazz songs for fifty years. Immersed in the techniques of the European avant-garde via his contact with Boulez, he subsequently developed his own dramatic-abstract style. In later years, he adopted an increasingly tonal idiom. The Concerto for Orchestra was commissioned at the instigation of Brian Priestman, the British chief conductor of the Denver Symphony Orchestra. It's three-movement structure, closing with a dazzling set of variations, displays the modern orchestra as a virtuoso body of players. His rarely performed cello concerto Sonnets to Orpheus was written for the Edinburgh International Festival, and premiered by Heinrich Schiff. Diversions was a commission from the Haberdashers' Aske's Schools, in north London, to celebrate their tercentenary, in 1990. It was first played by the combined orchestras of all seven schools at a celebration concert in the Royal Festival Hall and the finished work is an exuberantly colourful set of symphonic variations based on the Scottish folksong 'Whistle and I'll come to you, my lad'.

For a period of the 20th Century, due to his talent and association with Benjamin Britten, Peter Pears was perhaps the world's most famous classical singer. Pears inspired Britten to create great works of art precisely because Pears was a compelling artist with an exceptional voice, an inquisitive mind, a knowledge of art, history, literature and poetry. They became a self-perpetuating duo, inspiring each other to even greater heights of artistry, technical ability, and emotional certainty. This album of works by Lennox Berkeley, Benjamin Britten, Arthur Oldham, Richard Rodney Bennett and Geoffrey Bush is performed by tenor Robin Tritschler, who is joined by cellist Philip Higham, guitarist Sean Shibe and pianist Malcolm Martineau. Praise for Robin Tritschler and Malcolm Martineau: 4 stars Performance, 4 stars Recording "Robin Tritschler's sweet-toned voice is a continual delight, as is Malcolm Martineau's sparkling, pearly, luminous piano sound" - BBC Music Magazine