Emmanuel Despax returns to Signum with a disc of JS Bach transcriptions. The title quotes Victor Hugo’s ‘The Hunchback of Notre-Dame’ (“Breathe, Hope”), brought to Despax’s mind following the news of the fire at Notre-Dame Cathedral, where he had attended many concerts of Bach’s music as a child. Despax describes Bach’s music as being “of such clarity, coherence and expressive power, that it is able to transcend its original medium, and to some extent, style.” This virtuosic programme combines both well-known transcriptions, such as the mighty Bach-Busoni ‘Chaconne’ and Saint-Saën’s ‘Overture’, with the first recordings of several arrangements by the late 19th/early 20th century pianist Theodor Szántó’s – featuring his monumental and uncompromising transcriptions of the Fantasia and Fugue in G minor, and the Passacaglia and Fugue in C minor. Emmanuel Despax has gained worldwide recognition as a singular artist, whose interpretations bring a rare sincerity and imagination to the music. A remarkable performer of romantic and post-romantic music, he has been invited to give recital performances in the UK (Wigmore Hall’s London Pianoforte Series, Cadogan Hall, Chipping Campden and Petworth Festivals, and the Royal Concert Hall in Nottingham, where he was appointed artistic director in 2020 of a complete Beethoven piano sonata cycle). Summer 2021 will see the release of a Brahms album including the Sixteen Waltzes Op. 39 and Piano Concerto No.1 with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Andrew Litton.

Signum’s first album with Mexican composer Rodrigo Ruiz combines the composer’s musical and literary passions in performances by world-class soloists Kerenza Peacock, Huw Watkins and Laura van der Heijden. Born in Tijuana, Mexico, Ruiz has attracted commissions from a number of artists, with both the opening Violin Sonata and ‘A riveder le stelle’ commissioned by Kerenza Peacock for this recording. The second work is a duo for violin and piano that is accompanied by poetic quotations from Canto XXXIV of Dante’s Inferno. The booklet notes include an interview with the composer by Jessica Duchen, who describes how the programme “clearly shows Rodrigo´s roots in the traditions of Beethoven and Brahms, but with individual twists that clearly indicate we are in fact on new territory”.

Recorded at the height of the international Covid lockdown, Oliver Davis’s sixth album for Signum is a feat of both technological as well as artistic achievement. Following from draws together artists from across the globe for a selection of moving works for a variety of forces – recording a violinist in Los Angeles, a piano duo in The Netherlands, a guitarist in Argentina and the Budapest Scoring Orchestra conducted by Péter Illényi in Budapest. Davis’s previous albums with Signum have reached the top 10 on both iTunes Classical and UK Specialist Classical Charts multiple times, receiving numerous five-star reviews and well over a million streams on Apple Music. British composer Oliver Davis has parlayed a long record as a composer of film and television scores into a successful career as a composer of orchestral music that in performance have attracted top-notch London orchestras and soloists. He has also been active as a composer of ballet – most recently premiering Lineage with choreographer Edwaard Liang at New York City Ballet’s prestigious Fall Fashion Gala.

Following an acclaimed tribute album to Benny Goodman, the 'King of Swing', the Julian Bliss Septet returns with a new album that showcases the music of jazz legends, George and Ira Gershwin, and - by popular demand - some of Benny's compositions and much-loved tunes. The Julian Bliss Septet was formed in 2010 and quickly became known for their trademark inspiring jazz-fuelled shows which have captivated audiences across the globe. Their dazzling virtuosity, extraordinary musicianship and charming humor shines through their programmes of swing, Latin, American and jazz music. The band has played at some of the most prestigious venues and festivals around the world, including the famous Ronnie Scott's and Wigmore Hall in London, the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, Bermuda Jazz Festival and on multiple US tours to sold-out clubs and concert halls including Dizzy's Club at Jazz at Lincoln Center (New York).

‘Settecento’ is the style of art, music and architecture that emerged in Italy in the early 18th century, celebrated here by La Serenissima and Adrian Chandler with a collection of works from that era. The works are grouped by the areas of Italy where each composer worked, including the Kingdom of Naples (Scarlatti, Mancini), Republic of Venice (Dall’Abaco, Vandini, Tartini & Vivaldi) and the Papal States / Bologna (Brescianello). The ensemble La Serenissima is recognized as the UK’s leading exponent of the music of 18th-century Venice and connected composers. Uniquely, the group’s entire repertoire is edited from manuscript or contemporary sources. It has become synonymous with virtuosity, dynamism and accessibility, uncovering new repertoire and making it available to all through live performance, recordings and educational initiatives.

The richest single source of Tudor polyphony, preserving almost 170 works many of which survive nowhere else, is a set of manuscript partbooks copied between about 1575 and 1581 by John Baldwin, a lay clerk at St George’s Chapel, Windsor. This album is the third and final installment in a series of recordings by Contrapunctus exploring contrasting aspects of this remarkable treasure house of sacred music covering much of the sixteenth century. Owen Rees is both performer and scholar, his scholarship consistently informing his performances. Through his extensive work as a choral director, he has brought to the concert hall and recording studio substantial repertories of magnificent Renaissance and Baroque music, including many previously unknown or little-known works from Portugal and Spain. His interpretations of these repertories have been acclaimed as ‘rare examples of scholarship and musicianship combining to result in performances that are both impressive and immediately attractive to the listener’, and he has been described as ‘one of the most energetic and persuasive voices’ in this field.

Following the celebrated releases of Gunning’s Symphonies Nos. 2, 10 & 12 in 2019 and his concertos for Violin and Cello with the piece ‘Birdflight’ in 2020, Signum presents the recording of Symphonies Nos. 6 & 7 as well as his piece ‘Night Voyage’, performed by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. Linked by the theme of journeying, Symphonies 6 & 7 explore Gunning’s fascination with a single movement form broken into several sub-sections. The piece ‘Night Voyage’ is a sea piece born on a rainy evening whilst the composer was standing on the edge of the Mersey river. Four-time BAFTA winning composer Christopher Gunning, has composed twelve symphonies as well as concertos for the piano, violin, cello, flute, oboe, clarinet, saxophone, and guitar.

Timelapse creates a space where sounds of the past and present collide to form a unique musical landscape. Although the pieces were written, in some cases, centuries apart and in culturally disparate eras, it is striking how much these contrasting works inhabit such similar emotional territory. Intriguing pairings of works by Rameau and Radiohead, Schubert and The Smiths, Adés and Grieg, Satie and Reich, compliment each other beautifully in the context of Timelapse. This recording by Orchestra of the Swan provides a place where notions of time and style have become irrelevant.

Award-winning Vibraphonist Lewis Wright returns to Signum following the success of his recording 'Duets' in 2018, with a selection of new compositions this time performed with Matt Brewer (Double-Bass) and Marcus Gilmore (Drums). "The Colour of Intention refers to the creative process itself: that in order to express yourself honestly in music, you have to generate clear intentions developed from thoughts and emotions which then color the work rather than explaining every aspect of it. In the moment of performance, the goal then becomes to put all these previous investigations out of mind and exist in the present. The color of intention is describing everything except performance; the slower processes of development, reflection and refinement and how they'll seep, often unpredictably, into everything that ends up being realized. Working with Matt (Brewer) and Marcus (Gilmore) adds the last and most engaging dimension. How they interpret the music, interact and bring their own highly developed languages to bare, creates something that's both a reflection of my intentions and also infinitely more sophisticated than it's possible for me to conceive of. I think in this sense, human connection is the greatest element of what it is we do as musicians." (Lewis Wright)

The four works on this release, all composed in the 1940s, embrace the lingering end of one musical tradition and the vigorous upsurge of another. Mellifluous, retrospective and playful, the Duet Concertino and Prelude to Capriccio were works from Richard Strauss’s final phase – an old man’s refuge from the barbarism of war and its aftermath. What the public thought of them was incidental, even irrelevant. In the same decade, Aaron Copland and other younger American composers were reaching out, via radio, recordings and film, to a new mass audience. The European influence of Appalachian Spring and the Clarinet Concerto, though inescapable, was minimized in a populist, vernacular idiom that absorbed folk music and jazz.

Richard Stamp unites some of the finest instrumentalists from the UK and Europe in these performances – featuring celebrated orchestras the Academy of London and the Royal Northern Sinfonia with renowned Austrian soloists Ernst Ottensamer and Stepan Turnovsky. Stepan Turnovsky joined the Vienna State Opera and Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra in 1978 and has kept the position of Solo Bassoonist there since 1985, performing with conductors such as Herbert von Karajan, Leonard Bernstein, Karl Böhm, Carlos Kleiber amongst many others. The late Ernst Ottensamer was a former principal clarinettist at the Vienna Philharmonic and an avid performer of chamber music – founding numerous ensembles and collaborating with musicians such as Sir Simon Rattle, André Previn, Daniel Barenboim and Rudolf Buchbinder amongst others. In 2005 he found a clarinet trio with his sons Daniel and Andreas Ottensamer – themselves the Principal Clarinettists of the Vienna Philharmonic and Berlin Philharmonic Orchestras. This present performance represents his last concerto recording.

REVIEW:

It is for the two Strauss performances that I can offer an enthusiastic thumbs up. Ernest Ottensamer died suddenly in 2017 at the age of 61, and the Copland was his last concerto recording. That, too, adds to the value of this release. Signum deserves gratitude for saving all four performances from being lost and forgotten.

– Fanfare

Leopold Anthony Stokowski was an English conductor of Polish descent. One of the leading conductors of the early and mid-20th century, he is best known for his long association with the Philadelphia Orchestra and his appearance in the Disney film Fantasia. He was especially noted for his free-hand conducting style that spurned the traditional baton and for obtaining a characteristically sumptuous sound from the orchestras he directed. The NBC Symphony Orchestra was a radio orchestra conceived by David Sarnoff, the president of the Radio Corporation of America, especially for the celebrated conductor Arturo Toscanini. The NBC Symphony performed weekly radio concert broadcasts with Toscanini and other conductors and served as house orchestra for the NBC network. The orchestra’s first broadcast was on November 13, 1937 and it continued until disbanded in 1954. A new ensemble, independent of the network, called the “’Symphony of the Air’” followed. It was made up of former members of the NBC Symphony Orchestra and performed from 1954 to 1963, Stokowski was a champion of Sibelius’s music, giving the US premieres of his last three symphonies and recording many of his works. He brings his own vision of Nordic grandeur to the first two of the Finnish master’s symphonies in these recordings.

David Goode performs the complete organ works of Johann Sebastian Bach on the renowned Metzler Söhne organ of Trinity College Chapel, Cambridge, in a new a set spanning 16 albums and over 17 hours and 40 minutes of music. Covering the multiplicity of genres and stylistic influences that typified Bach’s organ music, the set includes complete recordings of the Chorale preludes, the six Sonatas, and the many preludes, toccatas, fugues, fantasias, chorales and partitas. The accompanying 136-page booklet includes background information on each work by organist George Parsons, along with an introduction to the set by David Goode. As well as a tracklisting, the booklet includes indexes to the works by BWV number and alphabetical order. “This series is notable for the flair, clarity and spontaneity that Goode brings to this timeless music” (Gramophone)

REVIEW

This cycle of Bach's Complete Organ Works occupied David Goode between January 2015 and August 2016 and was originally issued as separate volumes, but now Signum Classics have released them as a 16 CD set. Centre stage is the magnificent Metzler organ of Trinity College Chapel, Cambridge, which ranks as one of the finest in the UK. The Signum engineers have done a sterling job with the sound quality. The cycle certainly stands shoulder to shoulder with some of my favorite traversals, including those by Christopher Herrick, Peter Hurford, Lionel Rogg and André Isoir.

--MusicWeb International

Internationally-acclaimed violinist Charlie Siem and pianist Itamar Golan release their debut album on Signum including works by Kreisler, Sarasate, Paganini, Elgar and Wieniawski, showcasing Siem’s versatility and virtuosity in an intimate Parisian-style ‘salon’ programme. Siem has appeared with many of the world’s finest orchestras and chamber ensembles, including: the Bergen Philharmonic, the Camerata Salzburg, the Czech National Symphony, the Israel Philharmonic, the London Symphony, the Moscow Philharmonic, the Oslo Philharmonic, the Rotterdam Philharmonic and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. He plays the 1735 Guarneri del Gesù violin, known as the “D’Egvill”.

Welsh pianist Llyr Williams is widely admired for his profound musical intelligence and the expressive and communicative nature of his interpretations. The complete 8 album collection of Llyr Williams’ Schubert series – previously released as individual digital volumes over 2019 to 2020. These recordings were made following a critically-lauded recital series at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama by Williams. Together they showcase the detailed examination given by Williams to these pieces, which is “warm, yet detailed” (Piano International). The accompanying booklet includes background notes on each piece, as well as an essay by US composer William Bolcom on his completion of Schubert’s unfinished Sonata in C major, D. 840. “These precious five minutes alone are worth a whole string of concerts” (Le Devoir) “ease into melting loveliness” (Classical Source) “Remarkable artistry and authority” (The Guardian)

REVIEW

In live performances such as these, one would expect a certain amount of casualness and distraction, a tendency to slur over passages, rush an accelerando to impress the audience and miss the occasional staccato dot or complete grace note. That is not the case. Williams brings to each work, no matter how slight or monumental, the same integrity and an honoring of the composer’s voice. Technically, I can’t help but be impressed, even amazed, by the strength of his playing and the consistency of pressure on each finger. Yet, there is an overarching individual expressiveness that conveys, as few others can, the unique wistfulness of the Schubert “sound”, the composer’s yearning for recognition and, later, for health, and knowing full well what little time he had in which to accomplish so much. I have never before heard the essential Schubert discerned and revealed at this level of perfection.

–ConcertoNet.com (Linda Holt)

Crouch End Festival Chorus presents two Britten classics: Saint Nicolas and A Ceremony of Carols. Full of vibrancy and drama, Saint Nicolas is performed alongside the fabulous BBC Concert Orchestra and features tenor Mark Le Brocq as well as Coldfall Primary School Choir, members of Hertfordshire Chorus and Hannah Brine Choirs. The ever-popular A Ceremony of Carols is performed with harpist Sally Pryce, with both works conducted by David Temple. A Ceremony of Carols (1942/3) and Saint Nicolas (1948) are the earliest works that Benjamin Britten composed for public performance primarily for boys’ voices. These performances, recorded here at London’s All Saint’s Church and Alexandra Palace Theatre, truly show how glorious these two pieces of music are, and why they have remained so popular.

REVIEW:

This album stands out, for it might be considered an authentic performance. The main choir, gallery choir, boy soloists, and duo pianists here are all amateurs, and they bring a sense of discovery to the work and its narrative quality that's different from professional choir performances. The Ceremony of Carols has the requisite bright innocence, and the boy soloists in Saint Nicolas are top-notch. Conductor David Temple deserves special notice here, fusing the members of four separate choirs into a seamless whole. The engineering in the recently restored and acoustically ideal Alexandra Palace Theater is a bonus on top of this fine slice of the English choral tradition.

– AllMusicGuide.com (James Manheim)