'Close Harmony' is the latest musical offering from Grammy Award winning and internationally acclaimed vocal group The King's Singers. Accompanying the new album, this limited edition LP features a selection of the newly recorded tracks, recorded in 2020 and 2024.

Signum Classics is proud to release an album of string works by the award-winning composer, Brian Elias. Spanning almost half a century, this survey of Brian Elias's chamber music for strings arose from a retrospective staged in 2020 by the Music@Malling festival in Kent. His first album on Signum, it is released alongside 'Music for Wind' and will be launched at Music@Malling in September 2024. The album artwork is by celebrated artist Anish Kapoor. "Amply gifted as an orchestral composer... purified intensity, immediacy and unrestrained lyricism" - Paul Griffiths, The Sunday Times

Released as part of a double launch, 'Music for Wind' is an album of world premiere recordings by composer Brian Elias, winner of two British Composer Awards. He has had previous compositions performed and recorded extensively by leading orchestras and soloists including the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the Britten Sinfonia among many others. The album artwork is by world-renowned artist Anish Kapoor. "Every inflection tells, the balance of sound is exact, and the sound seductive in the best traditions of glamorous 20th century orchestral writing." - Paul Driver, The Sunday Times

His ninth solo album on Signum Records, Alessio Bax combines exceptional lyricism and insight with consummate technique and is without a doubt "among the most remarkable young pianists now before the public" (Gramophone). Here he presents an album of works for dancing, including tangos and waltzes spanning three centuries. Featuring composers such as J S Bach, Manuel de Falla and Franz Liszt a variety of cultures are showcased in this album for solo piano, and features contributions to an arrangement by Bax himself.

Despite the somewhat sterile concert-hall ambiance, this King's Singers' performance at the 2008 BBC Proms gives listeners a fair representation of the group's live concerts, in this case a sort of celebration/retrospective of the celebrated ensemble's 40-year history. There are several folksong arrangements (honoring King's Singers arrangers Gordon Langford, Philip Lawson, and Bob Chilcott), several madrigals and partsongs--staples of the group's rich and varied repertoire--and, perhaps the program's highlight, Poulenc's rarely-heard set of six Chansons Françaises Op. 130. There's virtuosity aplenty, most effectively displayed in Janequin's challenging "battle" piece, La Guerre, John McCabe's Scenes in America Deserta (written for the King's Singers), and in an entertaining if musically ill-advised fit of overexuberance, the fastest rendition of Passereau's Il est bel et bon ever recorded.

The sense of "you are there" is confirmed by the group's frequent informative (and often humorous) talks to the audience, and by the inclusion of applause after each piece (not a plus for many CD listeners!), but there are certainly times where our enjoyment of the concert would be enhanced if we could only see the singers' onstage interaction and outward presentation to the audience (in fact, a DVD of this concert is available). Ultimately, this is a very satisfying recital that showcases the King's Singers and many of their classic concert pieces in one of Britain's hallowed events and performing venues. If you're a fan, you've already reserved a spot for this disc in your collection; if you're new to the King's Singers, one listen to this entertaining, characterful concert will have you looking for more.

--David Vernier, ClassicsToday.com

Owen Rees leads early-music consort Contrapunctus alongside The Choir of The Queen's College, Oxford in performances of John Taverner's masterwork, the Missa Gloria tibi trinitas. A virtuosic work, it has pride of place in the Forrest-Heyther partbooks (in the Bodleian Library in Oxford), which it has been variously argued originated at Cardinal College or at the Chapel Royal. It might well have been heard on Trinity Sunday in the chapel of Cardinal Thomas Wolsey's palace at Hampton Court. The work is accompanied by other sacred choral works by Taverner, including his Ave Maria composed for Wolsey's Cardinal College, Oxford, and one of his most widely copied works, Gaude plurimum - a dramatic work where Taverner exploits the power of his full forces to evoke Christ's harrowing of hell and the breaking of 'the bloody powers of the prince of eternal death' Contrapunctus is an early-music vocal ensemble dedicated to passionate interpretations informed by authoritative insight and understanding. Directed by Owen Rees, a specialist in music of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the group presents imaginative programmes revealing previously undiscovered musical treasures and throwing new light on familiar works.

Andrew Nethsingha and The Choir of St John’s College, Cambridge mark the centenary of the 1918 Armistice with a new recording of choral works by Ralph Vaughan Williams. Many of the works were composed in the years immediately following the event, including ‘O clap your hands,’ ‘Lord, thou hast been our refuge’ and the Mass in G minor which leads the programme. Vaughan Williams turned his attention to liturgical music following his service as a wagon orderly during the Great War. Ursula Vaughan Williams, his second wife and biographer, wrote that such work ‘gave Ralph vivid awareness of how men died’. It is perhaps unsurprising that in many of the texts to which he turned after the 1918 Armistice, the fragility and weakness of humanity becomes a recurrent theme. Despite being described as a ‘confirmed atheist’ by the philosopher Bertrand Russell, his heightened exploration of Christian texts, symbols, and images after the War might rather be understood both as an attempt to grapple anew with what might lie, as he put it, ‘beyond sense and knowledge’, and to search for consolation in religious and other inherited traditions amid a world irrevocably changed. The fifth release in their series with Signum, the Choir of St John’s have received glowing praise for their previous releases, culminating in the choral prize at the 2017 BBC Music Magazine Awards for their debut release of works by Jonathan Harvey.

2012 marks the 15th anniversary of the first release from the leading independent classical label Signum Records. Beginning life as an early music specialist (with a landmark release of the Complete Works of Thomas Tallis with Chapelle du Roi), Signum has grown since 1997 to a catalogue of over 300 releases across a wide range of genres, featuring a number of world-class artists including: - A Cappella and Choral Music (The King's Singers, Tenebrae, VOCES8, The Swingle Singers, Rodolfus Choir) - Orchestral and Chamber Music (Philharmonia Orchestra, London Sinfonietta, Gabrieli Consort & Players, OAE, LCO, Smith Quartet) - Instrumental Soloist Recitals (Jamie Walton, Alessio Bax, Matthew Barley, Llyr Williams, James Rhodes) - Art song and Lieder (Iain Burnside, Malcolm Martineau, John Mark Ainsley, Mark Padmore, Ailish Tynan, Felicity Lott, Sarah Connolly, Jonathan Lemalu). In our new anniversary series we have drawn on this extensive catalogue to form six collectable budget-price releases, assembled around the themes of A Cappella, Early Music, Organ, Choral, Art Song, and Piano music.

The latest instalment from baroque ensemble La Serenissima. Often compared to Vivaldi, Giuseppe Tartini was a famous virtuoso violinist and highly respected teacher, and is best known for the sonata “Il Trillo del Diavolo” (The Devi’s Trill) which is legendary for both its story and for its fiendish level of technical wizardry.

Originally broadcast on BBC2, the 21st-Century Bach series present performances by the world-class organist, John Scott Whiteley, played on well-restored, historically-authentic instruments that are closely linked with Johann Sebastian Bach. The organ at Amorbach Abbey was begun only two decades after his death, and Bach himself acted as an inspector for the organs of H. G. Trost, the organ builder at Walterhausen. The organs are in themselves works of art, captured in these performances using pioneering camera-work. Extra features include commentarties by the performer, and an interview with Harvard Professor Christoph Wolff on the organ works.

Includes work(s) by Jacobus Clemens non Papa. Ensemble: Brabant Ensemble. Conductor: Stephen Rice.

From one of Australia's leading composers, Elena Kats-Chernin, Signum presents a disc of jazzy piano rags and melancholic musings, with duos for piano and violin of energy, romance and charm, with echoes of Debussy to Shostakovich. Two highly talented young UK artists - Sarah Nicolls (piano) and Nicola Sweeney (violin) - perform this previously unrecorded repertoire which is immediately appealing, yet has intriguing layers and depths that demand repeat listening. Elena Kats-Chernin is a composer who defies categorization and is probably best summed up as a force of nature. Her prodigious imagination has produced a vast body of work, unparalleled in range, drawing from all the musical traditions of the past and present. A virtuosic pianist and improviser, her compositions flow from her like a fountain. This CD is drawn from the small works she often writes for her own enjoyment - a cornucopia of rags, lbues and heart-melting melodies.

Classical Music

Built between 1922 and 1932, the Grand Organ of Westminster Cathedral is considered by many to be the greatest achievement and crowning glory of Henry Willis III, one of England’s finest organ builders. Organist Robert Quinney plays 10 preludes and overtures works by Brahms, Wagner, and Dupre. “It’s quite an achievement to pull off orchestral transcriptions for the organ that don’t have you missing the original, but Robert Quinney manages this on the magnificent Westminster Cathedral instrument

Praise cannot be too high for Cordaria. For me this is quite simply the best recording of this music I have ever heard... Their blend, sensitivity and recorded balance are always immaculate, beautiful and at times tear-jerking. Highly recommended.

The ‘Mystery Sonatas’ consist of 15 short suites for violin and continuo whose inspiration lies in the so-called 15 mysteries of the Virgin Mary; effectively 15 meditations which are sometimes directly programmatic and sometimes more elusive. They divide into three groups of five. The Joyful Mysteries are based on episodes in Jesus’s early life, the Nativity for example; the middle group are the Sorrowful Mysteries like ‘The Crown of Thorns’ etc; and the final group are the Glorious Mysteries which continue the story from the Resurrection to the Assumption and then to the Coronation of the Virgin. The whole work is capped off by a grand unaccompanied Passacaglia for Violin. The whole sequence lasts about two hours and a quarter and is therefore on two discs. Sadly the middle group of five has had to be divided, with the last one, the Crucifixion, on the second disc.

Biber composed these works for Archbishop Max Gandolph. Peter Holman, who I am delighted to find writing programme notes for this disc as he has a proven track record of expertise in the field of 17th Century instrumental music, tells us that "Biber pointed out in his dedication that Max Gandolph was strongly in favour of the Rosary in Salzburg". Also we learn that "the cycle was used in the traditional Rosary devotions in September and October … and the faithful as they walked in procession would have listened to appropriate biblical passages and commentaries and to Biber’s music whilst meditating of their Rosaries". The manuscript also contains fifteen elegant roundels, which were relevant to the subject of each sonata. Nine of these have been reprinted in black and white and are scattered around the booklet. There is also a musical quotation from the Sonata XI and the violin tunings needed for each sonata are given. Some are quite extraordinary. But what makes these sonatas virtuoso compositions for the performer and (I am sure for the composer) is that once re-tuned the notation remains as usual, to correspond with the continuo harmony. This technique is called Scordatura and many violinists dread it. Walter Reiter appears undaunted and unflappable, more so than any other player I have ever heard. The reason for some of these tunings is quite obvious and indeed programmatic. For example the beautiful ‘Ascension’ sonata has a C major tuning, g-c-g-d. Contrast that with the 9th Sonata ‘Jesus carries his own cross’ in A minor, tuned to straining point c-e-a-e in other words raised a 4th giving a rather strangled effect.

Apart from these unique sets of tunings there are other programmatic elements in the music. The ‘Resurrection’ sonata is the only one in one continuous and untitled movement. It begins in total stillness - the dawn of Easter Morning. The free recitativic tempo gradually builds so that in the brightness of the morning sun [c.2’15"] the empty tomb is displayed. Then enters, at first quietly, the Easter Chorale melody ‘Surrexit Christus Hodie’. Incidentally the tuning in this sonata is so odd that the effect is literally unearthly. In the ‘Ascension’ sonata (number 12) the violinist is expected with his terrifically difficult double stoppings to imitate a choir of trumpets in the ‘Aria tubicinium’ [track 7].

In the ‘Crucifixion’ sonata the rending of the veil over ‘the holy of holies’ is vividly portrayed (track 4).

Most of the sonatas have several movements and several have dance titles. Some have Aria’s followed by Variations. Dances include ‘Allmans’ and ‘Correntes’ which are slipped curiously into movements like ‘The Visitation’ sonata and the ‘Nativity’ sonata. Presumably on the grounds of ‘why should the devil have the best tunes?’

Praise cannot be too high for Cordaria. For me this is quite simply the best recording of this music I have ever heard. Credit should go of course to Walter Reiter. Timothy Roberts on the chamber organ or harpsichord and Elizabeth Kenny on the theorbo along with Joanna Levine on the gamba with Frances Kelly, a very experienced influence, on the harp and Mark Levey on a Lirone make a ‘dream team’.

Their blend, sensitivity and recorded balance are always immaculate, beautiful and at times tear-jerking. Highly recommended.

-- Gary Higginson, MusicWeb International