There was controversy when Alessandro Taverna won bronze at the Leeds International Competition in 2005 - many people thought he should have been awarded the gold. Since then, he's gone from strength to strength, as amply proved by this Medtner album on Somm, which features three of the composer's 14 sonatas - the Reminiscenza, the Romantica and the Minacciosa. The Reminiscenza and Romantica are both exemplary in their dynamic, emotional and architectural control. The Minacciosa's climactic fugue is breathtaking.'' (The Guardian, February 2015) The Guardian's was one of many warm reviews for Alessandro Taverna's debut album on SOMM. His playing on this second album attests to Taverna's close affinity to the music of Debussy and Ravel. He possesses a mesmerising palette of colors ranging from a seductive, ethereal touch in Ondine to ferocity and thrust in Scarbo - and what great brilliance and dynamism he brings to La Valse and I'isle Joyeuse!

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REVIEW:

The Debussy Images are beautifully paced. This is utterly unshowy playing too, which suites the Images well. His L'isle joyeuse is impressive, his technique again utterly in service of the music, resulting in playing that is both lithe and transparent. His Ravel La valse makes a fine finale, full of shimmering delicacy and filigree (with some fantastic glissandos), alive to the darkness of this corrupted dance.

– Gramophone

A MusicWeb International Recording of the Month!

An imaginative and intelligent programme this, all three works performed with style, panache and polish.

For me, the most interesting piece here is the Poulenc Sonata, written in 1943 during the German occupation of France. Here Poulenc is deploring fascism. Rather than aiming his ire directly at the Nazis, he prefers an indirect assault by targeting the Spanish fascists and the 1930s Spanish Civil War and specifically eulogising the great Spanish poet, Federico Garcia Lorca, a rightly mourned fatality of that war. Poulenc’s soufflés of insouciance that abound in the concertos are not in evidence here; rather, the opening movement is earnest – passionately, fierily defiant and turbulent – but it is also not without poignancy and appropriate sentimentality. The music here is ambitious, imaginative and intelligently assembled. There is notable and frequent use of pizzicato writing that clearly suggests that for a guitar. The gorgeous, haunting elegiac middle Movement, marked Intermezzo, is aptly headed by a quotation from Lorca – ‘The guitar makes dreams weep’. The final movement, marked Presto tragico, starts with lighter material at speed before the pace becomes halting and tragic and anguished as, with a crestfallen screech (suggesting, perhaps, Lorca’s violent end?), the music comes to an abrupt full stop.

The adorable, memorable melodies that form the opening and closing movements of the deservedly popular Franck Sonata are lovingly articulated and shaped by the Carlock-Combet duo, and they are nicely contrasted with the fiery, protesting yet yearning material of the second Allegro movement and the more inward contemplation of the Recitativo-Fantasia.

Saint-Saëns’ first Violin Sonata is cast in four movements, but the first and second are joined and so, too, are the third and fourth, effectively producing a two-part work. The first two-part section moves seamlessly from the imposing dramatic opening, contrasted with the intimacy of the lovely second subject, to the beauty of the Adagio – tender, intimate and sensually winding. The first part of the second section, Allegretto Moderato, skips along to remind one of Mendelssohn and, perhaps, Kreisler, while the closing Allegro molto rushes headlong with sparkling virtuosity towards a glowing, majestic conclusion.

– MusicWeb International (Ian Lace)

SOMM Recordings is proud to release this album of Elgar recordings, including the first-ever release of Elgar's april, 1933 recording of Elegy, Op. 58 with the BBC Symphony Orchestra. In August, 1933, Elgar recorded teh work for a second time with the London Philharmonic Orchestra and it was this recording that was released shortly after Elgar's death in 1934. In 2015, a test pressing of the earlier recording was discovered and is now being released for the first time. There is no doubt that this recording has more energy with a greater sense of "line" and ebb-and-flow than the later performance and its neglect by Elgar and HMV is something of a mystery. In addition, this album contains a recording of the composer's Sonatina, played by its dedicatee, Elgar's niece, May Grafton. Privately recorded in 1958 at her home by the Elgar biographer, Jerrold Northrop Moore, this is an enchanting reminder of a close relationship that flourished particularly when Miss Grafton acted as Elgar's secretary. The great violinist Albert Sammons performed the Elgar concerto with the composer over many years. However, they were each contracted to different record labels so in 1929 Sammons recorded teh concerto complete with the New Queen's Hall orchestra, led by Sir Henry Wood. Sixteen years earlier, Sammons and Wood made the first recording of the concerto in a version cut by Wood to fit on four sides of 78rpm discs. This recording has not been reproduced in any other form since its release in 1916, until now.

Somm's celebration of John Joubert's 90th birthday brings to the catalogue yet more new riches, this time no less than seven premiere recordings fo his choral music. South of the Line was recorded last June at the Birmingham Conservatoire and poignant is the fact that it was commissioned from the composer for the opening of the Adrian Boult Hall and the last music heard there for this recording, before its demolition. Choirs are at the heart of John Joubert's music and it is by his choral music that he seems to communicate most directly with audiences. He once commented. 'Communication is important to me. I want to be understood, enjoyed and used.' It's perhaps for this reason, this capacity for dramatic articulation of meaning, that his choral music holds such a certain place in the listeners' hearts. Indeed he has composed choral music throughout his career winning, in 1952, a Novello Anthem competition with O Lorde, the Maker of Al Thing set to a poem by Henry VIII. The lullaby-like There is no Rose is another work with af irm place in the English choral repertoire, and another setting of an ancient text. Incantation, Pilgrimage Song and Three Portraits as well as Sonnet, This is the Gat eof the Lord, Autumn Rain and Be Not Afeard, his most recent work a commission for Novella honouring the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death, are all first recordings.

Considering how well William Alwyn’s music has fared on disc, perhaps it’s surprising that his Tenth through Thirteenth string quartets from the 1930s have not been recorded until now. After all, Alwyn always wrote effectively and beautifully for the genre.

While the Tenth’s four movements depict a sea voyage, somehow programmatic elements like the first movement’s gently rocking ostinatos, the second movement’s scampering violin lines depicting birds in flight, and the finale’s stormy, angular tuttis never sound clichéd (sound clip). The Eleventh’s first movement opens with a terse yet enigmatic motto theme that eventually generates robust and animated counterpoint. The second movement’s obsessive repeated pattern and muted sonorities fuse delicacy and backbone, while the finale’s spacious rising and falling lines gradually build to an intense fortissimo.

The Twelfth is a one-movement fantasia that embraces more dissonant and freewheeling ideas, while the Thirteenth is harmonically and melodically more conservative, and lushly scored; notice, for example, the second movement’s blend of busy pizzicatos and whirling trills and the first movement’s frequent octave doublings and double stops.

In the case of recorded premieres such as these, critics tend to focus on the music more than the performances. However, one must credit the Tippett Quartet for giving vibrant and communicative voice to Alwyn’s wide expressive range and marvelous deployment of string textures among all four instruments, together with Somm’s warm, well blended engineering. Recommended.

– ClassicsToday (Jed Distler)

After his "hope across the Atlantic" for his all-Gershwin disc, Mark Bebbington returns to the English fare for which he is best-known, with the Complete Vaughan Williams Piano Music. This SOMM release contains world premiere recordings, notably the Introduction and Fugue. In this work, and in the Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis, both written for two-pianos, Bebbington is joined by the gifted young Romanian-Nigerian pianist Rebeca Ormordia. The Tallis Fantasia in its original string version is an evergreen English work, repeatedly topping Classic FM's listener surveys of favorite pieces. Of its two-piano version, Bebbington says: In transcribing the Fantasia for two pianos Vaughan Williams has created a work with leaner textures and clearer polyphony. The premiere recording on this disc is the Introduction and Fugue for two pianost written in 1947, which RVW dedicated to the famous two-piano team Phyllis Sellick and Cyril Smith. Bebbington says: "Vaughan Williams wrote the Introduction and Fugue concurrently with the Sixth Symphony - a work which shocked the musical world with its undisguised brutality and modernism, and this piano work belongs to the same musical aesthetic.

This new release of American Piano Sonatas from SOMM reminds the listener of 20th-century America's achievements in music as in so much else. SOMM's new collaboration with pianist Nathan Williamson who has been steeped in American music since his years as a student of piano and composition at Yale has produced an exhilarating album brimming with dynamism and energy. The release includes sonatas by four very different American composers writing under very different circumstances: Leonard Bernstein, a charismatic, ambitious all-round musician in his student years; Aaron Copland, an established master at the height of his powers; Lou Harrison, an inveterate experimentalist setting himself a new problem; and Charles Ives, a dogged individualist insisting on his own way of doing things. In each case, the composer chose not to fit his music into conventional forms, but to rethink the whole idea of the sonata. America is after all the land of the clean sheet, the fresh start – of making things fresh, exciting and new. Nathan, who leads a diverse and varied career as pianist, composer and artistic director studied at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama with Joan Havill and Malcolm Singer, at Oxford University with Robert Saxton, and at Yale with Martin Bresnick and Joan Panetti and American composer Ezra Laderman Dean of the Yale School of Music and President of American Academy of Arts and Letters, who died in 2015 at the age of 90. Nathan has dedicated this recording to Laderman as a tribute to a great teacher whose far-reaching influence has inspired him to study the work of American composers in great depth.

Russia produced three renowned composer-pianists at the end of the nineteenth century: Medtner, Rachmaninov, and his fellow student at the Moscow Conservatoire, Alexander Scriabin, a unique figure in Russian music as he seemed to follow a musical path all his own, completely different to that of either of his contemporaries. He created an original, exotic soundworld which progressed from Chopinesque romanticism in the First Sonata to a world of fantasy, inhabited by uncompromising, audacious dissonances in the later Sonatas which make overwhelming demands on any performer who dares to tackle them. In his third Sonata Scriabin provided descriptions of the four movements under the heading ‘States of the Soul’. In the Fourth he experimented with Wagner’s Tristan harmonies. By the Sixth Sonata Scriabin’s harmonic tonality had completely broken down and dissipated – “frightening...dark and mysterious, impure, dangerous” as he himself wrote. The Seventh Sonata (White Mass) instructs the performer to play ‘with a heavenly voluptuousness’, ‘with a dark majesty’... Through the music he wanted to express an ecstatic disorder creating a trance-like effect on performer and audience. The Ninth (Black Mass) represents the Satanic but the Tenth has an opening marked ‘very sweetly and pure’. He said of this, ‘My Tenth Sonata is a sonata of insects. Insects are born from the sun, they are the kisses of the sun.’ These works are performed by legendary pianist Peter Donahoe.

A truly invigorating new release from SOMM, this record brings us Leon McCawley in a recording of four Haydn Piano Sonatas together with the set of Variations in F minor (Sonata-Un piccolo divertimento). Siva Oke first heard Leon play Haydn during a recital for the Chopin Society and was immediately struck by the many wonderful qualities he brought to his playing which captured classical purity and pristine articulation coupled with warmth, plasticity and wit. Widely acknowledged as one of Britain’s foremost pianists, McCawley has forged a highly successful career since winning First Prize in the 1993 International Beethoven Piano Competition in Vienna and Second Prize at the leeds International Piano Competition, building on his earlier success as Winner of the Piano Section of BBC Young Musician of the Year in 1990. Since then, his impressive discography which includes the much-lauded complete cycle of Mozart Sonatas for Avie has established him as a pianist of great integrity and variety, bringing freshness and vitality to classical, romantic and 20th century repertoire. The more than 50 piano sonatas of Haydn were the first by any composer, for it was he who first applied the word ‘Sonata’ to a solo piano piece. Haydn’s influence on Mozart Beethoven, and all the other great composers who followed him, was hugely significant, yet it is only in quite recent times that the importance and originality of his piano sonatas have gradually come to be recognized. The Sonatas on this release have long been part of McCawley’s repertoire. They reflect eh range of Haydn’s genius in the genre he invented, and McCawley’s performances are full of the insight and virtuosity which have made him one of the major international artists currently before the public.

SOMM celebrates Christmas this year with Carols from Chelsea, a delicious offering from the Chapel Choir of the Royal Hospital Chelsea under their Director, William Vann. The Royal Hospital, founded in 1682 by Charles II, is the home of the iconic Chelsea Pensioners, who are all retired soldiers of the British Army. The Chapel Choir sings for the Sunday morning Matins service in the Royal Hospital's Wren Chapel during the year, but in December provides the music for carol services and other Christmas-themed events almost every day. This recording showcases some of the Choir's most cherished carol repertoire, alongside solo organ music performed by the Royal Hospital's Organ Scholar, James Orford, and a very special performance with Chelsea Pensioner and George Hatton. Many of the Royal Hospital's carol services begin wtih Franz Gruber's spine-tingling carol Stille Nacht, an especially moving carol to hear in the original German, given it's celebrated performance in the trenches on Christmas Day, 1914. Once in Royal David's City is the first of three carols that are usually sung with the full congregation, opening with the famous solo that captures the mood of Christmas like nothing else.

This fifth disc in SOMM's successful collaboration with the Birmingham Conservatoire Chamber Choir and Paul Spicer adds another delightful album to the catalogue. The repertoire chosen by Spicer for this release despels the thought that the music of Vaughan Williams, Gustav Holst and Herbert Howells is "English" in a derogatory sense, recalling more Elisabeth Lutyen's "cowpat school" label than that of "visionary". As amply demonstrated here, all three were composers of enormous transcendent vision, forging a uniquely English musical revolution.

As a tribute to Alexander Baillie on his 60th birthday, he and John Thwaites join together to create an outstanding release of cello and piano music by Brahms. The Brhams Sonatas have formed part of many a recital by Baillie and Thwaites over the years but what makes these so special are the pianos. The pianos for this release were chosen specifically for each sonata and are authentic to the time of the composition.

This release is the third and final installment in the critically-acclaimed recording of the complete Piano Sonatas of Sergei Prokofiev by pianist Peter Donohoe. This album is dedicated entirely to the ‘War Trilogy,’ which are three piano sonatas that Prokofiev composed consecutively during World War II. The pieces show the horrors and reflections of what Soviet Russia referred to as the “Great Patriotic War.” The central sonata in the trilogy, No. 7, is regarded by many as his most famous and brilliant piano work. The finale of the piece depicts the grit and ferocity of the Russian attacks on the Nazi army. Peter Donohoe has long been a masterful interpreter of Russian music. He first recorded the Seventh Sonata in 1982, then again in 1991. “Prokofiev was creating these major works throughout his career- all of them are major and some are still underrated and I am delighted to have had the chance of recording the complete cycle at last.” (Peter Donohoe)

This release contains two complimentary piano works: David Matthews’ Piano Quintet Op. 92, and Dmitri Shostakovich’s Piano Quintet. The Piano Quintet by David Matthews was composed in 2004 as a gift for his fiancé Jenifer in honor of their engagement. The five-movement Piano Quintet Op. 57 by Shostakovich is possibly the best piano quintet of the twentieth century. After its premiere in November 1940, the piece was awarded a Stalin prize of 1,000,000 roubles. Pianist Martin Cousin and The Villers Quartet are well-known musicians who are personal friends of David Matthews, so it is fitting that they are recording this outstanding work.

Since winning, at the age of seventeen, the BBC Young Musicians of the Year Competition and the Young Artists Auditions in New York, clarinettist Emma Johnson has been one of the UK's biggest selling classical artists. Since her first recording of the Mozart Clarinet Concerto when she was 18, she has sold almost half a million discs worldwide. During his lifetime, Bernhard Crusell was considered as one of Sweden's leading composers and one of the finest clarinettists throughout Europe. His mastery of the clarinet is evident in the delightful serenade-like Concert Trio for clarinet, horn and bassoon. The trio is in four movements which follow one another with barely a break.