Emma Johnson & Friends – the ensemble led by the outstanding clarinetist and one of the UK’s best-selling classical artists – returns to SOMM Recordings for an entertaining programme of chamber music led by Beethoven’s magisterial Septet. The group’s second release for SOMM follows 2016’s well-received coupling of Schubert and Crusell, when MusicWeb International noted: “With an hour and a quarter of delightful music in first-rate performances, this album is a winner”. Composed in 1800, Beethoven’s Septet is one of the cornerstones of the chamber repertoire. Caught on the cusp between the Classical era and fast-emerging Romanticism, as Robert Matthew-Walker’s booklet essay notes, “it abounds in felicitous light fancy and delicious invention... standing apart as a work of unquestionable independence of expression, already looking towards the initial decades of the new century”. The Septet was the first work to pair clarinet, horn, bassoon, violin, viola, cello and double bass, its six movements “filled with sunny gaiety” (Matthew-Walker again) and realized here with exquisite delicacy and definition by Johnson in the company of the Carducci String Quartet, Peter Francombe (horn), Philip Gibbon (bassoon) and Christ West (double bass). For clarinet and string quartet, the Introduction, Theme and Variations, originally thought to have been Carl Maria Weber’s but now ascribed to Joseph Kuffner, boasts an “inherent musicality and the beauty and cut of its themes and their treatment demonstrate quite clearly that this beautiful piece is well worth the attention of all lovers of music from the early Romantic period”. Two delightfully playful and poetic arrangements by Emma Johnson of Johann Strauss II’s Fruhlingsstimmen and Perpetuum Mobile provide surprising encores to a recording of chamber music at its most elegant and eloquent.

SOMM Recordings announces the launch of a major new series surveying Mozart's complete Piano Sonatas featuring the acclaimed "lion of the keyboard" Peter Donohoe in his highly-anticipated first-ever recordings of the composer's solo piano works. The landmark six-volume series launches with two early Sonatas - Nos.2 (K280) and 6 (K284) - and a later masterpiece - No.17 (K570), the first composed when Mozart was 18 in 1774, the last, described by Alfred Einstein as "the ideal" of the composer's sonatas, in 1789 at the age of 33. Mozart's 19 Piano Sonatas, as music critic Christopher Morley comments in his booklet notes, "cover so much of his short life... and a huge range of styles and genres, from quasi-concertos without orchestra to simple study pieces... There are generic dance-movements, there are movements of exquisite contemplation, there are explorations of searching counterpoint, there are the most exquisite melodies, and there is the perfume of opera". The sonatas in this first volume include the early, harpsichord-accented Second in F major (K280), the dignified ceremonial of the Du�rnitz Sonata, No.6 in D major (K284) and the Sonata No.17 in B-flat major (K570), a work whose surface brilliance disguises it's inner complexity. The impressive and sombre Fantasia No.3 in D minor (K397) completes the release. Described by BBC Radio 3 as "one of our greatest home-grown performers", Peter Donohoe's previous recordings for SOMM have attracted substantial critical approval and include the complete sonatas of Scriabin and Prokofiev along with works by Stravinsky. His recent partnering with Valerie Tryon and Mishka Rushdie Momen in Mozart's solo, duo and trio Mozart concertos prompted Gramophone to remark "it's good to be reminded just how much fun Mozart's works involving multiple pianos are".

Somm Recordings closes the 120th anniversary year of George Gershwin's birth with the re-issue of the historic 1998 Centennial Edition recording initiated by the composer's sister, Frances Gershwin, together with first appearances of two orchestrations commissioned from Jos� Serebrier. Originally released on Dinemec Classics, the Gershwin Centennial Edition features the composer's nephew and Frances' son, pianist Leopold Godowsky III, and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra conducted by Jos� Serebrier. The recording followed a concert in London organized by the composer's formidable sister, Frances - 96 at the time - who invited Serebrier to conduct An American in Paris, the Concerto in F, and, in specially commissioned orchestrations by Serebrier, the Three Preludes and Lullaby. The programme shows Gershwin at his inimitable, era-defining best. Composed as an extended ballet sequence for the 1951 MGM musical starring Gene Kelly, An American in Paris is a buoyant, Technicolor-bright tribute to the French capital shot through with jazz-accented vitality. The Concerto in F is a bold, brassy, brilliantly orchestrated work with a grandstanding piano line bridging the worlds of classical music and jazz. It's animated opening movement is followed by a Blues-tinged Adagio and a finale boasting a helter-skelter orgy of rhythm and athletic pianism. Initially reluctant to orchestrate Lullaby, Serebrier says: "Now I am glad Leopold persuaded me. I have tried to keep the scoring as simple and pure as possible, so that the orchestral version of this poignantly lovely piece might take on a life of it's own in a voice that is still recognizably Gershwin's". The never before re-issued is a brilliant reminder of one of the most remarkable talents of the 20th century in performances by one of his greatest interpreters.

The all-female vocal ensemble Papagena makes its debut on SOMM Recordings with The Darkest Midnight, a sublime collection of songs for winter from the Middle Ages to the modern era embracing the secular and the sacred. Described as “a stunning addition to the vocal music scene” and “la crème de la crème in the crowded a cappella space”, Papagena’s three sopranos (Elizabeth Drury, Abbi Temple, Suzie Vango) and two altos (Suzzie Purkis, Sarah Tenant-Flowers) look certain to add to their fast-growing reputation with this beautifully sung compendium. Casting a dark glamour all of its own, the bleakness of winter has prompted some of the most bewitching, brittle and bright songs. Alongside traditional Christmas anthems can be found legendary singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell’s ‘The River’ in an achingly melancholic arrangement and American composer Don Macdonald, whose When the Earth Stands Still is movingly poignant and still, twilit and shining. Celebratory songs marking the Christmas season – the exuberant In dulci Jubilo, burnished, glowing harmonies of Angelus ad virginem, sublimely serene Es ist ein Ros entsprungen and infectious Shchedryk/Hark How the Bells from Ukraine – are heard alongside lilting Irish songs from antiquity and the charming Scottish lullaby Balulalow. Songs from England, Germany, Norway and ‘Toi le coeur de la rose’ from Ravel’s L’enfant et les sortilèges round off a recording that includes first performances of eight arrangements and is marked by sheer beauty of sound.

SOMM Recordings is delighted to announce a major new release by Leon McCawley focusing on the piano music of Franz Schubert. The new recording is the latest offering from a highly acclaimed partnership between SOMM and McCawley that has seen earlier albums devoted to Haydn, Chopin, Schumann, Brahms, Rachmaninov and Samuel Barber. Leon McCawley has been one Britain's foremost pianists since winning the International Beethoven Piano Competition in 1993, when he also took second prize in the Leeds International Piano Competition. Perhaps "the most enigmatic of all musical geniuses", as Bryce Morrison describes him, Schubert himself famously declared "I came into this world for nothing else but to compose". Two masterpieces are heard here. The Drei Klavierst�cke saw Schubert reaching out in a radical new direction to deliver, says Morrison, something "wild, feverish, disjointed and intimate... visionary music with a vengeance". The Wanderer Fantasy is a luxurious display of virtuoso opulence - music the like of which wouldn't be heard again until Liszt at his most incendiary - that makes fearsome demands on the soloist. Four songs arranged by Liszt remain uncannily faithful to Schubert's originals while adding an extra dimension of drama and sophistication to show both composers at their melodic and dramatic best. Leon McCawley's previous recordings for SOMM have received wide critical praise. Gramophone hailed his complete Rachmaninov Preludes as "a distinguished issue", Fanfare described his playing of Brahms as "music-making of a very high order" with International Record Review adding: "When all is said and done, it is difficult to know whether McCawley's refined piano playing, his natural yet cultivated musicality or his boundless imagination warrants the greater praise. You must hear the recording". His recording of Haydn's Sonatas and Variations received a coveted Diapason d'Or and the "superb collection" of Barber's piano music was a Gramophone Editor's Choice.

SOMM Recordings' historic, enthusiastically reviewed survey of Sir Hubert Parry's 12 Sets of English Lyrics reaches it's end with a third revelatory volume. Volume III features pianist Andrew West and baritone Roderick Williams (both heard on Volumes I and II) and the return of soprano Sarah Fox (who appeared on Volume II). Composed between 1874 and shortly before Parry's death in 1918, the English Lyrics come from a time of immense change as old certainties gave way to new complexity and a global war that would utterly change Britain's standing in the world. Parry's riposte was the English Lyrics: a defiant assertion that English poetry was the equal of Germany's Lied and French m�lodies and arguably created the template for the development of the emerging English art-song. The texts of many of the 25 songs - including some of his finest - on this recording carry deeply personal meanings for Parry, his response to them as varied as mood dictates and all realized with consummate insight and craftsmanship. Settings of AP Graves, Julia Chatterton and Julian Sturgis are to the fore, although lyrics by Herbert Warner and the American poets Ralph Waldo Emerson and Langdon Elwyn Mitchell are also to be heard in a spell- binding conclusion to an acclaimed series. Parry's only setting of Christina Rossetti, 'My heart is like a singing bird,' is delightfully effusive, 'When the Sun's Great Orb,' Wagner-like in it's imagining of the end of days, 'The child and the twilight' vividly full of night-time fears. Reviewing Volume I, BBC Music Magazine praised the "many pleasurable moments in this richly enjoyable album" with Classical Ear summing it up as being "In a word: blissful". Of Volume II, Robert Hugill applauded "this enterprising and illuminating survey", while MusicWeb International said: "Lovers of English songs, and Parry in particular, should be in their element with this satisfying album on Somm".

In the centenary anniversary year of the end of the First World War and on the eve of the 80th anniversary of the beginning of the Second World War, SOMM Recordings pays tribute to those who fought and fell in battle with In Remembrance. A moving compendium of music spanning 130 years, it features the Chapel Choir of the Royal Hospital Chelsea, the Choir of Chelsea Pensioners, Staff and Volunteers, sopranos Katy Hill and Leah Jackson, baritone Gareth John and organists James Orford and Hugh Rowlands under the direction of William Vann. Founded in 1682 by King Charles II, the Royal Hospital is home to the world-famous Chelsea Pensioners - retired veterans of the British army - whose contributions on three tracks adds it's own special poignancy to In Remembrance. Moving choral works commemorating courage and offering comfort by Hubert Parry, Gustav Holst, and Edward Elgar are heard alongside equally affecting pieces by their contemporaries and successors, Charles Villiers Stanford, John Ireland, Douglas Guest and Charles Harris. Faur�'s Requiem, arranged for choir and organ by Iain Farrington, and Ian Venable's newly-composed Requiem aeternam (in it's first recording) both offer succor and solace in their conviction that death is not the end but, as Faur� thought of it: "a happy deliverance, an aspiration towards happiness above, rather than as a painful experience."

Somm Recordings and former BBC Young Musician Competition prize- winner Cordelia Williams present two sublime voices together for the first time on album in a poetic and probing coupling of the solo piano music of JS Bach - musical laureate of 17th-century Protestantism - and Arvo P�rt, principal voice of contemporary Holy Minimalism. Although a quarter of a millennia separates their births, both share a conviction that faith in God, as Williams notes in her introductory essay, "is the foundation of the creation of music." This pioneering coupling of the two composers reveals a surprising latticework of connections in their constant, shared striving for economy and essence. P�rt's signature chiming 'tintinnabuli' style is beautifully evoked in three pieces designed to console and comfort their dedicatees: the tolling, melancholic profundity of F�r Alina; the quietly majestic and moving F�r Anna Maria and the limpid, liquid invention of Variationen zur Gesundung von Arinuschka. Composed for his 10-year-old son, Wilhelm Friedemann (himself later a composer of distinction), Bach's twin sets of 15 Two-part Inventions (BWV 772-86) and 15 Three-part Sinfonias (BWV 787-801) are much more than mere pedagogic primers. Williams finds in them a richness of technical design far beyond their apparent simplicity. Here, Williams reverts to Bach's original ordering of the pieces to chart a subtly revealing way through music as intimate as it is illuminating.

Somm Recordings is delighted to present a revelatory collection of orchestral songs by Sir Edward Elgar performed by two of today’s most exciting young singers – mezzo-soprano Kathryn Rudge and baritone Henk Neven – accompanied by the BBC Concert Orchestra conducted by Barry Wordsworth. The Hills of Dreamland takes its title from a line in Elgar’s well-known setting, beautifully still and beseeching, of Arthur L Salmon’s Pleading. Historically the least regarded part of Elgar’s output, his songs contain a treasure-trove of vocal gems and here receive performances of insight, imagination and emotional directness. The Op.59 Song Cycle is an exemplary case in point, by turns quietly radiant, touchingly nostalgic and achingly melancholic. Two settings of poems by Elgar’s wife – the richly orchestrated The Wind at Dawn and celebratory The King’s Way– show Elgar at his most evocative and ebullient. Sombre and powerful, The Pipes of Pan boasts colorful imagery and driving rhythmic energy, The River and The Torch wholly Elgarian in their wonderful sonorities. A first recording of the orchestral version of the marching song Follow the Colours shows Elgar at his most patriotic. The complete incidental music for a 1901 staging of WB Yeats’ Grania and Diarmid offers a rare opportunity to experience the full gamut of Elgar’s moving and dramatic evocation of a timeless tale of love in the ancient Irish myth. A bonus album of recordings made under the auspices of the Elgar Society showcases soprano Nathalie de Montmollin and pianist Barry Collett in a collection of piano-accompanied songs. It includes first recordings of the piano version of ‘Winter’ from The Mill Wheel and the world-weary tread of Muleteer’s Serenade, setting words from Cervantes’ Don Quixote.

SOMM Recordings celebrates the centenary of Leonard Bernstein's birth in style with a remarkable 1993 live broadcast recording - never before issued and newly mastered - with the Hannover Philharmonie conducted by Iain Sutherland. Five of Bernstein's era-defining works for Broadway and Hollywood revel in his inexhaustible gift for memorable melodies, his vivid sense of drama, infectious playfulness and captivating sense of poetry. The effervescent Overture to Bernstein's 1956 re-telling of Voltaire's Candide has long been a concert hall favorite. Brilliant, uplifting and thrillingly orchestrated, it brims with memorable tunes threaded together with masterful aplomb. The Symphonic Suite drawn from his score for Elia Kazan's Oscar-laden 1954 lm On the Waterfront is a heavyweight exercise in evocative and atmospheric music, it's muscle and menace transformed into a final, redemptive hymn to individual freedom. A decade earlier, Bernstein's first extended theatre music - for Jerome Robbins' ballet Fancy Free - made brilliant use of a symphony orchestra's resources with stylish infusions of jazz-based and Latin-influenced concert music. On the Town pays tribute to the city that never sleeps in an exuberant tale of three sailors finding love on 24-hour shore-leave in New York. It's Two Dance Episodes borrow themes from Fancy Free to exhilarating effect. Bernstein's theatre masterpiece West Side Story transformed the American musical overnight in 1957. With it's great trajectory from C major to E at and back again, it carries itself with operatic immediacy. The Symphonic Dances drawn from the score exalt in the power of an orchestra in full, forceful flow.

Somm Recordings celebrates the sublime choral music of Richard Rodney Bennett – best known to a wider audience for his Academy Award-nominated scores to Murder on the Orient Express and Far from the Madding Crowd – with 11 first recordings and a vivid new recording of his choral masterpiece, The Glory and the Dream. Performed by the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire Chamber Choir, directed by Paul Spicer and with dexterous support from organist Nicholas Morris, The Glory and the Dream features 12 varied and vivacious choral pieces composed over more than 50 years. The album’s striking title work sets Wordsworth’s ode Intimations of Immortality to music that conjures childhood rapture and adult fears with the utmost finesse and feeling and features a fearsomely complex and challenging organ accompaniment. Dating from 1961, the earliest pieces here are Two Madrigals in which Bennett treats the rich ornamentations of the 17th century to a wholly modern perspective. The most recent work, One Equal Music – a sinewy, austere anthem with a serene ending – was completed in February 2012, just 10 months before the composer’s death at the age of 76. Bennett’s fascination with the Elizabethan and Jacobean eras is also to be found in the elegiac partsong A Contemplation Upon Flowers, the vocal fanfare This Day and Time, a somber meditation on the finality of life and lasting effulgence of Christ’s eternal being, and the simple but affective carol I wonder as I wander. Other seasonal pieces include the early, plainchant-infused The Sorrows of Mary, the gentle ‘hush song’ Lullaby Baby and late, substantial Remember, O thou man, a fervent and heartfelt prayer ending in quiet contemplation. Previous Royal Birmingham Conservatoire Chamber Choir recordings on SOMM have included admired recordings of choral music by Herbert Howells, Samuel Barber and John Joubert, together with partsongs by Ireland, Delius and Stanford.

The launch of Somm Recordings' inspirational Beethoven Plus series sees violinist Krysia Osostowicz and pianist Daniel Tong commissioning 10 leading contemporary composers to write 'companion' pieces for - and inspired by - Beethoven's seminal set of 10 Violin Sonatas. The result is a fascinating conversation between past and present in which Beethoven's mastery of the form receives illuminating - and often surprising - commentary from entirely modern perspectives. Volume 1 focuses on Beethoven's first five Violin Sonatas - Opp. 12 (Nos. 1-3), 23, 24 - and the Third Sonata from his Op. 30. They are each coupled with first recordings of their new companion pieces. Jonathan Dove's Ludwig Games is a glorious "upbeat" to Beethoven's First Sonata in which motivic dynamism and minimalist accents are brilliantly matched. The punningly titled A Major Chase updates the humorous Second Sonata in a virtuosic display described by composer Peter Ash as "Bart�k meets Tom and Jerry". Imaginatively re-working the key of E flat, the characterful dissonance of Elspeth Brooke's Swoop offers a decidedly contemporary response to the Third Sonata. Judith Bingham's The Neglected Child pays a heartfelt homage to Beethoven's Op. 23, while Huw Watkins' Spring is a masterly miniature inspired by the radiant, lyrical textures of Op. 24. Jeremy Thurlow's Mehlsch�berl alights on the wit of Op. 30 No. 3 to take two motivic cells from Beethoven's score as the starting point for an intriguing and involving set of colorful transformations. Daniel Tong says: "The new companion pieces locate this set of recordings within a specific time - these composers' responses to Beethoven coupled with our response as interpreters - leaving us with the thought that, in the end, all interpretation is work in progress."

An exciting new collaboration between Somm Recordings and the Tippett Quartet begins with striking performances of early and late string quartets by Mendelssohn. Fiercely imbued with the spirit of Beethoven, Mendelssohn's Opp. 12, 13 and 80 quartets brim and boil with an innovation, dynamism, emotional sincerity and technical flair some would deny the composer. These deeply felt performances from the Tippett Quartet present Mendelssohn in a new light and challenge Hans von B�low's notorious observation that he "began as a genius and ended as a talent." All three quartets - Op. 13, composed when Mendelssohn was just 18-years-old, and Op. 80, his last major work, completed two months before his death at 38 - speak movingly of loss. Op. 12 laments the passing of Beethoven, Op. 13 regrets unrequited love, Op. 80 an inconsolable response to the death of Mendelssohn's sister, Fanny. The earlier works, the Tippett Quartet says, "command an astounding expressive power and technical prowess with all the exuberance and intensity of a young man searching for the sublime and the profound." Mendelssohn's last significant musical utterance, the valedictory Op. 80, "turns his sense of loss, grief and, most of all, anger into a truly sublime work of art". "When we were recording them, " says the Tippett Quartet, "it felt like we were playing brand new pieces by a living composer, not works that carry, and have become burdened by, the weight of tradition". These poignant, powerful, emotionally raw, musically rich performances make persuasive claim for music of passion, poetry and profundity and offer fresh insights into Mendelssohn as he was meant to be played.

An evergreen masterpiece, an under-appreciated jewel and a great 'what might have been' - pianist Mark Bebbington and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Jan Latham Koenig explore the personal and musical connections between Edvard Grieg and Frederick Delius. Heard together on an album for the first time, the Piano Concertos by Grieg and Delius reveal the full extent of the composers' friendship and mutual admiration. Composed in 1868, Grieg's Piano Concerto in A minor has become one of the cornerstones of the repertoire. It's famous opening timpani roll heralds a ravishing display of virtuosity lit up by the melting melody at the heart of an immediately recognizable masterpiece. Also in a minor key, Delius's C minor Piano Concerto was inspired by a performance of Grieg's Concerto in London in 1888. Grieg's gifting of a copy of the score to Delius spurred him on to write his own Concerto. A first draft in 1897 was followed by two further revisions over the next decade before the final version heard here in a rare appearance. Grieg's mooted Second Piano Concerto was never completed, but the 150 bars he did sketch hint at what might have been. Robert Matthew-Walker has fashioned the existing material - in various stages of completion and detail - into a coherent single movement to give, for the very first time, the clearest indication of what Grieg had in mind for a work left tantalizingly unfinished. Both this and the solo piano version - also arranged by Robert Matthew-Walker - receive their premiere recordings here.

Mozart's progress from child prodigy to mature brilliance, from innocent insight to inspired innovation, is measured out in his piano music. Somm's survey of six works for one, two and three pianos brilliantly charts both his phenomenal development and his far-reaching transformation of the concerto form. Two of today's finest, most accomplished and admired pianists - Valerie Tryon and Peter Donohoe - bring unrivalled experience to bear in impeccable, incisive and illuminating accounts of the solo and duo works. The young, fast-rising Mishka Rushdie Momen joins them for the discretely dazzling Piano Concerto No.7 for three pianos. Three other concertos are featured. Composed for Mozart's sister, Nannerl, the two-piano No.10 is a playful but challenging exercise in sibling rivalry. A favorite of Beethoven's, No.20 is marked by a dark-hued drama and broiling emotional turbulence banished by it's surprise sunny ending. Famously, it prompted Haydn to tell Mozart's father, "Your son is the greatest composer whom I know in person or by reputation". The Piano Concerto No.21 is distinguished by it's melodic directness, guileless wit and the balletic interaction between piano and orchestra, it's meltingly lyrical Andante popularised by it's use in the 1967 film Elvira Madigan and American pop star Neil Diamond's 1972 chart hit, Song Sung Blue. Echoing the galant style of the Seventh Piano Concerto, the ebullient, lyrical and bright Sonata for Two Pianos in D pulls and pushes the focus between the two instruments in music of delightfully genial resourcefulness. Composed a year later, the Fantasia in C minor for solo piano boasts a cornucopia of mesmerising effects as it spins the piano line into altogether idiomatic flights of dark-toned fantasy richly realised by Valerie Tryon.