SOMM Recordings proudly announces this fifth and penultimate release in the complete cycle of the Beethoven Symphonies arranged for piano four-hands by the great Polish-German composer and pianist Xaver Scharwenka. This is a series that has consistently had listeners "waiting impatiently for the next volume" (MusicWeb International). Of the many piano-duo versions of the Symphonies, Scharwenka's benefit from an unbroken link back to Beethoven himself, for the arranger was a piano student of Franz Kullak, who in turn studied under the master symphonist's pupil Carl Czerny. The present Volume 5 adds Symphonies 4 & 8 to the collection, coupled with Ferruccio Busoni's two-piano transcription of Mozart's Magic Flute Overture BV B 93, leaving only Beethoven's "Choral" Ninth still to be released on the series' concluding instalment. The performers undertaking this monumental recording project, the "phenomenal" piano duo of Tessa Uys & Ben Schoeman ("In Tune", BBC Radio 3), have performed all nine symphony arrangements in public for almost a decade, breeding a familiarity that informs the impeccable ensemble and authoritative vision they bring to the recordings. Gramophone's Peter J. Rabinowitz lauded this in Volume 4: "Uys and Schoeman cut through the clutter with impressive unanimity; and their finely gauged handling of dynamics and their rhythmic drive... assure that the symphonies emerge with their shape intact, even shorn of orchestral colour. It all sounds idiomatic, both as Beethoven and as piano music... knowledgeable and illuminating." The Sunday Times' Dan Cairns, who named Volume 3 a "Classical Album of the Week", also relished those "dual delights: you can just as easily feel you are listening to entirely new works as experience moments when your response will be along the lines of: 'Ah yes, that bit'. Both are richly rewarding... a fascinating listening experience." The two-piano Magic Flute Overture included here echoes Volume 4 in the series, which featured the Mozart-Busoni Duettino concertante based on the Finale of Piano Concerto No.19, a performance hailed in BBC Music Magazine as "brilliantly conceived and light as a feather". Ates Orga, reviewing for International Piano, noted the change in aural texture from the four-hands Beethoven to two pianos, "the audible separation of instruments enhancing their spatial impact". Ferruccio Busoni was a younger contemporary of Scharwenka, and they died the same year, making this the centenary of the deaths of both pianist-composers. Perhaps most associated with arrangements of Bach, Busoni also championed the music of his fellow Freemason Mozart, and he celebrates that link in his transcription of the Masonic opera's overture.

SOMM Recordings announces Canticle of the Sun, an album dedicated to choral works by Stephen Dodgson. This recording adds to SOMM’s growing discography of music by this unjustly neglected and richly deserving British composer (the label last year launched an ongoing three-volume series embracing Dodgson’s rich and varied output of songs) on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of his birth.

The performances are given by the chamber choir Sonoro, one of the UK’s foremost vocal ensembles. Described as “outstandingly refreshing” (BBC Music Magazine) and “abundant in vibrant colour” (The Guardian), they are tonally immaculate and technically astounding in Dodgson’s tuneful, yet challenging choral writing. They are joined in one work by Michael Higgins at the organ and in another by Katherine Bicknell on flute, while the remaining pieces feature the choir in stunning a cappella with soloists drawn from the choir throughout, and the entire programme is led by conductor and Co-Artistic Director of Sonoro Neil Ferris.

The selection of works, all of them first recordings, reveals in Dodgson a genuine composer for voices – one of abundant gifts, and special among them a sensitive approach to word-setting. The album’s titular piece, Canticle of the Sun (2008), one of Dodgson’s last vocal compositions, sets a text by the prolific English poet John Heath-Stubbs (1918–2006). The cantata Four Poems of Mary Coleridge (1987) sets the texts for the unusual and striking combination of mixed voices and solo flute, played by Katherine Bicknell, a flautist of “sumptuous tone” (The Straits Times, Singapore) and “striking musical ability” (MusicWeb). Incredibly effective throughout, the contrast between voices and flute is particularly evocative in the wonderfully dark “Nocturne I: (The Fire, the Lamp and I)”, with its interplay between almost recitative-like flute and solo bass interspersed with choir playing the characters of the fire and lamp.

’Tis Almost One (1984), is a short cantata for mixed voices and organ to words by Robert Herrick (1591–1674). The organ accompaniment is provided by pianist, organist, composer and arranger, and Co-Artistic Director of Sonoro Michael Higgins.

Following three undated but likely quite early shorter works for a cappella upper voices on anonymous texts (Winter, Lullaby and All Bells in Paradise), the programme concludes with Lines from Hal Summers, a setting for unaccompanied mixed choir. Dodgson chose three poems from Smoke After Flame (1944) by the English poet Henry (known as Hal) Summers (1911–2005), excerpting from them and setting to music carefully selected lines, as referenced by the title. It is difficult not to feel the growing sense of expected war-time victory in these texts – the music reflecting an unstated hopefulness for peace and rebirth.

This recording is supported by the Stephen Dodgson Charitable Trust.

SOMM Recordings is proud to announce a recital disc from cellist Adrian Bradbury and pianist Andrew West titled The Pre-Raphaelite Cello – at once ground-breaking and celebratory, and rich with first recordings. The curiosity piqued by the album’s unusual name will be amply rewarded with the fascinating story of the artistic threads this programme weaves together and their relevance to important commemorations being observed this year.

The idea was conceived and devised by pianist Oliver Davies (1938–2020)*, and the recording is dedicated to his memory. It is a tribute to the renowned British cellist Beatrice Harrison and her association with the composers of The Frankfurt Gang whose music she championed. And the occasion of this tribute is the 100th anniversary of the Nightingale Broadcast, one of the earliest ever made by the BBC from a remote location: on 19 May 1924 Beatrice sat and played her cello in the garden of “Foyle Riding” (the family home at Oxted), duetting with the local nightingales before a microphone that carried them over the airwaves to more than a million listeners and enchanted a nation.

The composers in Beatrice’s circle included a multi-year cohort of anglophone composition students under Iwan Knorr at Frankfurt before the turn of the 20th century. Englishmen Roger Quilter and Cyril Scott and the Australian Percy Grainger belonged to this Frankfurt Gang, who remained close friends after their student days in Germany and who adopted the Pre-Raphaelite banner from the like-minded brotherhood of English painters and poets, distinguishing themselves musically from other British composers through a focus on emotion rather than musical architecture. They were among the composers inspired by Beatrice’s musicianship, and their works on this album were arranged for her or played and loved by her. These are prefaced on the programme by cello-piano pieces from Iwan Knorr (the composition professor who unites the Gang) and Hugo Becker (Beatrice’s cello teacher from the age of 15).

SOMM RECORDINGS is delighted to announce Vaughan Williams – A Birthday Garland, the debut on disc of baritone Roderick Williams and pianist Susie Allan’s popular concert tribute to Ralph Vaughan Williams originally marking the 150th anniversary of the composer’s birth in 2022.

Curating a “fantasy birthday party concert” in tribute to “the grand-daddy of 20th-century English song”, Williams has assembled pieces by RVW and 18 fellow composers. The result is a wide-ranging celebration of the rich variety of English song over a century and more that pays tribute to Vaughan Williams’ influence with songs inspired by poets ranging from Shakespeare and Tennyson to W.B. Yeats and Walt Whitman.

First recordings include Herbert Howell’s The Sorrow of Love, a setting of the Irish poet Seamus O’Sullivan; Sarah Cattley’s A Square and Candle-lighted Boat, treating verses by RVW’s cousin, Frances Cornford; and Roderick Williams’ own distinctive take on William Blake’s The Shepherd.

The 30-song recital includes songs by RVW’s teachers (Stanford, Parry, Wood, Bruch, Ravel), friends (Holst, Gurney, Howells, Butterworth, Finzi and others), and pupils (Grace Williams, Ina Boyle, Ruth Gipps, Elizabeth Maconchy and Madeleine Dring). Vaughan Williams’ biographer Simon Heffer provides authoritative booklet notes.

SOMM’s previous Vaughan Williams releases include the widely acclaimed four-volume Vaughan Williams Live series (SOMM ARIADNE 5016, 5018, 5019-2, 5020); Mark Bebbington and Rebeca Omordia’s “compelling” (International Piano) survey of his Piano Music (SOMMCD 0164); and the “priceless document” (MusicWeb International) coupling the Fifth Symphony and Dona nobis pace (SOMMCD 071).

Roderick Williams and Susie Allan’s previous SOMM releases include Celebrating English Song (SOMMCD 0177), lauded by Gramophone as “a treat”; the Ivor Gurney-focused Severn & Somme (SOMM 057), “strongly recommended” by BBC Music Magazine; and Somervell’s A Shropshire Lad and Maud (SOMMCD 0615), “performances of much beauty, empathy and sensitivity” (British Music Society).

SOMM Recordings is pleased to announce the release of Mirage, a recital of piano music by Stephen Dodgson performed by Osman Tack in his impressive label debut.

Featuring 24 first recordings, Mirage is the third volume in a series marking the 10th anniversary of Dodgson’s death in 2013, and celebrates a composer of “urbane and civilised” music, as Robert Matthew-Walker describes it in informative booklet notes.

The recital spans seven decades from 1956’s Eight Fanciful Preludes – “a judiciously varied suite… bound by the directness of utterance that so distinguished Dodgson’s music” – to the Six Bagatelles composed between 1998 and 2005 when “his inspiration burned brightly in his eighties”.

Also included are the “vastly impressive” Piano Sonata No.7 (Dodgson’s last) from 2003; the “significant” Three Impromptus (1962, revised 1985), and the varied, impressionistic Four Moods of the Wind Suite (1968).

A bonus track, the Rondo in A flat from 1953, will be available for downloading on digital platforms.

Osman Tack is a former Chandos Young Musician of the Year who has performed throughout the UK and internationally as a soloist, accompanist, and chamber musician (having won the Pro-Corda Festival competition).

Dodgson’s Songs Volume 1, The Peasant Poet (SOMMCD 0659) was hailed by Opera Today as “an incredibly interesting and engaging disc… done excellent service by all the performers”. Of Volume 2, The Distances Between (SOMMCD 0673), the British Music Society said “the performances (by some prestigious names) and the warm, lifelike recording are impeccable”.

SOMM’s championing of British song includes Stanford’s Children’s Songs (SOMMCD 0655), “fairly and squarely in the great English song tradition” (MusicWeb International), and Roderick Williams and Susie Allan’s Celebrating English Song (SOMMCD 0177), lauded by Gramophone as “a treat”, and Somervell’s A Shropshire Lad and Maud (SOMMCD 0615), “performances of much beauty, empathy, and sensitivity” (British Music Society).

SOMM RECORDINGS is delighted to announce a revelatory new perspective on Georges Bizet's much-loved L'Arlesienne with the re-issue of his complete stage music for Alphonse Daudet's play and a new dramatization of Daudet's original short story by Jon Tolansky. First staged in 1872, L'Arlesienne is, as Tolansky remarks in his illuminating notes, an "evocative and poignant tale about broken love set in a small Provençal community". One that inspired Bizet "to compose some of the most heartrendingly poignant tones he ever created". More familiar in the two Suites extracted from the theatrical score, L'Arlesienne is heard here in it's original, complete version, reconstructed by Dominique Riffaud in a rare, 1985 recording by Orfeon Donostiarra and Orchestre national du Capitole de Toulouse conducted by Michel Plasson. A bonus track features a new adaptation of Daudet's short story, dramatized and narrated by Tolansky, and illustrated by musical excerpts from Bizet's incidental music. The Minuetto from L'Arlesienne was featured on SOMM's Favourite Orchestral Classics by the Philharmonic Concert Orchestra and Iain Sutherland (ARIADNE 5012), hailed "an exquisite collection" by Classical Music Daily, while two pieces from Carmen were given a mischievous jazz treatment on the Art Deco Trio's Classical Changes (SOMMCD 0663), declared by Gramophone as "exemplary". A noted, widely published and broadcast music commentator and documentary maker, Jon Tolansky's previous SOMM collaborations include Mahler Pioneers (SOMM Ariadne 5022-2), hailed as "a major addition to the catalogue" by OperaWire, and the International Classical Music Award-nominated Serge Koussevitzky Conducts the London Philharmonic - Live (SOMM Ariadne 5017-2). More recently his exclusive interview with Ian Partridge was featured in the Gramophone Editor's Choice release of the tenor's Schubert songs accompanied by his sister, Jennifer Partridge, Stimme Der Liebe (SOMMCD 0670).

Stanford: Cushendall - Irish Song Cycles

SOMM RECORDINGS is delighted to announce the release of Natural Connection, a captivatingly lyrical new recording by pianist Leon McCawley featuring music for solo piano inspired by the natural world. The effect of the ever-changing seasons has been a perpetual inspiration for composers since Ancient Greece’s Delphic hymns and before, down to the present day, arguably finding its richest expression, as Robert Matthew-Walker’s erudite booklet notes argue, in the generations who alternatively espoused Romanticism and Impressionism. Nine composers, each with their own individual but complementary responses, are featured in a 21-track recital of miniature gems traversing the inexorable turn of the year’s cycle from Christian Sinding’s tremulous signature, Rustle of Spring, to Grieg’s sublimely tentative To the Spring. In between, popular pieces by Debussy (Clair de Lune) and Saint-Saëns (The Swan) vie with assorted works by Tchaikovsky (selections from The Seasons), Ravel (the liquescent Jeux d’eau), Bartók (the delightful From the Diary of a Fly and atmospheric The Night’s Music), and Rachmaninov (the gentle Lilacs and poetic Daisies). The most expressive pianist-composer of his age, Liszt, contributes three pieces including the sighing ebb-and-flow of Au lac de Walletstadt and stormy Orage, to eloquently link this multi-faceted and evocative, often moving, collection of responses to the living world. Leon McCawley’s previous SOMM releases include four widely acclaimed volumes of Haydn Sonatas, the first (SOMMCD 0162) receiving a coveted Diapason d’Or from Diapason magazine, Gramophone hailing him for Volume III (SOMMCD 0624) as “a thoughtful, keenly intelligent artist in peak form”. MusicWeb International declared his Chopin recital (SOMMCD 0103) “exemplary” and “outstanding”, while his Schubert survey (SOMMCD 0188) was described by Classical Music Daily as “a meaningful, eloquent performance [that] offers many memorable moments”.

SOMM RECORDINGS is delighted to announce the return of pianist Peter Donohoe to the label following his acclaimed complete survey of Mozart’s Piano Sonatas with a dazzling new recital coupling Rachmaninoff – on the 150th anniversary of his birth in 1873 – and Chopin.

SOMM Recordings is happy to present the fourth release in the planned First Recordings of the complete Beethoven Symphonies in the legendary edition for piano duet by Xaver Scharwenka, continuing a direct connection to Beethoven via his teacher Franz Kullak who studied with Beethoven’s pupil Carl Czerny, played by the ‘wholly exceptional’ duo of Tessa Uys and Ben Schoeman.

This new CD couples Beethoven’s Symphonies 1 & 6 ‘Pastoral’ together with Busoni’s brilliant Concertino BV88 on a theme of Mozart K. 459, for Two Pianos. Extract from the Duo’s recent Gramophone Blog: We would like to highlight our personal historical connection to this music – particularly the Zeitgeist of Berlin, the city where Scharwenka lived and worked. Tessa’s mother Helga Bassel was a concert pianist who also hailed from Berlin, and in the 1930s had to seek refuge in Cape Town. She was indeed fortunate to be able to leave Germany accompanied by her Blüthner grand piano and her collection of piano music which included Scharwenka’s duo transcriptions of the nine Beethoven symphonies.”

Previous releases in this ground-breaking set have received outstanding reviews: ‘Uys and Schoeman play marvellously...SOMM’s fine sonics do justice both to the performers and to their superbly regulated Steinway model D concert grand’ (Classics Today); ‘I was immediately struck by the orchestral quality of their sound – this is an exhilarating account’ (Rebecca Franks, BBC Music Magazine); ‘The result is stunning...these are two superb pianists who breathe through all this music as if they were one’ (Gramophone); ‘In a pure state...the work’s argument has a drivenness and gloriousness that seems to define what a musical argument might be...’ (The Sunday Times); ‘This is undoubtedly superb musicianship throughout’ (Musical Opinion). This new recording is fully up to the superlative standards with which this most gifted of piano duo’s previous recordings have been acclaimed. SOMM is proud to continue this unique integral series of world premiere Beethoven releases.

SOMM Recordings is delighted to announce the label debut of the acclaimed British composer Howard Blake with a disc of his orchestral music to mark his 85th birthday. Blake himself is heard at the piano and conducting the Philharmonia Orchestra, with Paul Daniel also conducting the English Northern Philharmonia. Internationally recognised as the composer of The Snowman's 'Walking on Air', Blake's prolific and wide-ranging achievements extend into symphonies, concertos, oratorios and music for solo piano to embrace the concert hall, dance stage and cinema screen. This focus on his orchestral music which includes four first recordings begins with his single- movement Symphony No.1 in it's 1990 revision, a richly variegated work of vivid images and, as it's title has it, Impressions of a City. A work of dazzling, multi-faceted dimensions and execution, it is, writes Robert Matthew-Walker in his authoritative booklet notes, an "organic, truly symphonic, composition from a genuine creative figure". Concert Dances, for piano and orchestra, from 1992 and featuring Blake conducting from the piano, comprises nine relatively short dance movements in various styles to vivacious effect. Alluding to Eleanor of Aquitaine, 1979's The Court of Love is a ravishing concert suite of three movements drawn from Blake's ballet score for choreographer Lynn Seymour marking Queen Elizabeth II's Silver Jubilee two years previously. The suite taken from his soundtrack to the 1987 film A Month in the Country shows Blake at his most exquisite and expressive in a score, says Matthew-Walker, that "surely belongs in any collection of 20th-century English music for string orchestra". SOMM's long championing of British composers includes recent discs devoted to Stephen Dodgson (SOMMCD 0659; 0673), Penelope Thwaites (SOMMCD 0612; 0672), Kenneth Leighton (SOMMCD 0667), Holst (SOMMCD 279), Ian King (SOMMCD 0649) and Elgar (SOMMCD 278).

SOMM Recordings announces Medtner in England, a revelatory new recording exploring the musical life of Nikolai Medtner, featuring violinist Natalia Lomeiko, pianist Alexander Karpeyev and baritone Theodore Platt. Born in Moscow, Medtner was to adopt England as his home, dying in London, aged 70, in 1951. The English capital seemed to provide him with a liberating creative space as the three featured works here eloquently suggest.

Simultaneously composed between 1935 and 1938 were the two-movement Op.56 Sonata-Idylle in G major – which moves from its ‘Pastorale’ opening to, as composer and pianist Francis Pott comments in his authoritative booklet notes, “a valedictory late-summer haze” – and its immediate successor, the four-part, symphony-sized Epica Violin Sonata No.3, “an act of remembrance” for Medtner’s brother, Emil. Both works are the product of a period in which Medtner was attempting to “pare down the virtuosity of his piano writing”. And both, in their intricate design and execution, illustrate his productive struggle with the ambition.

From his more than 100 songs, the posthumously assembled miscellany of the Op.61 Eight Songs span the near quarter-century from 1927 to the year of Medtner’s death. Employing poems by Pushkin, Lermontov, Eichendorff and Fyodor Tyutchev, they are variegated exercises in temperament and mood that look back towards Schubert and forwards to Medtner’s own distinctive way in setting words and conveying emotions.

Natalia Lomeiko and Theodore Platt are making their debuts on SOMM Recordings, Alexander Karpeyev’s previous SOMM release, Composers at the Savile Club (SOMMCD 0601), was “a recital eminently worth investigating” said BBC Music Magazine in its five-star review, while MusicWeb International declared it “will be greatly enjoyed”. SOMM’s previous Medtner release, three Piano Sonatas performed by Alessandro Taverna (SOMMCD 0142), received a four-star review from The Guardian, with Gramophone insisting “Make no mistake... this first-class recording... is well worth hearing”.

SOMM Recordings announces Cascade; the exhilarating new recital by pianist Cordelia Williams featuring music by Beethoven, Schumann, and Prokofiev. Cascade explores music’s mercurial ability to change in an instant; to reveal depths beneath the surface; and to illustrate; as Williams says; “that the whole world can change entirely in one twist of perspective; one change of angle; to offer a glimpse of something bigger”.

Early and late Beethoven bookend the program. Unpublished in his lifetime; the C major Bagatelle (WoO 56) flickers and glints; sparkles and surprises with kaleidoscope-like brilliance. His Op.126 Six Bagatelles – among the very last pieces he wrote for solo piano – alternate between the introspective and the garrulous; each turned inside out to reveal new facets and features. A variegated collection of 20 miniatures with hints of Chopin; Scriabin and Shostakovich to be found; Prokofiev’s Visions fugitives; Op.22 are essentially a series of meditations; each individually pursuing a specific idea or mood while collectively exploring the hinterland between surface appearance and what lies beneath; and all expressed with comparable crystalline clarity. Schumann’s Waldszenen (Forest Scenes); his last major cycle for solo piano; is an enchanted landscape lit up by beguiling pastoralism and shadow-cast by darker recesses of the imagination. Two sides of the same coin: Arcadia in excelsis; and red in tooth and claw.

Booklets notes; as with all of Cordelia Williams’ recent SOMM releases; have been written by Michael Quinn. Piano winner of the BBC Young Musician of the Year Competition; Cordelia Williams’ previous SOMM releases include her acclaimed coupling of Bach and Arvo Pärt (SOMMCD 0186); hailed by International Piano as “a magnificently stimulating concept; brilliantly recognised”; well-received recitals of Schubert (SOMMCD 0127) and Schumann (SOMMCD 0150); and Nightlight (SOMMCD 0639); which Fanfare hailed for Williams’ “spectacular playing” and which Gramophone described as “extraordinary”.

...“full of the most delicious music you could ask to hear, and the players give every indication of loving every note they play” was how one enthusiastic reviewer described the first volume of aria arrangements on SOMM, of “Handel at Home” (SOMMCD 055) with the London Handel Players in Pan Magazine. Indeed, it is an attestation of Handel’s power to speak to the very depths of one’s soul, to touch the heart and to rouse the spirit that after many years performing the repertoire, the London Handel Players present here “Handel at Home” Vol 2.

A second selection of popular operatic arias either in contemporary settings or their own arrangements inspired by the original luscious scoring.In the 18th century, the demand for such arrangements was high, since they provided a gratifying means of revisiting theatrical highlights in the domestic environment. Handel’s publisher, John Walsh, made numerous arrangements of various overtures and Handel himself may well have reworked the solo keyboard version/rendition of Ombra cara from Radamisto. Babell’s florid embellishment of the ever popular Lascia ch’io pianga from Rinaldo demonstrates a free interpretation adorned with extravagant Italianate ornamentation.The beautiful rendition of the Overture to Samson for solo flute with continuo is taken from Walsh’s extensive publication and LHP have reinstated the string accompaniment in Total Eclipse and Thus when the Sun for added drama.

The lyrical arias from Rinaldo, Giulio Cesare and The Choice of Hercules proved irresistible and they made their own arrangements! “The London Handel Players often capture the elusive dramatic and orchestral context of the arias in these chamber arrangements. Their consummate musicianship is consistently delightful: sparkling violin-playing (often with two players in perfect unison) and superb continuo contributions are just as impressive as Rachel Brown’s poetic flute solos.” David Vickers, Gramophone – Handel at Home.

SOMM Recordings is delighted to announce the release of Gardens, Fables, Prisons, Dreams, eight first recordings of music by Penelope Thwaites paying homage to “the heroes, the witty wordsmiths, the dancers, the poets, and the visionaries; and two great composers” who have influenced her musical life. Thwaites is joined by fellow pianist Benjamin Frith for the exuberant six- part A Lambeth Garland, the enchanting eight-part retelling of Oscar Wilde’s fable The Selfish Giant and Thwaites’ arrangement of Delius’s In a Summer Garden, the first to be made for two pianos. She is heard with John Mills (violin) and Bozidar Vukotic (cello) on Vijay’s Fable, drawn from her culture-fusing score for Indian choreographer Vijaylakshmi Subramaniam, and the atmospheric Mazurka: au Tombeau de Chopin. The Tippett Quartet contribute three memorable performances: Jan Palach’s Theme, recalling the self-immolating student protestor against the Soviet Union’s 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia; For Irina, a tribute to dissident Russian poet Irina Ratushinskaya who survived imprisonment but died of cancer in 2017; and with double bassist Laurence Ungless for To the Hills, a string quintet version of Thwaites’ earlier choral setting of Psalm 121. Since her 1974 London debut at Wigmore Hall, she has performed in more than 30 countries, and is internationally known as an acclaimed pianist and editor of The New Percy Grainger Companion (Boydell Press, 2010), the standard reference book on performing his music.

SOMM RECORDINGS is delighted to pay tribute to the British tenor Ian Partridge on his 85th birthday on June 12 with Stimme der Liebe (The Voice of Love), a collection of iconic songs by Schubert, on which he is joined by his pianist-sister Jennifer Partridge and pianist Ernest Lush. The great German lyric baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau hailed Partridge’s Schubert interpretations as “a pure joy”, an accolade that these 20 performances of Lieder, taken from BBC Radio broadcasts between 1968 and 1972 – and available now for the first time on disc – readily illustrate. They reveal Partridge’s unique, insightful affinity with the complexity and nuance of Schubert’s response to matters of the heart, a quality Fischer Dieskau described – in a facsimile letter to the singer included in the booklet – as his “respect and love for the music”. Among familiar works such as ‘Im Frühling’, ‘Das Fischermädchen’ and ‘An den Mond’, are relative rarities such as ‘Vor meiner Wiege’, which Partridge describes in his booklet interview with Jon Tolansky exploring his “life-long love affair” with Schubert’s Lieder, as one of the composer’s “most inspired creations”.

With a repertoire ranging from Monteverdi and Elizabethan lute songs to Schoenberg and Britten, Ian Partridge is one of the most acclaimed lyric tenors of his generation. He is especially known for his success with songs and Lieder and regarded as one of the great modern Schubert interpreters. His hugely successful partnership with his pianist-sister, Jennifer, saw the duo giving more than 430 recitals and making numerous recordings over their 52-year-long partnership. The booklet also includes informative notes, texts and translations by Richard Stokes, Professor of Lieder at London’s Royal Academy of Music, and author of The Book of Lieder (Faber, 2005). Restoration of the original recordings has been undertaken by audio expert and long-time SOMM collaborator, Lani Spahr.

SOMM RECORDINGS announces the first volume of Prokofiev Milestones, featuring three characterful sonatas and a sparkling arrangement of music from Romeo and Juliet performed by violinists Lana Trotovšek and Boris Bizjak (who also doubles on flute) accompanied by Maria Canyigueral on piano.

Prokofiev Milestones revealingly turns the focus away from the prolific composer’s famed orchestral works and celebrated ballets to his rich and varied chamber music.
First performed in 1943, the Sonata for Flute and Piano (Op.94) is, as Robert Matthew-Walker comments in his notes, “music not of war, but of peace”; a pastoral escape laced with wit and mischief vouchsafed within a pristine neo-classical frame. It is heard again, transformed, in Prokofiev’s own transcription for Violin and Piano (Op.94a). Composed soon after, it lays claim to being “one of the finest 20th-century works in the genre and a genuine masterpiece”.

The Sonata for Two Violins (Op.56) is heard in a new arrangement by Boris Bizjak that eloquently makes much of its sentimentality, drama and vitality.A characterful suite drawn from Romeo and Juliet, and arranged for violin and piano by Lidia Baich and Matthias Fletzberger, revels in Shakespeare’s great romance and Prokofiev’s ardent response to it.
Maria Canyigueral is making her SOMM Recordings debut. Lana Trotovšek and Boris Bizjak’s previous SOMM release was Hoffmeister’s Magic Flute (SOMMCD 0620) with the Piatti Quartet, of which Gramophone approvingly noted: “the challenge falls firmly on the performers… Bizjak, Trotovšek and their accomplices… meet the music’s technical demands admirably”.

SOMM RECORDINGS announces the eagerly anticipated Volume 3 of Treasures from the New World throwing revealing new light on music from the Americas. Pianist Clélia Iruzun returns, accompanied by feted guitarist and Royal Academy of Music Professor Fabio Zanon (who provides informative booklet notes) and celebrated flautist Marcelo Barboza, both making their label debuts. Works by six Brazilian composers for permutations of guitar, flute and piano are featured, three of which – by Marlos Nobre, Ronaldo Miranda and João Luiz – are First Recordings. Also included is American composer Jennifer Higdon, whose questing flute and piano duet, Legacy, is a rhetorical meditation on suffering and loss.

Composed for Iruzun in 2011, Nobre’s Desafio No.37 pits guitar and piano against each other echoing Brazil’s jousting troubadour tradition; Miranda’s single-movement Alumbramentos for flute and piano fuses the traditional and the new; Luiz’s Três na Pipa an animated depiction of three duelling kites; Paulo Porto Alegre’s Choro Suite for guitar and flute blending dance forms with improvisatory-like brilliance. Radamés Gnattali’s Sonatina No.2 is a charming guitar and piano dialogue, Roberto Sierra’s Crónicas del Descubrimiento (Chronicles of Discovery) a major addition to the flute and guitar repertoire. Volume 1 of Treasures from the New World (SOMMCD 0609), saw International Piano praise Iruzun as “a sterling advocate with impeccable phrasing, tone and timing”, Fanfare hailing it “a first-class release”. BBC Music Magazine lauded Volume 2 (SOMMCD 0632) “a delightful programme… every bit as vibrant as the previous volume”. Clélia Iruzun’s SOMM recordings include two volumes of music by Federico Mompou (SOMMCD 0121, 0155). Her recording of Piano Concertos by Albeniz & Mignone (SOMMCD 265) was nominated for an International Classical Music Award in 2019. International Piano said: “Clélia comes into her vivid own, playing with a superb mastery and empathy; it is difficult to imagine… greater skill and affection”.

SOMM Recordings is delighted to announce the label return of the chamber choir Londinium and director Andrew Griffiths with Every Living Creature, a recital of choral music by Kenneth Leighton on the 35th anniversary of his death featuring five premiere recordings. The album unearths a number of significant works by this important British composer, including the extraordinary, eight-movement Laudes Animantium, a 25-minute work for double choir, soloists and children’s chorus, as well as a superb setting of John Donne’s Nativitie and the charming Three Carols (1948). Also featured are the partsong London Town and three more sacred works: Lord, When the Sense of Thy Sweet Grace, An evening hymn and A Hymn to the Trinity.

Five of the pieces are heard on disc for the first time; the remaining four have been recorded only once before. Londinium is joined by soloists Rebecca Lea and Nina Bennet (sopranos), Ciara Hendrick (mezzo-soprano), Nick Pritchard (tenor) and, in the finale of Laudes Animantium, the choir of Finchley Children’s Music Group.

In his insightful booklet notes, Griffiths writes: “It is rare to find a choral singer who does not enjoy performing Leighton’s works. His music is rooted in rigorous part-writing and counterpoint, and alive with invigorating rhythm, motivic interplay and piquant dissonance, underlaid with a deeply lyrical instinct and an exquisite sensitivity to the meaning and colour of text”.

SOMM Recordings announces Volume 3 of the Tessa Uys and Ben Schoeman Piano Duo’s ground-breaking series exploring Franz Xaver Scharwenka’s arrangements of Beethoven Symphonies. A composer of no mean stature in his own right, Scharwenka’s transcriptions were once widely admired, his treatments of Beethoven’s symphonies a high-watermark of the genre. Volume 1 (SOMMCD 0637) met with universal acclaim; Gramophone praising the “mastery” of the performances, BBC Music finding it “utterly beguiling”, and MusicWeb International declaring “I was blown away by this magnificent recording”. Of Volume 2 (SOMMCD 0650), Gramophone hailed it as “a thoroughly rewarding, often revelatory view of this over-played and over- recorded masterpiece [Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony]”. BBC Music Magazine said: “In terms both of precise co-ordination and engaging interplay, the performances are state-of-the-art”.

Volume 3 couples perhaps the least known of Beethoven’s nine symphonies, No. 2 in D major, and the extraordinary scale and innovation of No. 7 in A major. As Robert Matthew-Walker points out in his informative booklet notes, perhaps the most astonishing aspect of the Second Symphony, composed during a period of crippling self-doubt and encroaching deafness, is that it is “so positive and full of life, tingling with vitality and energy”. Of the Seventh Symphony, he writes, “Beethoven poses further challenges to his interpreters – technical as well as musical … Nothing like this had ever been expressed in music before.”

Born in Cape Town and a Royal Academy of Music Associate, Tessa Uys has an impressive reputation as a concert and broadcasting performer, appearing at major venues around the world. Her multi-prize-winning South African compatriot Ben Schoeman has a busy international profile and is currently a senior lecturer in piano and musicology at the University of Pretoria. First playing as a London-based Duo in 2010, their admired explorations of Scharwenka’s four-hand Beethoven transcriptions on the concert platform began in 2015.

SOMM Recordings announces a double-disc set of Johann Sebastian Bach’s Sonatas for Violin and Harpsichord brilliantly performed by two virtuosos of their instruments, Adrian Butterfield (violin) and Silas Wollston (harpsichord).

The selection of eight sonatas includes six works for violin and obbligato harpsichord (BWV 1014-1019), likely composed between 1720 and 1723 during Bach’s final years in Cöthen, and the later Violin Sonatas in G major (BWV 1021) from 1732, and early (though belatedly catalogued) E minor (BWV 1023) from around 1709. Bonus tracks include three alternative movements composed for the BWV 1019 Sonata in G major that illustrate the development of Bach’s thinking in relation to sonata form and intimate musical expression. These intricately designed sonatas also serve to reveal Bach’s innovative way of employing the harpsichord’s singing voice as an equal to the violin and are surely precursors to the rich sonata tradition that emerged in the 19th century.

Butterfield and Wollston’s erudite booklet notes place the sonatas within the context of Bach’s own musical inheritance and influences while arguing for their abiding appeal: “More than 300 years after their composition, they still sound excellent, give much joy and continue to tug at the listener’s heartstrings”.

Making his SOMM debut, Silas Wollston is partnered by Adrian Butterfield, whose previous releases for the label feature him alongside London Handel Players colleagues in Handel’s Complete Sonatas & Works for Violin and Continuo with Katherine Sharman (cello) and Laurence Cummings (harpsichord), described by Early Music Review as “required listening” (SOMMCD 068); the Seven Trio Sonatas, Op.5, judged “assured and surprisingly lyrical” by Gramophone (SOMMCD 044); and Geminiani’s Complete Sonatas, Op.1 (SOMMCD 248-2), featuring performances that International Record Review declared “want for nothing in terms of technical brilliance and musical integrity”.

SOMM Recordings is pleased to announce Classical Changes, a second disc by the Art Deco Trio which treats favourite classical pieces to delightful and often dazzling jazz-accented re-workings in variegated arrangements by Iain Farrington. Comprising three remarkable instrumentalists – Peter Sparks clarinet, Kyle Horch saxophone, Iain Farrington piano – the Art Deco Trio is a virtuosic powerhouse in performance and made its acclaimed label debut with Gershwinicity (SOMMCD 0631) in 2021. Also featuring five African-American Spirituals and three sea shanties, Classical Change takes the early-20th-century fashion for “Jazzing the Classics” at face value with a collection of 20 first recordings of scintillating new arrangements, translating the works’ “original sober environment into one that was more intoxicated”, as Farrington tellingly comments in his booklet notes.

Familiar pieces by Beethoven, Brahms and Rimsky-Korsakov are respectively refashioned in the, by turns, evocative, exuberant and ecstatic ‘Elise’s Blues’, ‘Hungarian High-Five’ and ‘The Bite of the Flumblebee’. Similar treatment is afforded Bizet (The excitable ‘Jiffy Dance’ and sultry ‘One Night in Seville’), the ceremonial pomp of Handel (‘Arrival Revival’), grandeur of Elgar (‘Saturday in the Park with Elgar’), and grandiosity of Wagner (‘Valerie Takes a Ride’) alongside vivacious re-imaginings of Satie and Vivaldi. The trio of sea shanties in A Sea Shanty Shake-Up and the five-part Lay My Burden Down, drawn from African-American Spirituals, prove pleasingly amenable to Farrington’s jazz-laced re-fashioning of their various messages and moods.Of the Art Deco Trio’s Gershwinicity, BBC Music Magazine declared “What’s not to love? It’s a winning combination and the arrangements are top-notch too. This is a recording that is guaranteed to get you moving”. Fanfare approvingly commented: “Not only are the arrangements superb, but so is the Art Deco Trio’s performance of them … I think it’s a safe bet that any Gershwin aficionado will be as captivated with this disc as I was”.

SOMM Recordings marks the anniversaries of the birth and death of the late-Renaissance, early-Baroque master Girolamo Frescobaldi with a revelatory new recording of his celebrated collection of liturgical organ music, Fiori musicali. Making their label debuts are acclaimed organist Richard Lester, who also provides authoritative booklet notes, and a baritone quartet drawn from The Greenwood Consort. Although the history of the Organ Mass dates to the early 15th century, Frescobaldi’s Fiori musicali of 1635, the feted composer’s last work comprising three Masses, represents a highwater-mark of the genre and “a final flowering and significant celebration of his musical genius and creativity”. The first, In Dominicis infra annum (Orbis factor), composed for Sunday Mass, begins in declamatory style and transitions to a buoyant, playfully expressive conclusion. The Mass for the Apostles, Missa: In Festis Duplicibus I (Cunctipotens Genitor Deus), is marked by striking dynamic and textural contrasts. The third Mass, to mark Feasts of the Virgin Mary, In Festis Beata Mariae Virginis I (Cum jubilo), shows Frescobaldi daringly borrowing popular folk tunes to underline the connection between the secular and the sacred. Richard Lester’s five-decades-spanning career began with harpsichord studies with George Malcom and saw him hailed by The Telegraph as “one of our leading players”. He has recorded more than 80 albums of harpsichord and organ music and is the author of Girolamo Frescobaldi: A Variety of Inventions. Led by baritone Mark Bennett, Devon-based The Greenwood Consort is a flexible ensemble of singers and instrumentalists committed to performing to communities with limited access to live music, who focus on historically informed performance of Baroque and pre-Baroque music.

SOMM Recordings celebrates the 150th anniversary of Ralph Vaughan Williams’s birth with insightful, deeply felt accounts of his String Quartets Nos.1 and 2, coupled with Gustav Holst’s Phantasy Quartet, by the Tippett Quartet.

This major release sheds new light on one of the enduring friendships of 20th-century British music, Vaughan Williams and Holst having first met at the Royal College of Music in 1895. Vaughan Williams’ early interest in chamber music was fired by lessons with Max Bruch and Maurice Ravel, which prompted his String Quartet No.1 in G minor in 1908, later revised in 1922. It reveals Vaughan Williams, as Robert Matthew-Walker’s authoritative booklet notes suggest, “at his subtlest and most varied: lively, intense and rhythmically delightful… Nothing quite like this had appeared in English chamber-music up to that time”. His last but one chamber work, the A minor String Quartet No.2 (dedicated to Jean Stewart, violist of the Menges Quartet who gave its premiere in October 1944) gives prominence to the viola. Colored by wartime experience, it is a work of “turbulence and angst… an unemotional contemplation of bleak vistas” that movingly gives way to consoling serenity. Holst’s attractive Phantasy Quartet from 1917, heard here in Roderick Swanston’s edition commissioned by the Tippett Quartet who gave its first performance on BBC Radio 3’s In Tune, is based on four British folk-songs and offers “easy-going charm as well as much playfulness and warmth”.

The release continues the Tippett Quartet’s championing of British chamber music on SOMM, most recently with Dedication which focused on Ruth Gipps’ clarinet-led music (SOMMCD 0641) and was “recommended” by Gramophone. Their coupling of string quartets by William Alwyn and Doreen Carwithen (SOMMCD 0194) merited a five-star BBC Music Magazine review and was praised by The Strad for its “radiant insight and affection… utterly captivating”.

SOMM Recordings is delighted to announce a thrilling first collaboration between long-time SOMM stablemates, baritone Roderick Williams and the Coull Quartet, joined by tenor James Gilchrist and soprano Sophie Bevan. With six world premiere recordings, On This Shining Night is a ravishing recital focusing revealingly on a 20th-century phenomenon: works for voice and string quartet. It takes its title from a James Agate setting by Samuel Barber (whose masterly "Dover Beach" is also heard), here in a sublime arrangement by Roderick Williams. Williams also provides arrangements of Barber’s "Sleep Now" and three Frederick Delius pieces from his Seven Songs from the Norwegian: the evocative "Twilight Fancies," vivacious "Young Venevil" and exotic "I-Brasil." They serve, as Robert Matthew-Walker’s erudite booklet notes observe, as companions to 11 songs by Delius’s close friend and associate, Peter Warlock, including the gentle intimacy of "Corpus Christi," the “mini-cantata” "Sorrow’s Lullaby," and unique free-recitative of "My gostly vader."

Composed for Williams and the Coull Quartet, Sally Beamish’s five-part Tree Carols offer striking, variegated settings of poems by Fiona Sampson in their premiere recording. Roderick Williams’ SOMM catalogue include the acclaimed three-volume Twelve Sets of English Lyrics by Hubert Parry (SOMMCD 257, 270, 272), Sally Beamish’s Four Songs from Hafez (Birdsong, SOMMCD 0633), and the classic English song cycles A Shropshire Lad and Maud (SOMMCD 0615), which MusicWeb International declared a “game changer… in terms of our appreciation of Arthur Somervell’s songs”. The Coull Quartet has recorded a wide repertoire for SOMM. Their recording of Nicholas Maw and Benjamin Britten quartets (SOMMCD 065) was a Gramophone Editor’s Choice and a BBC Music Magazine Benchmark Recording. Gramophone declared their recent SOMM release with Clélia Iruzun, Treasures from the New World, featuring piano quintets by Amy Beach and Henrique Oswald (SOMMCD 0609), “a delight”.