SOMM Recordings is pleased to announce the second volume in the London Bridge Trio's revealing exploration, recorded live, of the influential musical fraternity known as The Leipzig Circle. Delving deeper into the coterie that coalesced around the husband-and- wife composers Robert and Clara Schumann as Leipzig flourished into becoming the centre of European music making in the 1840s. Composed soon after his 30th birthday, Felix Mendelssohn's Piano Trio No.1 in D minor (Op.49) is, says Robert Matthew-Walker in his informative booklet notes, one of the composer's "greatest chamber music compositions... a fine and trenchant work, revealing his genius at getting the utmost definition and detail from a small group of instruments". Clara Schumann's Op.17 Piano Trio in G minor elegantly shows off her own admired facility at the keyboard as well as her gift for composing music that "shows no little originality and a charm of melody which is all her own". From the beginning of what was to prove to be his late period, Robert Schumann's F major Second Piano Trio (Op.80) moves from episodes of intense melancholy to Spring-fresh lightness to conclude with an engrossing discussion between all three instruments. Here, says Matthew- Walker, "is Schumann at his most endearingly human, the quintessence of Romanticism from a demonstrably original great composer". The Leipzig Circle, Volume I (SOMMCD 0199) was hailed by The Telegraph as "a total delight" while Gramophone admired the London Bridge Trio's "playing of sensitivity and conviction" and concluded "there's a lot here to enjoy".

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.

SOMM Recordings presents Treasures from the New World - a compelling collection of late-Romantic and contemporary works for piano and string quartet from the Americas brimming with all the colour, energy, and emotion of that great continent. Rio de Janeiro-born piano virtuoso Cl�lia Iruzun teams up with the Coull Quartet for a varied and vital programme championing the music of her Brazilian compatriots Henrique Oswald and Marlos Nobre and the pioneering American Amy Beach. Influenced by Brahms and Schumann, Beach's Piano Quintet in F-sharp minor (1908) is stamped through with a lyrically melancholic and pensive signature all it's own. For her Romance for Violin and Piano (1893), a work of hypnotic gracefulness and aching emotions, Iruzun partners with the Coull Quartet's first violinist, Roger Coull. Receiving it's first recording outside of Brazil, Henrique Oswald's Piano Quintet in C major (1895) was composed in Florence. Imprinted with the European influences he absorbed there, it is lit up by his own gift for heartfelt melody. Marlos Nobre's Poema XXI - here in it's premiere recording - carries itself with a distinctive character drawing on traditional South American dances to produce something effusive, elegant and exotic in equal measure. Gavin Dixon provides illuminating, informative booklet notes. Cl�lia Iruzun's previous recordings for SOMM include two volumes of music by Federico Mompou and Piano Concertos by Albeniz & Mignone with the RPO and Jac van Steen - nominated for an International Classical Music Award in 2019 and hailed by International Piano: "Cl�lia comes into her vivid own, playing with a superb mastery and empathy; it is difficult to imagine... greater skill and affection". The Coull Quartet's long association with SOMM has produced admired recordings of Mozart, Nicholas Maw and Britten, Sibelius, Ian Venables, and settings of John Ruskin.

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."

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)

The growing genius of a titan of English music comes vividly into focus in a stunning collection of Edward Elgar's music for chorus and orchestra from the Brighton Festival Chorus and BBC Concert Orchestra conducted by Barry Wordsworth. The voice was at the center of Elgar's musical life as a child, and it was to play a defining role in his own compositions. Spanning 26 years - from the imposing setting of Ecce sacerdos magnus ('Behold the great priest')* in 1888 to the richly realized psalm settings of the 1910s, it is possible to chart in these often moving, occasionally monumental works the development of Elgar's prowess in setting the voice. The muscular and poetic Op.34 Te Deum and Benedictus and consoling Offertory Anthem, O Hearken Thou are heard alongside two contrasted psalms - the mighty Great is the Lord and bold and vigorous Give unto the Lord - that have become cornerstones of the English choral tradition. Two sunny, secular works show Elgar balancing delicacy and deliberateness with consummate skill. Based on a play by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, the Iberian-accented Spanish Serenade is courtship of exquisite beauty and warmth. Scenes from the Bavarian Alps sets words by the composer's wife, Alice, to produce six animated and colorful songs that conjure the sights and sounds of happy holiday visits by the recent newlyweds. Behold the Great Priest presents a treasure-trove of Elgar's choral compositions intriguingly mapping out his development towards the full-scale masterpieces of Sea Pictures, The Apostles and The Dream of Gerontius.

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.

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.

Classical Music

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.

This delightful disc of favorite – and occasionally unfamiliar – piano music played by pianist Philip Martin fulfills several functions: it is, first and foremost, a collection of ‘personal choice’ encore pieces, some of which are amongst the world’s favorite piano music, with others coming into the unjustly neglected genre, all of which have a special affection in Philip’s comprehensive repertoire. Secondly, we encounter the art of this much-admired Irish musician as a composer, whose own music possesses an individuality and immediacy of appeal that confirms his qualities as a musical communicator to his audience. And finally (although it is not ‘final’!), this exceptionally well-filled album is released as Philip Martin prepares coincidentally to celebrate his 70th birthday and 50 years in the music profession with a wide-ranging selection that indicates the range and artistry of this truly international musician.

This cleverly planned new recital represents a uniquely valuable addition to the catalogue and focuses attention on English piano music which is less well known but no less delectable. Our programme ranges from some of the most famous names in music to those best-known in other areas of the art - and has been carefully chosen to present a uniquely fascinating conspectus of piano music by British composers of the last 100 years. There are such rarities as Benjamin Britten's brilliant early suite 'Holiday Diary', the great composer in lighter mood, and the magnificent virtuoso set of Six Studies for Piano by Kenneth Leighton, alongside a rare collection of Impressionist pieces by Gustav Holst - showing him to be as much a master of the keyboard as his 'Planets' suite is of the orchestra. John Ireland (Britten's teacher) is represented by his haunting Ballade of London Nights, and we have a significant premiere recording of Ireland's most famous song - Sea Fever - arranged for solo piano by Roderick Williams, best-known as one of the finest of all living British singers, now appearing on disc in a new light. Both the world premiere Goodwood-by-the-Sea and the piano arrangement of Sea Fever were written by Roderick Williams especially for Maria Marchant and dedicated to her. Ronald Stevenson's 'Peter Grimes Fantasy' takes us back to Benjamin Britten - a wonderful homage from one major British composer to another.

The Gluepot Connection celebrates the coming together of a generation of established and emerging composers who defined British music in the middle of the last century in a cornerstone of British life - the local pub. "That bloody Gluepot" was the nickname given to The George public house in central London by Sir Henry Wood, exasperated that it's proximity to the legendary Queen's Hall proved irresistible to his musicians. Andrew Griffiths skillfully joins the dots of the Gluepot's tangled relationships and musical achievements with the Londinium chamber choir to present a vivid portrait of a moment unique in British music. Arnold Bax's a cappella masterpiece 'Mater ora filium' blends past and present to produce one of the most challenging and rewarding works in the English choral repertoire. Delius's 'On Craig Ddu' proved "a revelation" to a young Peter Warlock, whose 'The Full Heart' boldly marries antiquity and modernity with the same rapturous atmosphere. Interest in the first Elizabethan age was strong in the years before and after the second Queen Elizabeth took the throne, notably so in John Ireland's melancholic The Hills and EJ Moeran's attractively varied Songs of Springtime. Appearing for the first time are Alan Rawsthorne's bracing, tightly constructed Four Seasonal Songs and Alan Bush's pastoral part-song 'Like Rivers Flowing' and 'Lidice.' The Gluepot's connection to the new is illustrated by Elisabeth Lutyens' warm and melting 'Verses of Love' - a mellower contrast to early serialism that saw her dubbed 'Twelve-Tone Lizzie'. A highlight is William Walton's tour-de-force anthem 'Where does the uttered music go?' employing his trademark blend of warm-hearted lyricism and angular rhythms.

A new release from SOMM to lift our spirits in no uncertain fashion! Distinguished composer- pianists Julian Jacobson and Mariko Brown combined their considerable talents in 2011, thus forming a piano duo brimming with ideas not only centred on the classics for piano duo repertoire, but also with a strong commitment to searching out neglected masterpieces performed to great acclaim in their various concert tours. They have revived, among others, Debussy's exotic ballet masterpiece "Khamma". Set in ancient Egypt, it appears here as a first recording in the version for four hands. British Composer Anthony Herschel Hill who died last year also features here for the first time with Nocturne, a beautiful if intense elegy for two pianos, and a tribute to a composer of among many other works, 24 Symphonies and 14 Concertos whose true worth is yet to be fully appreciated.

“No praise could be high enough for such an adventurous and challenging programme, particularly when offered in such vivid and affectionate performances. Enescu’s Third Sonata is a wholly personal creation, played by Nicola Meecham with brilliant dexterity and musical devotion.” (Bryce Morrison, Gramophone) This is just one of the superlative reviews which greeted Nicola Meecham’s album for SOMM of works by Kodaly, Enescu and Janacek. We now welcome her back in a fabulous recital of piano music by Tchaikovsky which includes the two rarely performed or recorded Piano Sonatas. The large-scale, majestic Grande Sonate in G major Op. 37, Tchaikovsky’s most significant work for solo piano, and the earlier Sonata in C sharp minor of 1865. The G major sonata was published during Tchaikovsky’s lifetime, having been written in 1878. The work opens with a magnificent chordal gesture and an initial richly inventive theme, which is threaded through and across all four movements. In both sonatas, Tchaikovsky is in total command of his chosen structure and develops his ideas with great originality and ease. The effective keyboard writing apparent in both works betokens a composer thoroughly at home in the medium. The present release includes four of Tchaikovsky’s shorter solo pieces, the Nocturne and Feuillet d’album, Opus 19 and the Humoresque Op. 10 No. 2, all of which strengthened his reputation as a distinctive composer of solo piano pieces. The delightful Doumka in C minor paints a picture akin to a rustic Russian scene and is one of the finest of all of Tchaikovsky’s shorter solo piano works.