Classical Music

Classical Music

BRITISH OPERA OVERTURES: English Opera in the Nineteenth Century • Richard Bonynge, cond; Victorian Opera O • SOMM 0123 (74:36)


BENEDICT The Lily of Killarny. BARNETT The Mountain Sylph. BALFE The Siege of Rochelle. Le Puits d’amour. LODER The Night Dancers. WALLACE Lurline. The Amber Witch. Love’s Triumph Prelude. MACFARREN She Stoops to Conquer. THOMAS The Golden Web


For the most part, these are pleasant, skillfully wrought pieces, though some may deride them as a mere parade of pleasant tunes. I imagine the annotator makes a valid point in blaming the librettos of the operas they precede for the music’s demise in popularity. If you’re really curious, a few of them have made their way to recordings. John Barnett’s opera The Mountain Sylph is based on the same story that resulted in the venerable ballet La Sylphide (1836), composed by Herman Løvenskiold with choreography by August Bournonville. Like Rossini, Duparc, and Sibelius, Barnett severely curtailed or stopped his composing, in his case, from 1841 until his death in 1890. During his long life, he met Beethoven and studied with Weber. On the other hand, Edward Loder’s The Night Dancers uses some of the same plot as another venerable ballet, Giselle (1841), and Puccini’s opera Le villi, but no unfaithful bridegrooms have to dance to their deaths—it all turns out to have been a bad dream. Unlike Barnett, Loder attempts a few spooky effects in his Overture. Probably the most successful of these Victorian composers was Michael William Balfe, who is represented by two overtures, those to The Siege of Rochelle and Le Puits d’amour (“The Well of Love”—it’s also a French pastry with a hollow center). The latter work, with a libretto by Scribe, was first presented in Paris. His first London success was The Siege of Rochelle , his fourth opera. He went on to compose 24 more, of which the most successful was The Bohemian Girl . Unlike most of these operas, William Wallace’s Lurline , based on the Lorelei legend, has actually been recorded. Both the Overture and that to his The Amber Witch seem more engaged by the story than some of the overtures I have mentioned. George Macfarren’s She Stoops to Conquer is, as expected, based on Oliver Goldsmith’s 1773 play. Some composers have continued to create even after they became deaf, or nearly so; Macfarren wrote She Stoops to Conquer after he had gone blind. It has not been recorded but there is a recording of another of his operas, Robin Hood . I am grateful to Richard Bonynge for his interest in obscure vocal and dance music which has resulted in some delightful recordings—in fact, I’m interested in almost anything he chooses to record. One can enrich the catalog without adding another Beethoven symphony cycle to it.


FANFARE: James Miller

Classical Music

Classical Music

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

A priceless document.

“Vaughan Williams may not have been a great technical conductor, but he knew how his music should sound”. The words are those of RVW’s friend and biographer, the distinguished critic, Michael Kennedy. I suggest that anyone hearing this revelatory CD would be bound to agree with that verdict.

Because Vaughan Williams was not thought to be a great conductor he was rarely invited to record his own music. This is in stark contrast to, say, Elgar, Walton or Britten, all of whom recorded their own music extensively. Yet the evidence of that boiling, incandescent recording of his Fourth Symphony that RVW set down with the BBC Symphony Orchestra on 11 October 1937 shows that he was a vivid communicator of his own works (Dutton CDAX 8011). That’s long been a prized part of my own collection, as has the recording of Dona Nobis Pacem, in an earlier transfer, but I never thought we’d uncover a recording of him conducting what is perhaps his finest symphony.

This performance of the Fifth comes from the 1952 Henry Wood Promenade concerts at which all six of the symphonies that RVW had written to date were played in honour of his forthcoming eightieth birthday. It’s worth remembering that the symphony had been premièred at the Proms just nine years earlier, also under the composer’s baton. According to Alan Sanders’ very interesting note the broadcast was recorded off-air onto a long-playing acetate disc by an engineer named Eric Spain. The results are quite remarkable. To be sure, there is some surface noise but it is never intrusive and a remarkable amount of detail and perspective has been captured. There seems to have been no attempt made to edit out the audience noise between movements and this adds to the sense that we are eavesdropping on an event. However, no applause is retained at the end and while I usually like to hear some applause at the end of a live recording – a minority view, I suspect – on this occasion I don’t mind.

As to the performance, well it’s a very fine one. There are a few orchestral fluffs but nothing too serious. Vaughan Williams gives a reading that is direct and unfussy but one that also conveys admirably the wonderful poetry of this radiant symphony. The first movement proceeds serenely yet it has a quiet inner strength. When the music quickens (at 5:11) RVW obtains lightness from the strings but the melody in the wind and brass has a hint of darkness. When the climax of the movement arrives (8:10) it has an unforced majesty.

Much of the music of the second movement is characterised by what I’d term a rugged, rustic lightness. In places it suggests to me the ‘Rude Mechanicals’ of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. There are some occasional frailties in the playing but generally speaking the BBCSO responds well, giving a delightful account of the piece. At the very end the music dissolves up into the ether.

How moving it is to hear Vaughan Williams direct the glorious slow movement, containing as it does so much music from Pilgrim’s Progress, the visionary work that had occupied him for so many years. He achieves a real hushed intensity at the very start and there’s a lovely cor anglais solo. This ravishing movement shows Vaughan Williams’s lyrical gifts at their peak. Everything about this reading seems so right and he builds up to a glowing climax before allowing the music to die away in peaceful tranquillity.

The finale is a joyful movement and it comes across as such in its creator’s hands. There’s a real sense of hope in this music, despite its genesis in the dark days of war and RVW puts that across effortlessly. The gentle benediction of the coda is handled sensitively and with satisfying simplicity. The composer said of his Fourth symphony that it was what he “meant” and I think that’s true also of this deeply satisfying performance of the Fifth.

It used to be thought by some commentators, mistakenly but understandably, that the Fourth symphony was a depiction of the gathering political storms in Europe in the 1930s. In fact the cantata Dona Nobis Pacem is, surely, a much more direct artistic response to those menacing times and it’s amazing to find that Vaughan Williams, having produced such a searing work in the run-up to the Second World War, then penned a pacific work like the Fifth symphony while the conflict was at its height.

The performance of Dona Nobis Pacem presented here was given just a month after the work received its first performance from the Huddersfield Choral Society under Albert Coates. When Vaughan Williams came to broadcast it for the BBC he had the services of the same two soloists who had taken part in the première. This performance has appeared on CD before (Pearl GEMM CD9342) but this present release is claimed as its first authorised release. Presumably the source for this Somm issue is the BBC itself for Alan Sanders comments that this “is one of the Corporation’s few pre-war music recordings to have survived”. The Pearl booklet states that the source for their issue is “a private acetate transcription”.

I can state unequivocally that an A/B comparison shows that this Somm transfer completely supersedes the Pearl effort. The Somm disc is brighter, clearer and has an almost visceral impact compared with the Pearl. Not only that, the new transfer reports much more detail in both the loud and soft passages. Indeed, following with a vocal score I was amazed at how much inner detail is revealed – for example in the third section where the choir divides into eight parts, singing quietly and unaccompanied (cue 14 in the vocal score). It is simply staggering how vividly this recording speaks to us more than seventy years after it was made.

And the performance is vivid too. In the first movement Renée Flynn’s voice is caught with real presence – as is the case throughout the performance – and she sings marvellously. When the orchestra and chorus enter Vaughan Williams obtains some impassioned results. The second movement is a setting of RVW’s beloved Walt Whitman, as are the third and fourth movements. “Beat! beat! drums!” the choir sings. It’s a frenzied movement and Vaughan Williams whips up a real storm. The brass and percussion sound really vivid. The chorus parts are not easy, as I know from personal experience, but the BBC Chorus acquits itself valiantly. They’re rhythmically accurate – no mean feat in itself, especially in unfamiliar music - and the composer inspires them to singing of genuine fervour.

The third movement, ‘Reconciliation’, is at the centre of the work in more ways than one. Roy Henderson is a most dignified and moving soloist. Here there’s further evidence of Vaughan Williams’s conducting skill, for examples of subtle rubato abounds in his account of this movement and this could not have been achieved by someone who didn’t know what they were doing on the podium. It’s a most beautiful movement and the performers rise to great eloquence, none more so than Henderson, especially as he sings of the soldier finding his enemy’s corpse in its coffin. Whitman is, for my taste, somewhat mawkish here but Vaughan Williams in his music and Henderson in his singing transcend that.

The third and final Whitman setting is the celebrated ‘Dirge for Two Veterans’. There’s great cumulative power in the march that forms the basis of much of this movement. Vaughan Williams builds the tension purposefully and with skill and patience. The huge climax at “I hear the great drums pounding” is powerfully achieved as is the potent passage for orchestra alone a few pages later (5:09). The text is portentous at times, as Whitman so often is, but Vaughan Williams’s music has strength and conviction and this enables him to avoid sentimentality.

The fifth movement opens with a masterstroke. Over the sparest of accompaniments the baritone soloist sings lines from the celebrated speech made in the House of Commons by the radical MP, John Bright (1811-1889), in opposition to the Crimean War on 23 February 1855: “The Angel of Death has been abroad throughout the land.” Here Henderson’s hushed singing is hypnotically powerful. He’s quite chilling without any theatricality and he generates a tremendous atmosphere before the choral outburst, “Dona nobis pacem”. The movement ends on a more hopeful note with a chorus that, to me, anticipates the concluding pages of the Christmas work, Hodie (1954). Despite all the trials and tribulations of the 1930s Vaughan Williams could retain a sense of hope, if not optimism.

Dona Nobis Pacem is in many ways a work of its time but, in the sentiments that it expresses, it’s surely a work for our times also. It’s sincere and impassioned and a very fine piece. I’m surprised and disappointed that it’s not heard more often. It’s both moving and exciting to hear it under the composer’s own direction at a time when it was so new and also at a time when it was so relevant to the events that had moved him to write it. In this excellent new transfer the performance comes vividly to life. As I listened I found myself wondering how many of the performers may subsequently have become victims of the war that was not then far off.

In this year (2008) that marks the fiftieth anniversary of Vaughan Williams’s death I hope there will be many fine performances, broadcasts and recordings to celebrate his life and music. The year has started auspiciously with Tony Palmer’s wonderful new film biography, O Thou Transcendent. However, this superb release from Somm may turn out to be the most invaluable of all the anniversary tributes. It’s a mandatory purchase for all lovers of Vaughan Williams’s music and, frankly, a priceless document.

-- John Quinn, MusicWeb International

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

This is the third recording and an 80th birthday tribute to the amazing Valerie Tryon, whose pianism and musicianship are totally undiminished as her long, glittering career provides ample witness. The Rachmaninov Piano Concerto, as well as Strauss Burlesque and the Dohn�nyi Variations, have long been in her repertoire.

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Bebbington's acclaimed collaboration with SOMM yields new riches in this important release featuring three exhilarating works for piano and string orchestra, including the world premiere recording of Jacob's First Piano Concerto. A prolific composer, Jacob was also renowned as an expert on orchestration, and composers such as Vaughan Williams and Noel Coward entrusted him with arrangements of their music. Australian composer Malcolm Williamson was Master of the Queen's Music in the 1970s. of his four concertos, No. 2 is the most immediately accessible, displaying a variety of stylistic affinities from Stravinsky to Gershwin. Doreen Carwithen was married to her former teacher, composer William Alwyn, but was an accomplished composer in her own right. She completed her Piano Concerto in 1948, and it remains among her most substantial and beautiful scores.

Classical Music

This fine collection of arguably the Greatest Film Music ever written brings together on one album music from some of the most memorable films ever made. Opening with the unforgettable music from the ground-breaking 1977 movie ‘Star Wars’ by the greatest living composer of film music, John Williams, this selection includes a unique 14-minute concert suite of music from the film. Other Williams scores for Stephen Spielberg blockbusters include those for the unforgettable fantasy ‘E.T. – The Extra-Terrestrial’ and the haunting science fiction ‘Close Encounters of the Third Kind’. This album also looks back to the heyday of Hollywood, with scores by Max Steiner – from ‘Gone With the Wind’ – and the undisputed Master of the genre, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, with music from ‘The Adventures of Robin Hood’ and the weepie ‘Escape Me Never’. The hit theme from ‘The Big Country’ by Jerome Moross is also here, and British music from legendary U.K. movies widens the scope of this unique collection, with two great film scores by Sir William Walton – ‘Henry V’, starring Laurence Olivier, and ‘The First of the Few’ – the famous ‘Spitfire Prelude and Fugue’ – as well as the great Ron Goodwin’s memorable ‘633 Squadron’ alongside music from two Soviet composers: Prokofiev’s score for ‘Alexander Nevsky’ and Aram Khachaturian’s famous ‘Adagio from Spartacus’, featured in the romantic historical drama ‘Mayerling’. All in all, this SOMM release should form part of any collection, conducted by the great Scottish-born Maestro Iain Sutherland, directing the Philharmonic Promenade Orchestra of Hilversum.

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REVIEW:

Expertly recorded by conductor Iain Sutherland and the Philharmonic Concert Orchestra, Great Classic Film Music captures the magic of cinema through the music we know and love.

– Classic FM

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

This is the second disc of songs with Sally Silver and Richard Bonynge appearing on SOMM. The collection of songs on this CD ranges across the whole of Massenet's career as a composer. This selection also includes duets and other settings for solo voice groupings, of which Massenet composed many.

"What an adventurous move it is for a record company to provide listeners with the opportunity to hear songs that have not been committed to disc time and time again." - IRR

An exciting release from SOMM Recordings, featuring the Russian-born pianist Nikolay Medvedev, is the aptly named Fusions, which brings together the music of George Gershwin and Nikolai Kapustin-two diverse pianist-composers who share the influence of jazz in their work-while also highlighting the virtuosity of Earl Wild, one of the greatest American pianists of the 20th century. George Gershwin, whose compositions spanned jazz, popular, and classical music, hardly needs introduction, yet the unique fusion of jazz and classical forms of Nikolai Kapustin-who was born the year of Gershwin's death in 1937-was limited to a niche audience in Russia, until his music became internationally known in the early 2000s. These classical and jazz infused works are vividly performed by award-winning pianist, Nikolay Medvedev, whom BBC Music Magazine has named "a pianist with poise and precision," while the Berliner Morgenpost has described his performances as "a mesmerizing combination of technical mastery and emotive depth." What sets Nikolai Kapustin apart as a composer is that, although his music inhabits jazz idioms naturally, everything in it is carefully notated on the page and not improvised as traditional jazz would be. His Second Piano Sonata, which opens this programme, dates from 1989. It's an optimistic four-movement work that blends classical sonata form with jazz elements, requiring high-level technical skill to manage it's complex, syncopated rhythms. The sophisticated harmonic and rhythmic language that Kapustin derived from jazz fusion, bebop, and stride piano is also very much in evidence in his Eight Concert �tudes of 1984. These are not intended to be played together as a set, and this recital features five �tudes, ranging from a thrillingly atmospheric stylisation of South American carnival time to Joplinesque ragtime riding above a powerful left-hand stride. Kapustin's 1984 Variations for piano, which close this recital, are in the classical form of variations while seeming to contain every conceivable jazz influence. The rousing finale in particular is one of Kapustin's most exhilarating compositions. Had George Gershwin not died tragically at the age of 38, he might have completed his projected set of Twenty-Four Preludes for solo piano. As it happened, he wrote eight, and the first Three Preludes were published as a set in 1925. Prelude I is an exercise in energetic syncopation, Prelude II is a lyric blues, and Prelude III closes the set brilliantly with rugged rhythms and further syncopations. In 1932, Gershwin was persuaded to publish The George Gershwin Song-Book for solo piano, and in the 1950s Earl Wild-named by music critic Harold C. Schonberg a "super-virtuoso in the Horowitz class"-released two collections of his own unique versions of Gershwin songs. His 7 Virtuoso Etudes after George Gershwin-including Fascinatin' Rhythm and the haunting The Man I Love-raise Gershwin's inherent genius to an exceptional level of concert standards.

SOMM Recordings is proud to present The Mira Ensemble, taking it's name from the Latin word meaning "wonderful" or "admirable" and comprising professional singers from across the UK. The group was founded in 2025 to champion the extensive, yet little known and often-neglected body of music for upper voices. Their debut disc focuses on the upper-voices repertoire by Herbert Howells, and it features entirely premiere recordings that shine a light on a rarely discussed part of his output. The ensemble is directed by Newcastle-born conductor, composer, academic, editor, and orchestrator Tom Edney. They're accompanied by pianist Nick Salwey, who has performed live on BBC Radio 3, ITV, Channel 4, and Classic FM. Nick taught at Oxford, Eton College, and Winchester College, where he was Head of Piano from 2005 to 2025, and where he continues to teach and work as accompanist. Herbert Howells (1892-1983) composed a significant body of lyrical, often pastoral partsongs characterized by rich harmony and expressive text-setting. Early partsongs featured on this disc include The Shepherd, a setting of William Blake; A Croon from an old cradle song; An Old Man's Lullaby by Elizabethan Thomas Dekker; and A Tinker's Song, an anonymous old London song from 1667. Two unison songs from the 1920s-an old rhyme The Wonderful Derby Ram and a Spanish Lullaby-hint at Howells's own childhood singing experiences. A Golden Lullaby is another setting of An Old Man's Lullaby by Dekker, and Howells's different approaches to voicing are striking. My Master Hath a Garden, on an anonymous text, reflects the influence of Gustav Holst, while the old rhyme Sing Ivy evokes some of Holst's folk song arrangements-though it shifts midway to a sound reminiscent of Tudor keyboard music. Howells's interest in dance forms grew from his fascination with English Tudor music, and he adopted a Sarabande in setting a text by the late-Elizabethan Thomas Campion, Tune thy Music. In the early 1930s, Howells dedicated a setting of one of Walter de la Mare's miniatures, Bunches of Grapes, to his two children. In similarly light-hearted vein, Sea Urchins with texts by Gladys Balcomb describes a seaside holiday across ten movements. Two poetic meditations on Elizabeth texts-Sweet Content by Robert Greene and To Music Bent by Campion-also come from this decade. Howells lost his nine-year-old son to polio in 1935, and Piping down the Valleys Wild-William Blake's depiction of a divine child asking the piper to continue to play-is the bittersweet offering of a grieving parent. Howells composed fewer upper-voices partsongs after the Second World War. Featured among these are The Key of the Kingdom, another de la Mare text adapted from an old rhyme; Pink Almond, with a text by the Irish writer Katharine Tynan, in Sarabande form; and the delightful A Christmas Carol, to a text by 17th century writer George Wither, composed on Christmas Day in 1957.