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 Études of 1984. These are not intended to be played together as a set, and this recital features five études, 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.

SOMM Recordings continues it's much-admired and long-running series The Beecham Collection with it's 35th release of live recordings by Sir Thomas Beecham and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. The recording highlights the operatic side of Beecham with orchestral excerpts from Les Troyens and La Damnation de Faust by Hector Berlioz, and Tannhäuser, Parsifal, Götterdämmerung, and Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg by Richard Wagner. Producer and audio engineer Lani Spahr, whose work for SOMM on Elgar from the Archives has been described by Gramophone Magazine as "astounding" and "revelatory," is once again responsible for the audio restoration on this release. The professional debut of Sir Thomas Beecham, Bart., C.H. took place on 6 December 1899 in St Helen's Town Hall when he was twenty years old. He conducted the Hungarian March from La Damnation de Faust by Berlioz with the Hallé Orchestra, and the music of Berlioz was to become one of the cornerstones of his repertoire for the next six decades. This present recording of the Hungarian March is a gloriously uninhibited performance that brought the house down at the end of a 1955 concert at the Royal Festival Hall. That concert also included two excerpts from Les Troyens by Berlioz. The Prelude to The Trojans at Carthage is followed by The Royal Hunt and Storm, with the Oxford Bach Choir providing the brief choral contribution from Nymphs, Sylvans, and Fauns. These performances are remarkable for their atmospheric poetry in the slower sections and the rampaging energy in the faster music. During the same year as his professional debut, a young Beecham made his pilgrimage to Bayreuth, and he became an enthusiastic, instinctual conductor of Wagner's music. The renowned music critic Neville Cardus once noted that, while German conductors tended to take a reflective and philosophical approach in interpreting Wagner, Sir Thomas concentrated on the dramatic and picturesque parts of the music. This concentration on colour and drama makes his conducting of the orchestral extracts included on this release both satisfying and full of character. These four orchestral excerpts were recorded at the Royal Festival Hall on 17 December 1958. The concert opened with the Overture and Venusberg Music from Tannhäuser; for decades one of Beecham's warhorses as a concert opener. Orchestral excerpts from Parsifal appeared regularly on Beecham's concert programmes, and this 1958 concert featured the Good Friday Music. Beecham conducted a number of Ring cycles during his career, and his affinity with the music shines through in this recording of Siegfried's Rhine Journey from Götterdämmerung. This release closes with the Prelude to Act One of Die Meistersinger, about which the review in the Daily Telegraph said, "the thickly overlaid texture of the overture can seldom have been given with such golden clarity."

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 José 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 José 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.

Kathleen's Ferrier's legacy of recordings has been well-known and widely-admired for over 60 years. So it seems amazing that, after so long, a treasury of previously unpublished and little-circulated BBC broadcasts is now being released. In typical fashion, SOMM leads the way in remembering great composers and artists of the past and Kathleen Ferrier is one of hte most divinely gifted among them. These recordings are from two sources. Several are from BBC's own archives and include Ferrier's first broadcast of Rubbra's Three Psalms, Op. 61, of which she was the dedicatee, five Schubert Lieder, four by Brahms and Parry's Love is a bable, recorded at the 1948 Edinburgh Festival, which makes a delightful conclusion to the album. The other source is the remarkable collection of Kenneth Leech, a composer and engineer who, from the 1930s to the 1950s, recorded numerous broadcasts, mainly using Bakelite and metal discs - the usual way for an enthusiast to preserve radio programmes at that time. This collection is stored at the National Sound Archive in the British Library.

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REVIEW:

Listening to these newly retrieved from BBC broadcasts and never released before, I am struck over again by the great contralto’s overriding characteristic – her natural, unfettered generosity. In song after song, she gives all of herself, nothing held back. She simply soars.

New to her discography on this release are six English tracks – three Psalms that Edmund Rubbra wrote for her in 1946, and others by Stanford, Parry, and the lesser-known Maurice Jacobsen, a mentor of hers. The songs belong to an almost forgotten era of English simplicity and Ferrier delivers them in the most idiomatic fashion, without advocacy or ornament.

I would not want to be without this record of an immortal artist, and nor will you once you have heard it.

– Open Letters Monthly (Norman Lebrecht)

History is re-claimed with two significant archive recordings, newly restored and re-mastered, by the BBC Symphony Orchestra of a master British symphonist in his early prime on Somm Céleste. The first recorded appearance of Edmund Rubbra conducting the wartime premiere of his own Fourth Symphony (taken from an off-air recording of the live broadcast) is coupled with a live 1954 BBC radio broadcast – considered “quite stupendous” by the composer – of the Second Symphony conducted by the work’s dedicatee, Sir Adrian Boult. The Second Symphony boasts a language that is utterly original, the entirety of its four-movement arc spun out from the long-breathed noble theme at its opening. So enamoured of the Second was Boult he later chose it as one of his Desert Island Discs when he appeared on the iconic BBC Radio 4 programme. Recently conscripted, Rubbra was dressed in full military uniform when he conducted the premiere of his Fourth Symphony during the 1942 Proms season at the Royal Albert Hall. At once epic and intimate, powerful and poetic, it has, claims his one-time pupil Robert Layton “one of the most beautiful openings not just in Rubbra but in all English music” and a stirring finale of triumphant dimensions that has been likened to Bruckner. Rubbra’s own introduction to the symphony – first broadcast by BBC Radio five days before its premiere in This Week at the Proms – offers a revealing glimpse into the heart of a mighty and moving symphony.

Classical Music

This delightful album of Spanish music arranged for strings and celebrating the 150th anniversary of Enrique Granados, was recorded by legendary conductor Jose Serebrier and Concerto Malaga String Orchestra founded in 1996. The orchestra is now one of the foremost ensembles in Spain, best known for its dedicated research into string repertoire ranging from the 17th century onwards. Ther recording pays tribute to one of Spain's most important composers, Enrique Granados and also includes works by Granados's contemporaries and successors who played active roles in promoting Barcelona's and Madrid's musical life in the middle of the 19th century. Over a century after his tragic death, Granados's music continues to entertain and inspire performers and listeners the world over. He spent his entire life in Barcelona and contributed to its musical life as apianist, composer, teacher, conductor, and concert organizer. He was thus only a true champion of Spanish music but he was also a leading figure in the Catalan movement known as modernisme which was on display in much of Barcelona's architecture from around 1900. Granados's best-known collection of 12 Danzas espanolas was premiered in Barcelona in 189. No. 5, Andaluza, transports us to the south of Spain with its suggestion of an impassioned song supported by an energetic guitar accompaniment. Orienta is an all-purpose adjective that suggests anything associated with Andalusia or the Middle East. The Intermezzo from his opera Goyescas and the hauntingly beautiful Pequena Romanza are eloquent examples of his broad stylistic range.

SOMM Recordings’ widely acclaimed survey of Charles Villiers Stanford’s chamber music continues with his two String Quintets and Three Intermezzi arranged for cello and piano. A unique collaboration between members of the Dante and Endellion Quartets, together with pianist Benjamin Frith, sees first recordings of the String Quintet No.2 in C minor and the arrangement of the Three Intermezzi. Composed with Stanford’s lifelong mentor, the legendary violinist Joseph Joachim, in mind, the Quintets are the product of a master craftsman speaking with his own distinctive voice. Both were first performed in 1904 and separately owe a direct and glancing debt to Brahms. The First echoes the three-movement structure of Brahms’ First Quintet and its melodious warmth although its second movement strikingly makes use of an archaic form of Irish traditional singing – sean nós. Composed to mark the 60th anniversary of Joachim’s first visit to Britain, the Second Quintet shares what Stanford authority Jeremy Dibble in his erudite booklet notes describes as “the same serious demeanor and a similar outlook towards grand architecture” of Brahms’ First Symphony, which Joachim conducted on that occasion. Originally composed for clarinet and piano, the Three Intermezzi of 1880 display a masterly interplay between cello and piano in Stanford’s own arrangement. The Dante Quartet’s three-volume survey of Stanford’s String Quartets was universally admired. Of Volume 2, Gramophone enthused: “All three of the works on this disc are premiere recordings, an astonishing state of affairs for what must surely be the most significant quartet cycle by any British composer before Frank Bridge. That alone makes this disc essential listening... They’re each worth hearing, and the Dante Quartet go at them with red-blooded gusto and an energy that’s clearly born from the thrill of discovery... SOMM and the Dantes have broken important new ground with impressive commitment.”

SOMM Recordings is pleased to announce the third volume in Leon McCawley’s much praised series of Franz Joseph Haydn’s Piano Sonatas. Six Sonatas, spanning the years 1767-84, are featured: the earliest No.31 in A-flat major, the latest No.56 in D major while Robert Matthew- Walker provides fascinating booklet notes describing the multifarious effects on his music of Haydn’s enthusiasm for equal temperament. Sonata No.31 in A-flat major is, he says, a continuation of Bach that seems to bypass Mozart and anticipate early Beethoven: “Astonishingly original music, and not just for its time”. The two-movement Sonata No.32 in G minor is a unique and intimate work while No.34 in D major boasts an innovative tonal scheme that disguises its virtuosity with immediately approachable technique. The F major Sonata No.38, notes Matthew-Walker, is “full of that wonderful combination of inner life and directly human expression that is the essence of Haydn”. Two later Sonatas – Nos.55 (B-flat major) and 56 (D major) – arguably saw romantic sonata form tested to its expressive limits by “Haydn’s original genius” and his “thematic developmental-variation technique even today causing surprise for its profoundly original subtleties”. Volume I was recognized with a coveted Diapason d’Or from Diapason magazine, which enthused: “What a range in his interpretation and how many layers of gradation! McCawley ties these together in a special quality of inflexions which make their point with great intelligibility and sensitivity”. BBC Music Magazine declared Volume II “should stand high on any list” of quality recordings of Haydn, adding “the sparkle of McCawley’s touch is instantly apparent”. Gramophone also commended McCawley’s playing, describing it as “light of touch, stylistically assured and brimful of intelligence and wit”.

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.

SOMM RECORDINGS is delighted to announce Elgar from America, Volume II: the first commercial release of three historic performances from 1940s’ New York featuring legendary Elgarian interpreters including violinist Yehudi Menuhin and conductors Malcolm Sargent and Arturo Toscanini at the helm of the NBC Symphony Orchestra. The results offer a fascinating transatlantic perspective on a titan of British music while revealing his musical legacy in a country he visited annually from 1905-07 and again in 1911. The featured recordings date from the first half of the 1940s and have been restored and remastered by the multi-award-winning audio restoration engineer Lani Spahr, who also provides informative booklet notes. Menuhin, long associated with Elgar since his 1932 recording of the Violin Concerto, is heard here in a 1945 performance of the work, abbreviated to fit radio constraints of time. It is conducted by Sargent who also leads an account of Cockaigne (In London Town) Concert-Overture from the same year. Toscanini’s 1940 performance of the Introduction and Allegro for Strings marks the only time he conducted it with the NBC SO, joined here by Mischa Mischakoff and Edwin Bachmann violins, Carlton Cooley viola, Frank Miller cello. Elgar from America, Volume I (ARIADNE 5005) was hailed by Classical Music Daily as “a fine start to this historic cycle” while MusicWeb International called it “a model of one of the things the album should be doing: filling the medium to capacity with engaging and/or controversial interpretations that one cannot simply over-hear... Essential listening.”

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.

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 announces an important new recording of two classic English song cycles by Sir Arthur Somervell – Maud and A Shropshire Lad – from the acclaimed partnership of baritone Roderick Williams and pianist Susie Allan. Hailed as “the English Schumann” for his mastery of song setting, song cycles in particular, Somervell’s music is marked by a distinctive blend of lyricism and harmony that makes itself indelibly felt in these two seminal works of the English song repertoire. His first cycle, Maud, setting 13 poems from Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s dark monodrama, was first performed in 1899 at the height of a fashion for recitals of songs sung in English. An intense, impassioned portrayal of infatuation, it is marked by remarkably eloquent and revealing relationships between voice and text, and voice and piano. Composed in 1904, the 10 poems from A.E. Housman’s A Shropshire Lad portray a young man wistfully contemplating nature, life and love at the age of 20 before following him through a life full of incident, the horror of the First World War and growing self-awareness. It prompted from Somervell texturally rich and varied music shot through with an aching lyricism all the more powerful and potent for its folk song-like simplicity and directness. Completing the recital are the enchanting, ever-popular lullaby Shepherd’s Cradle Song and wistful tale of childhood sweethearts with texts by Edgar Allan Poe, A Kingdom by the Sea. British music authority Jeremy Dibble provides informative booklet notes and Roderick Williams a revealing take on Somervell’s music from a singer’s perspective.

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

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 the birth of Ruth Gipps with Dedication, featuring five premiere recordings of chamber works inspired by her clarinetist-husband, Robert Baker, most of which were recently broadcast on BBC Radio 3’s Composer of the Week. Based on a Scottish legend, the early The Kelpie of Corrievreckan (Op.5b) is an evocative miniature for clarinet and piano revelling in Gipps’ facility for locating a human dimension within a tragic fantasy; the Op.23 E-flat Rhapsody for clarinet and string quartet described by Robert Matthew- Walker in his informative booklet notes adroitly placing Gipps’ music within the wider context of her career and personal life, as “a fluent, masterfully eloquent composition”. The Op.51 Prelude for Bass Clarinet is a heartfelt soliloquy with a series of dance-like variations at its heart. Two substantial works include the Quintet for Oboe, Clarinet and String Trio, Op.16 – a completion exercise for Gipps’ degree course at Durham University boasting an imaginative intertwining of the individual voices, and the Cobbett Prize-winning Clarinet Sonata composed at a single sitting. “I heard it in my mind and wrote it down as fast as I could scribble”, Gipps later recalled. Making their debuts on SOMM, clarinettist Peter Cigleris, oboist Gareth Hulse and pianist Duncan Honeybourne are joined by the Tippett Quartet, whose coupling of music by William Alwyn and Doreen Carwithen (SOMMCD 0194) was admired by The Strad for its “radiant insight and affection... beguiling lustre and allure”. SOMM’s coupling of Gipps’ Piano Concerto with works by Dora Bright (SOMMCD 273) was universally acclaimed, International Piano declaring it “a treat for fans of English music... unmissable”, MusicWeb International haiing it as “simply outstanding... really impressive”, with BBC Music Magazine remarking that Gipps’ Concerto “seizes one immediately with her distinctive personality and voice”.

Classical Music

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 Bülow'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’ acclaimed series of re-mastered recitals by the much loved, fondly remembered contralto Kathleen Ferrier continues with Kathleen Ferrier: 20th Century British Treasures. Featuring recordings made for Decca and the BBC between 1946 and 1953, it includes a previously unpublished recording of Ferrier’s passionate performance of Lennox Berkeley’s Four Poems of St Teresa of Ávila. Sir Thomas Allen, the distinguished interpreter of British song and Trustee of the Kathleen Ferrier Awards, contributes an extensive booklet commentary that brings a lifetime’s experience to bear in an insightful analysis of Ferrier’s dexterous and treasured talent, accented by the distinctive tones of her native Lancashire. The earliest recording, from 1947, is of Benjamin Britten’s ‘The Flower Song’ from The Rape of Lucretia, the latest, from 1953 (both BBC recitals), includes Howard Ferguson’s lovely five-part Discovery, three songs by William Wordsworth and Edmund Rubbra’s Three Psalms, specially written for Ferrier. Pieces by defining proponents of British song including Parry, Stanford, Vaughan Williams, Roger Quilter, Frank Bridge and Peter Warlock complete a crucial celebration of Ferrier’s inimitable contribution to the genre. Pianist Julian Jacobson, son of composer Maurice Jacobson, whose melancholy but sensuous The Song of Songs is heard in a 1947 BBC broadcast, also provides a personal poignant note on Ferrier’s championing of his father’s music.