At the Festival Hall, on 24 April, 1960, an 80-year-old Sir Thomas Beecham gave what would turn out to be the final concert he conducted with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in London. SOMM Recordings is releasing the last work on that historic programme as part of it's continuing Beecham Collection of live recordings-the Bacchanale from the opera Samson et Dalila by Camille Saint-Saens. Unbeknownst to them, the audience's tumultuous reception of this performance proved to be a farewell to Beecham on the London concert platform. In June 1960, he suffered a cerebral thrombosis and never conducted again; he died on 8 March 1961. Jon Tolansky, a former musician at the Royal Opera House who has since specialised in making documentary features on composers and performers, recalls hearing this programme as an 11-year-old. "I had never heard anything remotely like it," he says, "as Sir Thomas, now standing fully upright on the podium, became a generator of electric lightning and as the Royal Festival Hall seemed to be shaking, most especially in the last two minutes or so, in a catastrophic earthquake." This historic release also includes live recordings of Saint-Saens's First Cello Concerto and Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade. Once again, audio restoration is by the renowned audio recording engineer Lani Spahr,�whose work has recently been honoured with four Gramophone�Magazine Editor's Choice Awards-for Bruckner from the Archives Vols I and IV and, more recently, Bliss, the Composer Conducts and E.J. Moeran's music conducted by Sir Adrian Boult. Beecham was always what The Times called "a quietly persistent advocate for Saint-Saens," and he offers attentive support to the 1958 reading of Saint-Saens's First Cello Concerto by Ukrainian-born soloist Mischel Cherniavsky. The concerto is in one continuous movement with three tightly structured sections sharing interrelated ideas. Cherniavsky came from a family of nine musically gifted children, and he played in the Cherniavsky Trio with two of his brothers from 1901 until 1934, after which he was mostly based in London and France. The live performance of Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade on this release was given at the Royal Festival Hall on 21 March, 1957. This fell right in the middle of recording sessions when the orchestra was immersed in the piece for three days, which goes some way to explaining the glorious quality of the playing in the concert. What Rimsky-Korsakov described as the "various fairy-tale wonders" he had in mind when composing the work come across in Beecham's live performance with a freshness and brilliance that make for an unforgettable experience. A 24-year-old Steven Staryk became leader of the�RPO shortly before these recordings, earning the title "king of concertmasters" from�The Strad�magazine. About his performance on this concert The Times wrote "the solo playing of the new leader, Mr Steven Staryk, must have due acknowledgment."

SOMM RECORDINGS continues its acclaimed Vaughan Williams Live series celebrating the 150th anniversary of Ralph Vaughan Williams’ birth with Volume 4 featuring his signature Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis, the Concerto for Two Pianos and Eighth Symphony in recordings conducted by Dimitri Mitropoulos and Sir John Barbirolli. The Tallis Fantasia is a live recording from Carnegie Hall in 1943 with Mitropoulos, a committed advocate for Vaughan Williams’ music, conducting the New York Philharmonic-Symphony Orchestra. They are also heard in the Concerto for Two Pianos, again from Carnegie Hall in 1952, when the soloists were Arthur Whittemore and Jack Lowe, who forged a widely popular and critically acclaimed piano duo partnership in America in the middle of the last century. Recorded in Manchester’s Free Trade Hall in 1964, the Symphony No.8 is blazingly conducted by its dedicatee, Sir John Barbirolli, leading the Hallé Orchestra.

SOMM Recordings’ celebration of the 150th anniversary of Ralph Vaughan Williams’ birth continues with Volume 2 of Vaughan Williams Live, featuring historic performances by the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus and the Boston Symphony Orchestra conducted by Sir Adrian Boult in new, signature remasterings by Lani Spahr with authoritative booklet notes by Vaughan Williams’ biographer Simon Heffer. Two works featuring the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus include a 1945 BBC radio broadcast of the first performance of the wartime masterpiece Thanksgiving for Victory – with soprano Elsie Suddaby, organist George Thalben-Ball and Valentine Dyall as the speaker – and the rapturous Serenade to Music from the opening night of the BBC’s Third Programme (now Radio 3) in 1946. First performed in 1938 in celebration of Henry Wood’s jubilee as a conductor and originally composed for 16 solo singers, it appears here in its version for orchestra, chorus and four soloists – Isobel Baillie (soprano), Astra Desmond (contralto), Beveridge White (tenor), and Harold Williams (baritone). Its dedicatee, Boult, conducts a performance of Job: A Masque for Dancing in 1946 by the Boston Symphony Orchestra before he made his four studio recordings of the work. Volume 1 of Vaughan Williams Live (SOMM Ariadne 5016) was hailed by All About the Arts as “beautifully remastered [and] sounding like pure gold” and was The Symphonist’s Record of the Week. SOMM’s other Vaughan Williams recordings include the Gramophone Award-winning Symphony No.5 and Dona Nobis Pacem with the LPO/BBCSO (SOMMCD 071), and The Piano Music of Ralph Vaughan Williams by Mark Bebbington and Rebecca Omordia (SOMMCD 0164), described by International Piano as “compelling”.

Somm Recordings celebrates the 150th anniversary of Ralph Vaughan Williams’ birth with Vaughan Williams Live, Volume 3, featuring signature works conducted by the composer including the 1943 world premiere of his Fifth Symphony with the London Philharmonic Orchestra. All performances on this double-album set have been expertly restored and re-mastered by Lani Spahr.

SOMM Recordings announces a major new release: the first appearance on album of live performances of Tchaikovsky’s Fifth and Sibelius’ Second Symphonies by the iconic conductor Serge Koussevitzky and the London Philharmonic Orchestra. This historic, two-album set includes an exclusive, specially-commissioned documentary about Koussevitzky’s Boston Symphony Orchestra tenure and his LPO guest appearances, featuring interviews with four key players from both orchestras by Jon Tolansky. Tolansky’s revealing hour-long documentary includes wide-ranging musical excerpts and contributions from former BSO players Harry Ellis Dickson (violin), Everett ‘Vic’ Firth (timpani), and Harry Shapiro (sub-principal horn), and erstwhile LPO sub-principal horn Patrick Strevens. The symphonies are heard in performances Koussevitzky conducted with the LPO in London’s Royal Albert Hall in 1950. Both have been expertly restored by Lani Spahr. Noted authority on historical recordings Rob Cowan provides detailed booklet notes on the “individual, flexible, flammable, emotionally candid and utterly spontaneous” Koussevitzky’s stewardship of both orchestras. He describes the Tchaikovsky as “especially unique [in] its unsparing volatility.... The explosive climaxes leave the audience stunned”. Of the Sibelius, he says: “Koussevitzky’s London Second is as comprehensive an overview of the work as we have”.

Lani Spahr’s previous restorations for SOMM include the four-disc Elgar Remastered (SOMMCD 261-4) featuring recordings from the composer’s own collection, hailed by Audiophilia as “a fascinating achievement which will have you wishing for more”. George Szell: The Forgotten Recordings was a Gramophone Editor’s Choice and awarded a Diapason d’Or as “a major discovery”. Jon Tolansky is the founder of the Music Performance Research Centre (now Music Preserved) and a widely admired producer of audio documentaries on classical musicians. For Spahr’s restorations on Beecham Conducts Sibelius, he produced a 30-minute audio documentary. MusicWeb International declared it “an unmissable disc [that] walks straight into a position of eminence in the catalogue”.

SOMM RECORDINGS celebrates the 150th anniversary of Ralph Vaughan Williams’ birth with definitive, newly remastered performances by Lani Spahr of his ever-popular The Wasps Overture and two symphonies – the startling Sixth and, in its world premiere performance, the valedictorian Ninth – with Sir Malcolm Sargent conducting the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. As Simon Heffer comments in his authoritative booklet notes, this major new release is notable for containing historical performances (from 1957, 1958 and 1964), for Spahr’s meticulous restorations, and for offering “a clear indication of the genius of” Sargent. From the 1957 BBC Proms, The Wasps Overture blends Ravelian influences with English folk songs to produce a vivaciously genial impression of RVW at his most distinctively infectious. Recorded in 1964 and again for the BBC Proms, the Sixth Symphony – a ‘war symphony’ in all but name – is, as Heffer notes, “rich in orchestral experiment, more innovative than perhaps any other work in the composer’s canon, and whose enigmas and mysteries still remain to be deciphered”. RVW’s final, Ninth Symphony, “a work of beauty and grandeur, and a magisterial signing off”, says Heffer, is heard here in splendidly remastered audio in its very first performance in April 1958, four months before the composer’s death, by Sargent and the RPO. SOMM’s previous Vaughan Williams recordings include Symphony No.5 and Dona Nobis Pacem with the BBCSO (SOMMCD 071), “a mandatory purchase for all lovers of Vaughan Williams’s music and, frankly, a priceless document” (MusicWeb International). And the “compelling” (International Piano) The Piano Music of Ralph Vaughan Williams by Mark Bebbington and Rebecca Omordia (SOMMCD 0164). Lani Spahr’s previous, universally acclaimed SOMM restorations include Elgar Rediscovered (SOMMCD 0167) and the four-album set Elgar Remastered (SOMMCD 261-4) hailed by Audiophilia as “a fascinating achievement which will have you wishing for more”.

SOMM RECORDINGS is delighted to announce the label debut of composer-conductor Nimrod Borenstein with first recordings of three works showcasing the piano in separate guises: his Piano Concerto, piano quintet Light and Darkness, and Shirim for solo piano. Borenstein himself conducts pianist Clélia Iruzun and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in his Piano Concerto, while Iruzun is joined by I Musicanti on Light and Darkness, and is the soloist for Shirim. For Borenstein, who also provides booklet notes, the disc is a dual celebration: “of the piano, an instrument I love”, and of “musical friendship”, recognizing his long creative partnership with Iruzun.The three-movement Piano Concerto – his Op.91 and first for the instrument, building on discoveries from his continuing series of Chopin- influenced solo Études – was composed for Iruzun and premiered in Brazil in July 2022. It reflects Borenstein’s concept of “the concerto as an heroic form”, a notion informing its “very fast, virtuosic and full of energy” finale. 2021’s Shirim (Op.94) takes its title from the Hebrew word for “poems” or “songs”. Cast in 18 variegated miniatures, “each being a world in themselves”, they are, says Borenstein tributing Mendelssohn, “my own songs without words”. Light and Darkness (2018, Op.80), “begins and ends with pure light, but is full of melancholy, and contains sections of great despair”. Nimrod Borenstein’s music has been performed by some of the world’s most prestigious soloists, chamber ensembles and orchestras. Several of his 90-plus pieces are available on acclaimed recordings. In demand as a conductor, he is currently working with orchestras in the UK, Germany and Israel.

SOMM Recordings announces the release of The Reeds by Severn Side, a ravishing collection of choral works by Edward Elgar, sung by the Chapel Choir of the Royal Hospital Chelsea, led by director William Vann, accompanied by organist Joshua Ryan. Of the 18 featured works, six are first recordings. They traverse Elgar’s remarkable ascension from lowly lawyer’s clerk to self-taught composer to Master of the King’s Musick. And chart the impeccable fusing of his Roman Catholic heritage with the Anglican church tradition to which he contributed several masterpieces. They also reveal what Vaughan Williams described as the “mystery and [the] miracle” of Elgar’s flowering into the music laureate of Edwardian England, as Andrew Neill, former Chairman of the Elgar Society, observes in his authoritative booklet notes.

Alongside juvenilia such as the 16-year-old Elgar’s Credo on Themes from Symphonies 5, 7 and 9 by Beethoven (in James Olsen’s completion) and Drake’s Broughton, to which the 73-year-old composer would return in his Nursery Suite, are diverse works that reveal growing confidence, including early settings of the Mass and first recordings (in English) of the Op.2 trilogy: Jesu, word of God Incarnate; Jesu, Lord of Life and Glory; Jesu, Meek and Lowly. The masterpiece bitonal setting of Tennyson, There is Sweet Music, one of Elgar’s self-described “choral songs”, is a highlight, alongside twin peaks of his anthem writing: O Hearken Thou (heard as the Latin motet, Intende voci orationis meae) and substantial Give Unto the Lord. William Vann and the Chapel Choir of the Royal Hospital Chelsea’s previous SOMM releases include In Remembrance, described by Gramophone as “almost unbearably moving”, and as “an album that will have enduring value into the future” by MusicWeb International. Carols from Chelsea was a Best Classical Christmas Release, praised for its “model singing”, in The Guardian.

SOMM RECORDINGS celebrates the mastery of a 20th-century original with superb new recordings of Kurt Weill’s Violin Concerto and Second Symphony by Tomás Kocsis and the Ulster Orchestra conducted by Jac van Steen. Although Weill found fame in theatre-focused collaborations with Bertolt Brecht that produced the era-defining The Threepenny Opera, the onetime pupil of Ferruccio Busoni straddled the worlds of music-theatre, jazz and the concert hall with music of daring aplomb and dazzling achievement. Dedicated to Joseph Szigeti, his five-movement Violin Concerto of 1924 also pays tribute to the ailing Busoni and sports discernible allusions to Stravinsky, Mahler and the potent popular music of Weimar Berlin’s cabaret clubs. A unique blend, as Robert Matthew-Walker comments in his authoritative booklet notes: “No comparable work had appeared before from any composer”. Composed a decade later, the Second Symphony was premiered by Bruno Walter and the Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam. In three movements, “Weill’s contrapuntal mastery and his equally unselfconscious command of instrumentation present us with genuinely symphonic music, such as a 20th-century Haydn would have appreciated and enjoyed”. Jac van Steen’s previous SOMM releases include acclaimed recordings of Mozart piano concertos with Peter Donohoe, Valerie Tryon and Mishka Rushdie Momen (SOMMCD 278-2), The Deeper the Blue, an intriguing exploration of color and timbre in music featuring Vaughan Williams, Ravel, Dutilleux and Kenneth Hesketh (SOMMCD 275), and the International Classical Music Awards-nominated pairing of concertos by Albeniz and Mignone with Clélia Iruzun (SOMMCD 265). The Ulster Orchestra has released world premiere recordings of Vaughan Williams’ Fantasia for Piano and Orchestra and two piano concertos by William Matthias with pianist Mark Bebbington (SOMMCD 246).

SOMM RECORDINGS announces the release of I Vow to Thee, My Country, believed to be the first recording to feature all of Gustav Holst’s sacred choral music, by the Chapel Choir of the Royal Hospital Chelsea directed by William Vann, with organist Joshua Ryan and Richard Horne on tubular and bass bells. A prolific composer best known for his orchestral spectacular The Planets, Holst was an expressive and sincere composer and arranger of religious music despite his professed agnosticism. Included are his only setting of the Anglican Service for Evening Prayer, Nunc Dimittis, and his substantial Two Psalms and Four Festival Choruses, whose inspirations range from the Bible, Byzantine liturgy, 16th-century sources (not least Bach), and Welsh hymns. The 12 other featured songs see Holst setting an impressive array of centuries-spanning texts, and include the striking eight-part setting of Ave Maria for unaccompanied female voices, the ecstatic Not Unto Us, O Lord, premiered by the Royal Hospital Chelsea and William Vann in 2020, and the disc’s anthemic title song, its melody borrowed from The Planets’ ‘Jupiter’. I Vow to Thee, My Country is sponsored by The Holst Society, who also commissioned four new arrangements making their debut on album by Iain Farrington, and includes extensive, authoritative notes by Andrew Neill.

SOMM RECORDINGS�celebrates the powerful and dynamic relationship between soloist and orchestra with three works by Nimrod Borenstein, whom Opus klassiek called "Brilliant... an inspired composer but also an inspiring conductor." Borenstein leads the English Chamber Orchestra in his Concerto for mandolin and orchestra; Shakespeare Songs for soprano and orchestra; and Legende - Concerto for oboe and orchestra. The program features mandolinist Alon Sariel, honored for his "dazzling virtuosity" by The Vancouver Sun; soprano Sarah Fox- Honorary Fellow at the University of London's Royal Holloway College and winner of the Kathleen Ferrier and John Christie awards-praised for her "shining intelligence" by Gramophone; and oboist Sanja Romic, hailed by Zubin Mehta for her "musical depth and lovely tone" and applauded worldwide for her expressive sound and charismatic stage presence. Nimrod Borenstein-whose substantial catalogue currently numbers more than 100 works ranging from orchestral and chamber music to solo instrumental pieces-made his SOMM debut [SOMMCD 281] conducting the first recordings of his Piano Concerto, piano quintet�Light and Darkness, and�Shirim�for solo piano, celebrated by Pizzicato as "feel-good music of exquisite quality." With reference to this present release, Borenstein describes the relationship between soloist and orchestra as having an epic, almost theatrical quality. "It can become a moment of confession, or of confrontation," he says, "a personal voice rising against, or carried by, a collective force." These elements are richly evident in all three works presented here. While the qualities of a mandolin can be delicate, quiet, and soft, Borenstein's choice in composing his Concerto for mandolin and orchestra was to create a work that feels monumental in scope while showcasing the virtuosic capabilities of the instrument. To this end, the composer explored many of the technical ideas and expressive tools pioneered by Paganini for the violin, adapting them to the mandolin's unique sound. This release of Borenstein's Shakespeare Songs reprises his performance in March 2025 at London's Cadogan Hall with Sarah Fox and the English Chamber Orchestra. In choosing and setting these five Shakespeare sonnets, Borenstein has created both variety and a sense of overall structure ranging from the enchantment of pure beauty in "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?" to the despair-turned-hope in "When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes." The two-movement Legende - Concerto for oboe and orchestra was written for and premiered by Sanja Romic in 2024. The slow, dance-like opening is like a preamble to a tale about to be told; "Let me tell you a story about a legend I once heard." The second and final movement is more fiery, with contrasts leading to a faster tempo return of the opening theme, creating a sense of narrative closure before a brilliant, virtuosic conclusion.

SOMM Recordings adds to it's already extensive catalogue of music by the British composer and BBC Radio 3 broadcaster Stephen Dodgson�(1924�- 2013) with a third volume of his songs titled Turn Ye to Me. SOMM's previous Dodgson song releases include The Peasant Poet [SOMMCD 0659], hailed by Opera Today as "an incredibly interesting and engaging disc... done excellent service by all the performers;" and The Distances Between [SOMMCD 0673], about which the�British Music Society�said "the performances (by some prestigious names) and the warm, lifelike recording are impeccable." The performers on this third volume of Dodgson songs include prior SOMM�artists also featured in Volumes I and II: Irish soprano Ailish Tynan and British mezzo-soprano Katie Bray, both past winners of the BBC Cardiff Singer of the World competition; doctor-turned-tenor James Gilchrist, who is noted for his forthright and passionate style; Roderick Williams, one of the most sought-after baritones of his generation; guitarist and Dodgson specialist, Mark Eden; and GRAMMY� Award-winning pianist, Christopher Glynn. The recital opens with a first release of Three Songs to words of Thomas Lovell Beddoes, who died by suicide in 1849 aged 45. Tandaradei is his translation of the 13th-century German love poem, Under der linden, by�Walther von der Vogelweide. Dirge and The Old Crow of Cairo are from Beddoes's posthumously published drama Death's Jest Book. Three single songs include settings of Andrew Marvell's pastoral poem The Mower to the Glow-Worms; George Meredith's sonnet Winter Heavens; and Matthew Prior's poem Daphne to Apollo inspired by Greek myth and set to guitar accompaniment. Two short solo piano pieces are from a set of Eight Fanciful Pieces-included in full on SOMM's 2024 release of piano music by Dodgson [SOMMCD 0684.] The marcato (marked) tempo of Il Zoppo suggests an irregular gait, while the contemplative Mirage hints at an Impressionistic style. Dodgson composed three sets of Bush Ballads based on texts by Australian poets and Australian folk verses. This release of the third series is a first recording. All Got a Mate sets an anonymous text as a folk duet. Rollicking, but steady is the tempo marking for Song of the Squatters to words by A.B. "Banjo" Paterson. The group closes with a quieter setting of Waitin'-a-While by Jim Grahame. Two single songs from 1950 include The Stone, marked Moderato: Calmo, to words adapted from Hal Summers, and the title song, Turn Ye to Me, which is a gently haunting Hebridean air with lyrics by Christopher North. The recital closes with London Lyrics, a cycle of five songs for tenor and guitar set to poetry by five different poets across four centuries-including Wilfred Owen and Cecil Day-Lewis-all inspired by Dodgson's home city. The composer draws expressive and captivating range from voice and guitar, exquisitely executed here by James Gilchrist and Mark Eden.

SOMM Recordings has had the good fortune to add to it's wide-ranging catalogue the "extraordinary voices" (BBC Radio 3)�of the all-female a cappella vocal quintet Papagena these past few years. Formed in 2015, the ensemble is made up of sopranos: Elizabeth Drury, Imogen Ram-Prasad, and Suzzie Vango; mezzo: Shivani Rattan; and alto: Sarah Tenant-Flowers. What distinguishes Papagena is their gloriously adventurous programming, which defies pigeonholing: medieval, classical, folk, and contemporary music from around the world, juxtaposed with repertoire from Hildegard of Bingen to Katy Perry and all points in between. Papagena's debut album, Nuns and Roses, was self-released in 2017. Their second, The Darkest Midnight, was released in 2018 by SOMM. Selected as MusicWeb International's Recording of the Month, it reached No.6 in the classical charts and No.1 in Amazon's classical download chart. In 2020, Papagena's second release with SOMM was Hush!, a Recommended Recording by MusicWeb International, which was praised by John Quinn as "another winner from Papagena. More, please!" SOMM is happy to oblige. SOMM's third collaboration with Papagena is Tomorrow is Today: Songs of love, beauty and the passing of time. As an example of the unique diversity of their programming, this new collection opens with a set of four songs that are united by ideas of love in various guises. The Gallant Weaver with words by Robert Burns tells of the sincere love of a humble girl for her weaver. S� Ch'io Vorrei Morire (Yes, I should wish to die), a madrigal by Claudio Monteverdi, deals with passionate sexual attraction. Oy Khodyt Son (Oh, sleep is coming) is a traditional Ukrainian melody about love within a family unit. Kaval Sviri (The Flute is Playing) is a traditional Bulgarian song of coquettish flirtation. A sampling of other highlights from this release includes Henry Purcell's Music for a while from his incidental music for John Dryden and Nathaniel Lee's 1692 play Oedipus. Holi, in a setting by Papagena's mezzo-soprano Shivani Rattan, is an Indian celebration song. The motet, Sicut lilium, is attributed to Leonora d'Este, a daughter of Lucrezia Borgia. From a collection of the earliest surviving examples of polyphonic music written in English, is the carol, Ther is no rose. The title song Tomorrow is Today, commissioned by Papagena from Janet Wheeler with a text by the composer's daughter Sarah Cattley, is subtitled Dawn Chorus, and is filled with bird references reflecting the ensemble's name of the bird-catcher's wife in Mozart's Magic Flute. Dolce Cantavi, written in the style of an Italian madrigal by American Caroline Shaw, also contains allusions of birdsong, natural beauty, and the dawning hope of love; while in Welcome somer, the Canadian composer Don Macdonald partners Chaucer's text with music that references medieval rhythms within a more contemporary harmonic idiom.

SOMM RECORDINGS celebrates the 400th anniversary of two Renaissance masters of the First Golden Age of English Song: John Dowland (1563-1626) and John Danyel (1564-1626). This recital for tenor and lute takes it's name from Dowland's song, Time Stands Still. The recording features British tenor Kieran White, who was a chorister at Wells Cathedral and held a Kohn Foundation Scholarship at the Royal Academy of Music. The Guardian has praised White's "pure, luminous tenor" and Opera Magazine his "extraordinary emotional clarity." He performs with long-time collaborator and friend, the Swiss-French lutenist C�dric Meyer, who holds two Master of Arts degrees and a postgraduate certificate with a specialisation in early music. Meyer plays here on his personally handcrafted eight-course Renaissance lute, based on an extant Italian lute from 1592. Lute songs, or "ayres," combine music and poetry to create songs that are filled with love, melancholy, and despair. John Dowland is acknowledged as the premier secular lute song composer of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, with a special affinity for melancholy. It was a distinction he relished, even punning on his own name in the lute solo Semper Dowland, semper dolens - Always Dowland, always doleful. Dowland's status as a god of early music enthusiasts is matched by his astute business sense. To prevent unscrupulous printers from distributing his work in pirated editions, Dowland preserved his music by publishing it himself. The lute songs on this recording come from The First Booke of Songes or Ayres, published in 1597; The Second Booke, 1600; The Third and Last Booke, 1603; and A Musicall Banquet, published by Dowland's son Robert in 1610. The texts are predominantly by anonymous authors. Unlike his enterprising publication of lute songs, Dowland never printed a definitive collection of his solo lute music. The four lute solos recorded here come from varying sources, with the result that not all can be definitively attributed. Nevertheless, the solo instrumental pieces offer a taste of the highly refined art of lute playing at the turn of the 17th century. Dowland's superstar reputation is diametrically opposed to that of his exact contemporary, John Danyel, whose vocal music survives in a single, slender volume, First Booke of Songes or Ayres-twenty-one songs for the lute, viol, and voice-published in 1606. Danyel seems to have come from a wealthy family. He graduated from Oxford, served as a tutor and court musician, and his privacy could well have been by choice. Yet these few pieces that have survived illustrate the uniquely sensitive mind of a skilful composer. Despite being less prolific and remaining comparatively obscure, noted early music specialists consider every one of Danyel's extant works a masterpiece.

MM Recordings presents a seductive and captivating release of Russian art songs, an intriguing juxtaposition of Russian Romances for voice and piano by Anton Arensky (1861-1906) and his student Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873-1943). The recital, "performed with great charm and sympathy" (Opera Today), features two artists making their debut for SOMM: lyric coloratura soprano Anastasia Prokofieva-a rising young star in the opera world, described as "striking" by Opera Magazine-and London-based conductor, pianist, and vocal coach Sergey Rybin, an Associate of the Royal Academy of Music, where he studied under SOMM recording artist Malcolm Martineau. Sergey Rybin's excellent notes, together with full texts and translations, help bring these neglected gems to light and highlight the inner connection between Arensky and Rachmaninoff. While there is no doubt that Rachmaninoff was possessed of a unique and innate musical gift, he acknowledged the profound influence of his teacher and mentor Arensky, who was his professor of harmony, counterpoint, and free composition at the Moscow Conservatory between 1885 and 1888, when Rachmaninoff was still a teenager. Arensky's writing-and Rachmaninoff's, too-is full of eminently singable melodies that are deeply connected both to bel canto and to a Russian folk aesthetic. Sergey Rybin also makes the point that a certain virtuosic flair in the piano parts of these rom�nsy, by both the professor and the pupil, "are unmistakably the branches of the same stylistic tree." Anton Arensky studied composition with Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov at the St. Petersburg Conservatory, and he was just twenty-one when he began teaching harmony and counterpoint-and later, instrumentation and free composition-at the Moscow Conservatory. While his role as a teacher may well be his most lasting contribution, he remained active as a composer of operas, symphonies, concertos, chamber music, and piano works. He also wrote fifty-seven rom�nsy, which show his affinity for intimate, emotional expression. Included among the thirteen art songs by Arensky on this release are the Five Romances, Op. 70 from 1900, and the five-song cycle Reminiscence, Op. 71, circa 1905. Before Rachmaninoff left Russia permanently in 1917, he composed a total of eighty-three rom�nsy for voice and piano. His gift for lush melodies, expansive emotional range, and exceptionally difficult piano works makes him one of the last great Romantic pianist-composers, and these stellar qualities are evident in his art songs. Thirteen are presented on this programme. The earliest, from his Six Songs, Op. 8 written in 1893, include Child! You are as beautiful as a flower and Dream. The Twelve Songs, Op. 21, composed in 1902, include some of his finest vocal writing, Lilacs being an exquisite example. Rachmaninoff's last compositions in the genre of rom�nsy were the Six Songs, Op. 38 in 1916; four from this set close the recital.

SOMM Recordings presents an intriguing pairing of chamber works that share the unusual and expressive instrumentation of piano, violin, viola, cello, and double bass: Johann Nepomuk Hummel's 'Military' Quintet in C major and Franz Schubert's Piano Quintet�in�A major, his Trout Quintet. Extraordinarily, this is a first recording of Hummel's 'Military' Quintet.' It is an amazing find by the virtuoso double-bass player Leon Bosch, Artistic Director of the mixed-instrument chamber ensemble I Musicanti,�with whom he performs here. They're joined by Peter Donohoe, laureate of the Tchaikovsky Competition and acclaimed as one of the foremost pianists of our time. Johann Nepomuk Hummel's gift as a composer was matched by his excellence as a pianist. A child prodigy, Hummel was taught and housed by Mozart for two years, and he studied further with Clementi, Haydn, Albrechtsberger, and Salieri. Hummel's mastery as a pianist and his compositional personality, admired by Liszt, shine through in his two piano septets featuring winds, brass, and strings, which he also arranged for a combination not uncommon at the time of piano, violin, viola, cello, and double bass. It was in October 1829, nearly a year after Schubert's death, that Hummel completed�his 'Military' Piano Septet No. 2. For publication in Vienna the following year, he also prepared a piano quintet version, again arranged for that ensemble of piano, violin, viola, cello, and double bass.�The Septet's scoring-for piano, flute, clarinet, trumpet, violin, cello, and double bass- already included four of the five of those instruments, so in effect�the alternate version redistributes the wind and brass parts among four strings with added viola. It is this version that receives it's premiere recording on this release. Franz Schubert's Trout Quintet came about during a walking holiday in the Alps in 1819, when he made the acquaintance of Sylvester Paumgartner, an amateur cellist who promoted chamber concerts in his home. He greatly admired Schubert's lied, Die Forelle ("The Trout"), and he commissioned a set of variations based on the song's melody. At the time, Paumgartner had brought together a group of musicians to perform Hummel's Piano Quintet in E flat minor-the arrangement Hummel made of his first piano septet-and suggested that Schubert write his new variations for that same quintet ensemble of pianist, violinist, violist, cellist, and double bass player. Schubert being Schubert, he not only composed a set of five variations on Die Forelle, but he created a five-movement quintet that featured the variations as the fourth movement of a work that has become one of the most renowned and beloved in the chamber repertoire. It is Schubert's first mature chamber work. He was twenty-two years old.

SOMM Recordings marks the 150th anniversary of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (1875�- 1912) with a diverse selection of his orchestral works, reflecting both his Afro-British parentage and a musical milieu that included Holst and Vaughan Williams. Of particular note is that five of the seven works presented here are first recordings. This commemorative release features the Ulster Orchestra conducted by Charles Peebles, whose first recordings of Piano Concertos�by Dora Bright and Ruth Gipps for SOMM�were widely praised. It was�quickly�apparent that Coleridge-Taylor possessed an unusual talent, and he produced a remarkable body of work before his untimely death at 37 though much of his music has been hidden from public view by the absence of surviving performance material. He composed his first work for voice and orchestra, Zara's Earrings, when he was just 19. Rebecca Murphy, hailed by Opera Journal for her "stunning delivery," is the featured soprano. The�Ballade, also written when Coleridge-Taylor was 19,�was premiered by Isabella Donkersley, the future wife of Augustus Jaeger (soon to be immortalised by Elgar as 'Nimrod' in his Enigma Variations). The Ballade's great drama and charismatic melodic material�play to the strengths of Coleridge-Taylor having been a violinist. �Ioana Petcu-Colan, heard here,�is leader of the Ulster Orchestra�and a soloist of considerable reputation. When Coleridge-Taylor heard Brahms's Clarinet Quintet while a student at the Royal College of Music, he was encouraged to write his own. The Romance for string orchestra is an arrangement of the quintet's introspective Larghetto affettuoso movement. Solemn Prelude, written for the Worcester Three Choirs Festival of 1899, is a work of elegiac pathos exuding the confidence of a young composer reaching the height of his powers. Since it's modern revival in 2021, it's been performed by some of the world's most distinguished orchestras. Coleridge-Taylor's Idyll, a commission for the Gloucester Three Choirs Festival in 1901, was a reworking of the Lament from his Symphony in A minor. When he conducted it's first performance, the Times critic wrote, "it was a single, very beautiful movement in C major. Giving ample room for the composer's love of original rhythm and rich and individual orchestral colouring. " Ethiopia Saluting the Colours from 1902 is an exuberant�work for orchestra and organ. It was inspired by Walt Whitman's moving poem paying tribute to an elderly Ethiopian woman encountered during the American Civil War. Beerbohm Tree commissioned the�incidental music for Stephen Phillip's play�Nero�in 1906, and the chance for Coleridge-Taylor to hear his music nightly rather than as one performance in the concert hall was a particular joy. This anniversary collection includes the first�Entr'acte,�which also featured at the 1907 Proms under Henry Wood.

In January 2026 The Elgar Society marks it's 75th anniversary, and SOMM Recordings celebrates the event with several Elgar releases in gratitude for the society's generous support and encouragement from 1998 to the present day. Light Out of Darkness, Choral Music by Elgar was recorded in February 2025, with the support of The Elgar Society, and continues the inspired journey of the composer's musical development in a series of widely acclaimed releases by SOMM. This present release includes five world-premiere recordings. Light Out of Darkness features the Chapel Choir Of The Royal Hospital Chelsea conducted by their Music Director, the multiple prize-winning conductor and pianist William Vann. This follows their hugely successful first recording of Elgar's choral works for SOMM, The Reeds by Severn Side [SOMMCD 0278]. The featured organist is Callum Knox, an emerging talent from Australia. Edward Elgar (1857-1934) had an unorthodox musical education that turned out to be a fertile training ground for his evolution into one of the most important composers of the Victorian and Edwardian eras. He "learned on the job," so to speak, studying scores and instruction manuals in his father's music shop; assisting his father who played the organ at Worcester's St George's Church; and graduating to organist for St George's in 1885. From these early years come world-premiere recordings of the hymn Praise ye the Lord, 1878, and the first of Elgar's seven settings of Thomas Aquinas's O Salutaris Hostia composed c.1877. Two later versions-from c.1880 (dedicated "To my father - with affection") and 1882-are also included here. This last is another world-premiere recording, as is Elgar's a cappella setting of the Stabat Mater from 1886. In 1888, now aged 31, Elgar composed the dignified Ecce sacerdos magnus (Behold a great priest) for a visit to St. George's by the newly installed Bishop of Birmingham. This release includes three anthems extracted from Elgar's oratorios. Light out of darkness and Light of the World, we know Thy praise are taken from his first oratorio, The Light of Life (Lux Christi). The third is The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, the opening chorus from his penultimate oratorio, The Apostles. Elgar's part songs, or "choral songs" as he later preferred to call them, contain some of his greatest music. Amongst the six included here are Byron's Deep in my soul from The Corsair; O wild West Wind! Inspired by Shelley's Ode to the West Wind; and Go, Song of Mine after the Italian 13th century poet, Guido Cavalcanti, translated by Dante Gabriel Rossetti. The programme closes with Elgar's rousing 1902 arrangement of God Save the King, heard here in the version for organ accompaniment.

SOMM Recordings is proud to present an album devoted to works by David Matthews, hailed as one of the leading symphonists of our time. His diverse output is superbly represented here by a Symphonic Diptych from his opera, Anna; his Symphony No. 11; and his Flute Concerto. The release features Dutch conductor Jac van Steen and the Ulster Orchestra, of which he is Honorary Principal Guest Conductor. Both are frequent SOMM collaborators, most recently on Manuel de Falla: The Three-Cornered Hat, Nights in the Gardens of Spain & Seven Spanish Folk Songs, SOMMCD 0694, about which Gramophone magazine wrote, "when van Steen unleashes the full orchestra... The tone is big and generous." They are joined by flautist Emma Halnan, winner of the BBC Young Musician Competition in 2010 in the woodwind category. She was also elected an Associate of the Royal Academy of Music (ARAM) in the Academy's 2024 Honours, recognizing alumni of the Academy who have distinguished themselves in the music profession. Emma enjoys commissioning new works, and composers who have written for her include Sir�Karl Jenkins, James Francis Brown, and, as here, David Matthews. David Matthews' first opera Anna had it's concert premiere at The Grange Hampshire in July 2023, conducted by Jac van Steen. Shortly afterwards, Jac suggested that David should make an orchestral reduction, as Strauss had done for his Intermezzo and Die Frau ohne Schatten. So, in this Symphonic Diptych, David has compressed the opera into two movements, one for each act-I. Anna in Love and II. Lament for Anna-which tell the story in purely orchestral terms about a brother (Peter) and sister (Anna) and their different reactions to the revolution that has just taken place in their country. In transferring all the vocal parts to instruments, David has slightly increased the opera's orchestra. In 2022, at the Presteigne Festival, David Matthews heard some striking trumpet playing at an orchestral concert. The next day, he wrote a few bars of quiet trumpet solo over a string chord. At first, he did not know what to do with this idea, until he thought it might be the beginning of a symphony, and so his single-movement Symphony No. 11 was conceived. He decided to preface it with an allegro D major/d minor theme, beginning on violas and moving to first violins, and these two ideas form the basis for a set of free variations. Considering the flute to be, essentially, a melodic instrument, David Matthews composed his Flute Concerto as alternating song and dance. The first movement combines a gentle allegretto with a fast waltz. The slow middle movement evokes a dance celebrating Pan, while the finale begins with a little tune that he wrote for his wife, Jenifer, at Christmas 2019, which has something of an Irish flavour. Siegfried Wagner was named for the young hero in Richard Wagner's Ring Cycle and immortalized in the Siegfried Idyll, included on this release. He was born to Richard Wagner and his future wife, Cosima (nee�Liszt), on 6 June 1869. Although Siegfried considered following a profession outside music (and, as a youth, studied architecture in Berlin and in Karlsruhe), it was inevitable that he would follow a career in music given the lineage of both his parents and his grandfather, Franz Liszt. In addition to receiving instruction in music from Liszt, the thirteen-year-old Siegfried began his advanced musical studies in Frankfurt with Engelbert Humperdinck, a true disciple of Richard Wagner. Siegfried became an assistant at Bayreuth in 1892, immersing himself in his father's music under the strong influence of Cosima Wagner and the conductor Hans Richter. In 1895, he made his debut at Bayreuth conducting a complete Ring cycle. The debut was a considerable artistic success, and Siegfried's future as the true guardian of the Wagner inheritance was assured, as he took a greater share in the direction of the Bayreuth Festival. With Cosima's full endorsement, Siegfried assumed the general directorship from his mother in 1908. Siegfried's busy professional life was devoted in the main to Bayreuth in the 1920s, but it was also during this time that he began a recording career devoted almost exclusively to his father's and his own works. Apart from his evident qualities as a conductor of his father's music-heard here in the recorded legacy he left of his performances at Bayreuth and in Berlin and London-he was equally keen to establish himself as a composer. The first of his twelve completed operas, Der Barenhauter (Bearskin) inspired by the German fairytale, met with public and critical acclaim when it was produced in 1899. The acoustic recording of the overture is heard here. Among the Richard Wagner works conducted by Siegfried Wagner on this historic release are well-known selections from Das Rheingold and Die Walkure from the Ring Cycle. Also included are a suite from Parsifal and selections from Tannhauser, Lohengrin, and Tristan und Isolde.

SOMM Recordings is delighted to build upon it's critically acclaimed discography with violinist, Adrian Butterfield, and the London Handel Players in a new collaboration featuring the Op. 7 set of six Violin Concertos by the French violinist-composer, Jean-Marie Leclair. The London Handel Players, praised by the New York Times for their "soulful depth" and "consummate skill and musicianship," have previously released five Handel discs with SOMM, along with recordings that celebrate Geminiani, J.S. Bach, and Telemann. The group's co-founder and director, period-instrument violinist Adrian Butterfield, has been described as "a marvel" by Gramophone for his recordings of Leclair's first three books of violin sonatas. The solo concerto emerged in Italy in the early 18th century through composers like Torelli, Albinoni and, particularly, Vivaldi. J.S. Bach acquired a copy of Vivaldi's popular set of twelve concertos, L'Estro Armonico, to transcribe and study, and he put his own stamp on concerto writing with works that are larger in scale, making use of more detailed contrapuntal development and a greater degree of harmonic variety. When Jean-Marie Leclair met an untimely death on 23 October, 1764 in a still-unsolved murder in Paris, he left behind a stellar reputation as the founder of the French violin school, along with a collection of works for violin that includes four volumes�of solo violin sonatas and two volumes of violin concertos; his Op. 7, heard here, and Op. 10, to follow in the near future. These virtuosic and elegant violin concertos are something of an amalgam of the Italian concerto style and of Bach's formalistic innovations. Leclair was born in Lyon in 1697, and his dream was to become a solo violinist in his own country. But, at this time in France, violin playing was the province of country fiddlers and orchestral players, while the viol was the chosen instrument for the French upper classes. When the Italian violinist-composer, Arcangelo Corelli, published his iconic set of Op. 5 sonatas in 1700, no French violinist was equipped with the technique to perform them. Having spent a year studying dance and composition in the Italian city of Turin, Leclair moved to Paris, where he soon published his first set of twelve violin sonatas. For a couple of years, he commuted between Paris and Turin in order to study with a former student of Corelli's, and, over the course of two decades, published three more sets of sonatas, along with the two sets of violin concertos. The concertos are justly celebrated for their blend of French elegance and Italian virtuosity, reflecting not only Leclair's skill as a renowned violinist, but also his background, which drew on a variety of Europe's national styles. In the early 1910s, Holst became interested in astrology, and he conceived the idea of a suite for orchestra based on the solar system's individual planets. Originally, he composed�The Planets on the piano, using the instrument in his newly-built, sound-proofed room in the music wing at St Paul's Girls School as well as the piano at his home in Thaxted. This version for four hands, two pianos was scored by two of his colleagues at St Paul's, Vally Lasker and Nora Day, who acted as amanuenses, because Holst suffered intermittently from painful neuritis in his right hand. Following the resounding success of the orchestrated version of The Planets, the original piano duet score was overlooked, though it was eventually published separately in 1949-51. In 1979, Holst's daughter, Imogen, reissued the complete two-piano arrangement in one volume, and Tessa Uys and Ben Schoeman perform this version here. Elgar's renown was such that, at the height of his fame, several established musicians were commissioned by publishers to make piano transcriptions of his orchestral music. This was no mean feat, given that Elgar's scores are scrupulously marked as to how he wanted every phrase-sometimes even every bar or note within that phrase-to be played. It was the composer, arranger, and conductor, Otto Singer II, who made the transcription for piano four-hands of Elgar's 1905 Introduction and Allegro, scored originally for solo string quartet and string orchestra. Singer's insight and skill are evident in techniques like transferring string double-stopping to spread keyboard chords, and his piano four-hands version is admirably true to Elgar's evolving contrapuntal and harmonic ideas. In Victorian England, the marriage of a tradesman's son to the daughter of a Major-General in the British Army, who was eight years his senior, might not have appeared a perfect match. Yet, the marriage of Edward Elgar and Caroline Alice Roberts turned out to be a love-match. In 1888, as a wedding present, Edward presented to Carice, as he called her, Salut d'Amour. This enduring melody has inspired numerous arrangements for widely varying instrumental combinations, including this one for piano duet.

SOMM Recordings' fruitful collaboration with Leon Bosch, renowned double bass player and director of I Musicanti, has recently produced a group of world premiere recordings, which consist of four delightful and interestingly disparate British Piano Quintets. The two quintets by Percy Godfrey (1899-1945) and Richard Walthew (1872-1951) fall within a post-Romantic idiom reminiscent of Rachmaninoff's music, while those of John McCabe�(1939-2015) and Ivor Hodgson (b.1959) share terrific rhythmic vitality and modern harmonies whilst remaining entirely accessible. Although the music of Percy Godfrey is little known these days, he received two notable awards around the turn of the last century. In 1902, he won a competition for a Coronation March for King Edward VII and, in 1899, he was awarded the prize for a newly-announced chamber music competition. That winning piece was his Piano Quintet in E flat major heard on this release. The quintet by Richard Walthew is titled Phantasy Quintet. Walthew was an important figure in English�chamber music�during the first half of the 20th century, having a natural affinity for the genre. His single movement Phantasy Quintet is his most successful chamber work, and it recreates the spirit of the Elizabethan consort through a varied statement-counterstatement-restatement format. John McCabe produced works in virtually every genre, including music for television. His theme tune for the 1973 family drama series, Sam, became a huge hit and was the inspiration for his 1989 chamber work, Sam Variations. As McCabe noted, "The theme itself is never heard direct - the nearest we get to it is in the rather enigmatic coda... But all of the material is taken from the theme and transformed in a variation-like way... " Among the varied works by the prolific composer and double bass player, Ivor Hodgson, is a set of nine concerti-including one he wrote for the pianist, Peter Donohoe, who is featured on this release. Hodgson's first Piano Quintet, featured here, was inspired by four Derbyshire inns, as indicated by the names of the four movements: The Quiet Woman, Earl Sterndale, Buxton; The Waltzing Weasel, Hayfield; Moonlight over Mount Famine, The Lamb Inn, Chinley Head; and The Oddfellows, Whitehough, Chinley. The mixed instrument chamber ensemble I Musicanti-hand-picked by the group's artistic director, international double bass virtuoso Leon Bosch-comprises some of the most experienced and respected musicians in the UK. Their previous collaborations with SOMM include Giovanni Bottesini: String Quintets, SOMMCD 0645 ("vivacious, colourful, flowing and finely nuanced accounts" -BBC Music Magazine) and Nimrod Borenstein: Piano Concerto, Shirim, Light and Darkness, SOMMCD 281 ("dramatic and energetic accents from the orchestra" -Pizzicato.) This recording features pianist, Peter Donohoe; violinist, Zsolt-Tihamer Visontay; violist, Robert�Smissen; cellist, Ursula Smith; and double bassist, Leon Bosch.

SOMM Recordings celebrates the wealth of popular concert music produced in Vienna in the 19th and early 20th centuries with a release called Dancing in Vienna, an exhilarating collection of waltzes to set your feet tapping. The Philharmonic Concert Orchestra is led by the versatile Scottish conductor, Iain Sutherland, whose previous, wide-ranging collaborations with SOMM have received enthusiastic critical response: "strong and trenchant, often exhilarating, never sentimental, " Gramophone; "getting pretty much everything right, every nuance and subtle rhythm, " Amazon USA. Einzi Stolz, widow of one of the last masters of Viennese light music, Robert Stolz, wrote to Sutherland, "You have a Viennese heart with the golden arm for Viennese music." Robert Stolz's rousing march, Greetings from Vienna, opens this collection, which also includes his Viennese Cafe Waltzes. Dominating the light music programmes of Vienna for almost a century was the Strauss family-Johann I and his three sons Johann II, Josef, and Eduard. They composed dances and conducted their own orchestras for all the grand balls and concerts almost every day of the week in Vienna, as well as all over the world. Among the works by Johann Strauss II included here is his famous Emperor Waltz, commissioned in 1889 for a state visit by Emperor Franz-Joseph I of Austria-Hungary to Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany. Reflecting the rise of popular Hungarian gypsy music at the time is his Salute the Magyars polka, along with the Trisch Trasch, Thunder and Lightning, and Champagne polkas, and the overture to his operetta masterpiece, Die Fledermaus. Johann II was the most famous of the family of musicians, though he once said of his younger brother, Josef Strauss, that he was "the more gifted of us two; I am merely the more popular..." From Josef Strauss we have the Chatterbox Polka, Dragonfly Polka-Mazurka, Jockey Polka (incorporating the international trumpet call marking the opening of the racing season), the Feuerfest! Polka to celebrate the Wertheim company's 200, 000th fireproof safe, and the beloved Pizzicato Polka, on which he collaborated with popular brother. The youngest of the Strauss brothers, Eduard Strauss, was better recognized as a dance music conductor than as a composer. Still, this release includes his Clear Track Polka, heralding the opening of a new railway company in 1869. Johannes Brahms greatly admired the melodic genius of Johann Strauss II. Their respect was mutual, and Strauss often included his good friend's Hungarian Dances on his programmes. This present collection includes Nos. 1, 5, and 6 from Brahms's collection of 21 dances. The lesser-known composer, author, and musical administrator Richard Heuberger is represented on this CD of Dancing in Vienna by the overture to his light opera, The Opera Ball.

SOMM Recordings is thrilled to collaborate once again with the Tessa Uys and Ben Schoeman piano duo following their highly praised six-volume recording of the nine symphonies by Beethoven arranged for piano duet by Xaver Scharwenka-about which International Piano says, "These readings afford unmitigated pleasure... The articulation and voicing of the players persuades us into thinking we're in the middle of an unleashed virtuoso orchestra." Now, these award-winning South African-born artists present music for two pianos and piano duet from their adopted country, highlighting works by Gustav Holst and Edward Elgar. In the early 1910s, Holst became interested in astrology, and he conceived the idea of a suite for orchestra based on the solar system's individual planets. Originally, he composed�The Planets on the piano, using the instrument in his newly-built, sound-proofed room in the music wing at St Paul's Girls School as well as the piano at his home in Thaxted. This version for four hands, two pianos was scored by two of his colleagues at St Paul's, Vally Lasker and Nora Day, who acted as amanuenses, because Holst suffered intermittently from painful neuritis in his right hand. Following the resounding success of the orchestrated version of The Planets, the original piano duet score was overlooked, though it was eventually published separately in 1949-51. In 1979, Holst's daughter, Imogen, reissued the complete two-piano arrangement in one volume, and Tessa Uys and Ben Schoeman perform this version here. Elgar's renown was such that, at the height of his fame, several established musicians were commissioned by publishers to make piano transcriptions of his orchestral music. This was no mean feat, given that Elgar's scores are scrupulously marked as to how he wanted every phrase-sometimes even every bar or note within that phrase-to be played. It was the composer, arranger, and conductor, Otto Singer II, who made the transcription for piano four-hands of Elgar's 1905 Introduction and Allegro, scored originally for solo string quartet and string orchestra. Singer's insight and skill are evident in techniques like transferring string double-stopping to spread keyboard chords, and his piano four-hands version is admirably true to Elgar's evolving contrapuntal and harmonic ideas. In Victorian England, the marriage of a tradesman's son to the daughter of a Major-General in the British Army, who was eight years his senior, might not have appeared a perfect match. Yet, the marriage of Edward Elgar and Caroline Alice Roberts turned out to be a love-match. In 1888, as a wedding present, Edward presented to Carice, as he called her, Salut d'Amour. This enduring melody has inspired numerous arrangements for widely varying instrumental combinations, including this one for piano duet.

SOMM Recordings is excited to explore the fascinating and largely unknown repertoire of Ibero-American art songs. A shared passion for showcasing hidden jewels of Latin American song inspired the collaboration of Colombian soprano Julieth Lozano Rolong and Portuguese pianist Joao Araujo, who began their partnership while studying at the Royal College of Music. Julieth received the 2018 RCM President's Award presented by RCM President, HM King Charles III. She won the Dame Kiri Te Kanawa Audience Prize in the 2023 Cardiff Singer of the World competition and was recently named one of Opera Wire's Top Ten Rising Stars. Joao was awarded best collaborative pianist prizes at the Concours Musical International de Montreal in Canada and the Maureen Lehane Vocal Awards at Wigmore Hall, and he has been nominated for the Gerald Moore Award. Their recital includes songs in Spanish and Portuguese from seven countries. Reflecting Argentina is "Dance of Two Brothers" by the Impressionistic composer Carlos Guastavino, and "Cancion de cuna India," a haunting lullaby by Gilardo Gilardi, inspired by Argentina's indigenous music. Maria Grever was the first Mexican female composer to gain international success. Her innate melodic gifts are evident in "My Soul" and "You Said 'I Love You'." "Uirapuru," by Brazilian composer Waldemar Henrique, describes the song of the so-named musician wren, while the evocative "Bluebird" by compatriot, Jayme Ovalle, was embraced by sopranos like Victoria de Los Angeles and Montserrat Caballe, and baritone Gerard Souzay. Ernani Braga's gift for transforming Afro-Brazilian musical elements is underscored in a song reflecting Brazilian folk religion and a sugar-mill workers' song. The simple originality of Spanish composer, Maria de Pablos Cerezo, who tragically spent her final decades in a mental institution, is heard here in "The Water Wheel." Ernesto Halffter's much-admired arrangement of a popular fado, "Oh, What a Beautiful Girl" is followed by two selections arranged by the Spanish poet and playwright, Federico Garcia Lorca: "The Moorish girls from Jaen" and "Sevillian Lullaby." Barcelona native Fernando Obradors conjures the Andalusian dance, "El vito," and from zarzuela composer, Joaquin "Quinito" Valverde Sanjuan, we have his sublime "Carnations." "Lullaby to Put Albertico to Bed" and "Rojo," a description of sunset, reflect the folkloric research by Venezuelan musicologist-composer, Modesta Bor. Colombia is represented by the haunting lullaby, "Promises So You Can Sleep" from Luis Carlos Figueroa Sierra; a loving picture of a country girl, "La campesina," by Jaime Leon Ferro; and "Four Questions" from a heartbroken lover by Pedro Morales Pino. The recital ends with two songs from Portugal. "The Willows" by Luis Costa is one of the gems of Portuguese art song. Finally, from Antonio Fragoso, a victim of the 1918 influenza epidemic, we have "Cradling the Little Boy."

SOMM Recordings is pleased to release Clarinet Concertos, four works for solo clarinet and wind orchestra, including two world-premiere recordings. The soloist is the English clarinettist, Peter Cigleris, who�enjoys a wide and varied career and is in great demand as a soloist and chamber musician. His burgeoning career as a clarinet soloist has taken him to Festivals in Spain, France, the Netherlands, and the U.S. Recently, he was invited to perform in Gyor, Hungary for the European Clarinet Festival, which led to a special invitation from the Gyor Symphonic Band to record four hugely enjoyable concertos for clarinet and wind orchestra. These are conducted by Laszlo Marosi, the world's foremost authority on Hungarian wind music, and Ferenc Szabo, the founder of the Gyor Symphonic Band. This release opens with the premiere recording of Concerto Semplice for clarinet and wind orchestra by the prolific Hungarian composer Frigyes Hidas (1928-2007). The concerto is written in a direct, almost classical, tonal language that portrays the composer's belief in traditional forms and syntax. Cigleris has given premiere performances of a number of new works for the clarinet, and he played the first performance of Sonatina in One Movement by the award-winning British composer Simon Milton. So, when composing his Concerto for Clarinet and Band, Milton knew that he "could push what I felt was playable and turn it into a challenge, whilst also maintaining a lyrical and sweet sound to the clarinet part." SOMM presents the premiere recording here. The Concerto for Clarinet and Wind Orchestra, written in 2014 by American composer David Maslanka (1943-2017), is an imposing composition in two large movements: "Lamentation" and "Dance." He described these as relating to "old forms such as the toccata and fugue - a free improvisatory movement followed by a rhythmically energized and formally strict second movement." This collection closes with a Clarinet Concerto from 2010 by one of the leading Japanese composers of music for wind instruments, Satoshi Yagisawa (b.1975). The work has achieved great popularity and is considered a major contribution to the composer's "Concerto Series." It is written in the traditional three-movement concerto form, played attacca with linking cadenzas for the clarinet solo. Peter Cigleris's previous collaborations with SOMM include Eclogue - British Chamber Music (SOMMCD 0653) and a full disc of first recordings, Dedication: The Clarinet Chamber Music of Ruth Gipps (SOMMCD 0641). This includes Gripps's Clarinet Sonata, one of the finest such works by any British composer, for which she won the Cobbett Prize of the Society of Women Musicians. The Gramophone review praised Cigleris and accompanist Duncan Honeybourne as "ideal executants in an account I cannot see being bettered any time soon." This recording features the Eusebius Quartet, formed in 2016 out of a passion for the extraordinary music written for this instrumentation, and praised as "excellent" by The Sunday Times. Their debut CD for SOMM of the Korngold Piano Quintet & Quartet (SOMMCD 0642) received critical acclaim: "Wit and clarity abound in the Quartet's Viennese-sounding performances," The Strad; "The musicians seem to feel the music just as it is, complex on the surface, but direct and straight from the heart," BBC Music Magazine. Elgar and Faure met once at the time of the London premiere of Elgar's First Symphony in 1908. Although Faure spoke no English and Elgar's French wasn't exactly conversational, it's fascinating to compare the musical language of their two quartets, both in the key of E minor, and written late in the composers' lives. Edward Elgar was a more than competent violinist, and he made several attempts throughout his career to write a string quartet. Finally, ill and depressed by war-time London in 1918, he completed his String Quartet, Op. 83. It is cast in three movements, the outer Allegro movements bookending one marked Piacevole (poco andante). This slow middle movement, which contains a�quotation�from Elgar's�Chanson de Matin, was a favourite of Lady Elgar, who described it as "captured sunshine." It was played at her funeral in 1920. Gabriel Faure composed his only String Quartet, Op. 121 in 1924, shortly before his death at the age of 79. By this time, he had been totally deaf for some years, and the quartet suggests a mind driven within itself in a way that hints at Beethoven's Late String Quartets. This final work of Faure presents an extraordinary duality, which masks the romantic ideas of his earlier music with what the English composer and writer Robert Matthew-Walker calls "a soft steely twilight that at times appears almost menacing." As with Elgar's quartet, the central Andante movement particularly captures the imagination with it's musical colouration suggesting a world of half-lights.