SOMM Recordings
257 products
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Arnold Bax: Spring Fire - Complete Music for Cello & Piano
$18.99CDSOMM Recordings
Jul 04, 2025SOMMCD 0704 -
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Elgar & Faure: String Quartets
Arnold Bax: Spring Fire - Complete Music for Cello & Piano
Ukraine: A Piano Portrait
Purcell: The Complete Suites & Other Music for Keyboard
Habanera - Music for Eight Cellos & Voice
An English Pastoral
Prokofiev: Milestones, Vol. 2
Beethoven Symphonies, Vol. 6
Telemann: Paris Quartets, Vol. 1 - 6 Quadri (1730)
Falla: The Three Cornered Hat; Nights in the Gardens of Spai
Glass: Selected Piano Etudes - 10th Anniversary Special Edit
Howells & Wood: Quartets
Saint-Saens: Music for Two Pianos
Chopin, Debussy, Ravel & Schumann: Waltzes
African Art Song
African Pianism, Vol. 2 / Rebeca Omordia
SOMM Recordings is thrilled to announce African Pianism, Volume 2, a new installment in a collection of piano music by African composers. Following suit from her critically acclaimed first African Pianism album, Rebeca Omordia brings us a fascinating program with no less than 8 First Recordings. Among these is the 4th in a selection of three Studies in African Pianism by Akin Euba, a Nigerian composer who makes a return on this second volume and whose “African Pianism” style, inspired by the research of Ghanaian composer J.H. Kwabena Nketia. The music of Algerian composer Salim Dada attempts to be a means by which a natural message of peace and dialogue may exist between the Arab-Muslim world and European civilization. Moroccan composer Nabil Benabdeljalil, like Akin Euba, makes a second appearance in this series with a new set of four pieces including 3 first recordings. Fellow South African Grant McLachlan contributes his arrangement for solo piano of the anti-apartheid protest song “Senzeni Na?”, which begins “What have we done? Is our sin that we are black?”. Fela Sowande, a Nigerian composer of the previous century, figures on the program with hauntingly original “K’A Mura” from 2 Preludes on Yoruba Sacred Folk Melodies. Also representing the first half of the 20th century is celebrated African American composer Florence Price in her luxuriantly pianistic Fantasie nègre.
Hailed as an "African classical music pioneer" (BBC World Service) and "a classical music game changer" (Classical Music), award-winning pianist Rebeca Omordia is an exciting virtuoso with a wide-ranging career as soloist, chamber musician and recording artist.
War Poems
Beethoven: Symphonies, Vol. 5 / Uys, Schoeman
Canticle of the Sun - Choral Music by Stephen Dodgson
SOMM Recordings announces Canticle of the Sun, an album dedicated to choral works by Stephen Dodgson. This recording adds to SOMM’s growing discography of music by this unjustly neglected and richly deserving British composer (the label last year launched an ongoing three-volume series embracing Dodgson’s rich and varied output of songs) on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of his birth.
The performances are given by the chamber choir Sonoro, one of the UK’s foremost vocal ensembles. Described as “outstandingly refreshing” (BBC Music Magazine) and “abundant in vibrant colour” (The Guardian), they are tonally immaculate and technically astounding in Dodgson’s tuneful, yet challenging choral writing. They are joined in one work by Michael Higgins at the organ and in another by Katherine Bicknell on flute, while the remaining pieces feature the choir in stunning a cappella with soloists drawn from the choir throughout, and the entire programme is led by conductor and Co-Artistic Director of Sonoro Neil Ferris.
The selection of works, all of them first recordings, reveals in Dodgson a genuine composer for voices – one of abundant gifts, and special among them a sensitive approach to word-setting. The album’s titular piece, Canticle of the Sun (2008), one of Dodgson’s last vocal compositions, sets a text by the prolific English poet John Heath-Stubbs (1918–2006). The cantata Four Poems of Mary Coleridge (1987) sets the texts for the unusual and striking combination of mixed voices and solo flute, played by Katherine Bicknell, a flautist of “sumptuous tone” (The Straits Times, Singapore) and “striking musical ability” (MusicWeb). Incredibly effective throughout, the contrast between voices and flute is particularly evocative in the wonderfully dark “Nocturne I: (The Fire, the Lamp and I)”, with its interplay between almost recitative-like flute and solo bass interspersed with choir playing the characters of the fire and lamp.
’Tis Almost One (1984), is a short cantata for mixed voices and organ to words by Robert Herrick (1591–1674). The organ accompaniment is provided by pianist, organist, composer and arranger, and Co-Artistic Director of Sonoro Michael Higgins.
Following three undated but likely quite early shorter works for a cappella upper voices on anonymous texts (Winter, Lullaby and All Bells in Paradise), the programme concludes with Lines from Hal Summers, a setting for unaccompanied mixed choir. Dodgson chose three poems from Smoke After Flame (1944) by the English poet Henry (known as Hal) Summers (1911–2005), excerpting from them and setting to music carefully selected lines, as referenced by the title. It is difficult not to feel the growing sense of expected war-time victory in these texts – the music reflecting an unstated hopefulness for peace and rebirth.
This recording is supported by the Stephen Dodgson Charitable Trust.
The Pre-Raphaelite Cello
SOMM Recordings is proud to announce a recital disc from cellist Adrian Bradbury and pianist Andrew West titled The Pre-Raphaelite Cello – at once ground-breaking and celebratory, and rich with first recordings. The curiosity piqued by the album’s unusual name will be amply rewarded with the fascinating story of the artistic threads this programme weaves together and their relevance to important commemorations being observed this year.
The idea was conceived and devised by pianist Oliver Davies (1938–2020)*, and the recording is dedicated to his memory. It is a tribute to the renowned British cellist Beatrice Harrison and her association with the composers of The Frankfurt Gang whose music she championed. And the occasion of this tribute is the 100th anniversary of the Nightingale Broadcast, one of the earliest ever made by the BBC from a remote location: on 19 May 1924 Beatrice sat and played her cello in the garden of “Foyle Riding” (the family home at Oxted), duetting with the local nightingales before a microphone that carried them over the airwaves to more than a million listeners and enchanted a nation.
The composers in Beatrice’s circle included a multi-year cohort of anglophone composition students under Iwan Knorr at Frankfurt before the turn of the 20th century. Englishmen Roger Quilter and Cyril Scott and the Australian Percy Grainger belonged to this Frankfurt Gang, who remained close friends after their student days in Germany and who adopted the Pre-Raphaelite banner from the like-minded brotherhood of English painters and poets, distinguishing themselves musically from other British composers through a focus on emotion rather than musical architecture. They were among the composers inspired by Beatrice’s musicianship, and their works on this album were arranged for her or played and loved by her. These are prefaced on the programme by cello-piano pieces from Iwan Knorr (the composition professor who unites the Gang) and Hugo Becker (Beatrice’s cello teacher from the age of 15).
Vaughan Williams - A Birthday Garland / Roderick Williams & Susie Allan
SOMM RECORDINGS is delighted to announce Vaughan Williams – A Birthday Garland, the debut on disc of baritone Roderick Williams and pianist Susie Allan’s popular concert tribute to Ralph Vaughan Williams originally marking the 150th anniversary of the composer’s birth in 2022.
Curating a “fantasy birthday party concert” in tribute to “the grand-daddy of 20th-century English song”, Williams has assembled pieces by RVW and 18 fellow composers. The result is a wide-ranging celebration of the rich variety of English song over a century and more that pays tribute to Vaughan Williams’ influence with songs inspired by poets ranging from Shakespeare and Tennyson to W.B. Yeats and Walt Whitman.
First recordings include Herbert Howell’s The Sorrow of Love, a setting of the Irish poet Seamus O’Sullivan; Sarah Cattley’s A Square and Candle-lighted Boat, treating verses by RVW’s cousin, Frances Cornford; and Roderick Williams’ own distinctive take on William Blake’s The Shepherd.
The 30-song recital includes songs by RVW’s teachers (Stanford, Parry, Wood, Bruch, Ravel), friends (Holst, Gurney, Howells, Butterworth, Finzi and others), and pupils (Grace Williams, Ina Boyle, Ruth Gipps, Elizabeth Maconchy and Madeleine Dring). Vaughan Williams’ biographer Simon Heffer provides authoritative booklet notes.
SOMM’s previous Vaughan Williams releases include the widely acclaimed four-volume Vaughan Williams Live series (SOMM ARIADNE 5016, 5018, 5019-2, 5020); Mark Bebbington and Rebeca Omordia’s “compelling” (International Piano) survey of his Piano Music (SOMMCD 0164); and the “priceless document” (MusicWeb International) coupling the Fifth Symphony and Dona nobis pace (SOMMCD 071).
Roderick Williams and Susie Allan’s previous SOMM releases include Celebrating English Song (SOMMCD 0177), lauded by Gramophone as “a treat”; the Ivor Gurney-focused Severn & Somme (SOMM 057), “strongly recommended” by BBC Music Magazine; and Somervell’s A Shropshire Lad and Maud (SOMMCD 0615), “performances of much beauty, empathy and sensitivity” (British Music Society).
Dodgson: Mirage - Piano Music
SOMM Recordings is pleased to announce the release of Mirage, a recital of piano music by Stephen Dodgson performed by Osman Tack in his impressive label debut.
Featuring 24 first recordings, Mirage is the third volume in a series marking the 10th anniversary of Dodgson’s death in 2013, and celebrates a composer of “urbane and civilised” music, as Robert Matthew-Walker describes it in informative booklet notes.
The recital spans seven decades from 1956’s Eight Fanciful Preludes – “a judiciously varied suite… bound by the directness of utterance that so distinguished Dodgson’s music” – to the Six Bagatelles composed between 1998 and 2005 when “his inspiration burned brightly in his eighties”.
Also included are the “vastly impressive” Piano Sonata No.7 (Dodgson’s last) from 2003; the “significant” Three Impromptus (1962, revised 1985), and the varied, impressionistic Four Moods of the Wind Suite (1968).
A bonus track, the Rondo in A flat from 1953, will be available for downloading on digital platforms.
Osman Tack is a former Chandos Young Musician of the Year who has performed throughout the UK and internationally as a soloist, accompanist, and chamber musician (having won the Pro-Corda Festival competition).
Dodgson’s Songs Volume 1, The Peasant Poet (SOMMCD 0659) was hailed by Opera Today as “an incredibly interesting and engaging disc… done excellent service by all the performers”. Of Volume 2, The Distances Between (SOMMCD 0673), the British Music Society said “the performances (by some prestigious names) and the warm, lifelike recording are impeccable”.
SOMM’s championing of British song includes Stanford’s Children’s Songs (SOMMCD 0655), “fairly and squarely in the great English song tradition” (MusicWeb International), and Roderick Williams and Susie Allan’s Celebrating English Song (SOMMCD 0177), lauded by Gramophone as “a treat”, and Somervell’s A Shropshire Lad and Maud (SOMMCD 0615), “performances of much beauty, empathy, and sensitivity” (British Music Society).
Bizet: L’arlesienne, Op. 23
Stanford: Cushendall - Irish Song Cycles
Natural Connection - Piano Music Inspired by the Natural World / McCawley
SOMM RECORDINGS is delighted to announce the release of Natural Connection, a captivatingly lyrical new recording by pianist Leon McCawley featuring music for solo piano inspired by the natural world. The effect of the ever-changing seasons has been a perpetual inspiration for composers since Ancient Greece’s Delphic hymns and before, down to the present day, arguably finding its richest expression, as Robert Matthew-Walker’s erudite booklet notes argue, in the generations who alternatively espoused Romanticism and Impressionism. Nine composers, each with their own individual but complementary responses, are featured in a 21-track recital of miniature gems traversing the inexorable turn of the year’s cycle from Christian Sinding’s tremulous signature, Rustle of Spring, to Grieg’s sublimely tentative To the Spring. In between, popular pieces by Debussy (Clair de Lune) and Saint-Saëns (The Swan) vie with assorted works by Tchaikovsky (selections from The Seasons), Ravel (the liquescent Jeux d’eau), Bartók (the delightful From the Diary of a Fly and atmospheric The Night’s Music), and Rachmaninov (the gentle Lilacs and poetic Daisies). The most expressive pianist-composer of his age, Liszt, contributes three pieces including the sighing ebb-and-flow of Au lac de Walletstadt and stormy Orage, to eloquently link this multi-faceted and evocative, often moving, collection of responses to the living world. Leon McCawley’s previous SOMM releases include four widely acclaimed volumes of Haydn Sonatas, the first (SOMMCD 0162) receiving a coveted Diapason d’Or from Diapason magazine, Gramophone hailing him for Volume III (SOMMCD 0624) as “a thoughtful, keenly intelligent artist in peak form”. MusicWeb International declared his Chopin recital (SOMMCD 0103) “exemplary” and “outstanding”, while his Schubert survey (SOMMCD 0188) was described by Classical Music Daily as “a meaningful, eloquent performance [that] offers many memorable moments”.
