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The original plan was to collaborate with gospel choir Soul Sanctuary on a Polish Christmas lullaby-style carol arrangement but when I came across this gorgeous Ukrainian lullaby-style carol ‘Sleep, Jesus, Sleep’ (Spy, Isuse, Spy) it instantly became clear that we needed to turn the project into a fundraising one. I was delighted when Ukrainian soprano Inna Husieva agreed to take part in the recording also but it has been troubling me enormously that since Putin announced his ’Special Operation’ in the Ukraine, the many thousands of Afghans we/UK airlifted out of Kabul in August ’21 have been forgotten and are still struggling to find their feet/life/accommodation in the UK, some still living whole families to one room. So I invited Afghan tabla player Sulaiman Haqpana to play on the track as well. - Roxanna Panufnik -
Tamsin Waley-Cohen, a violinist of ‘fearless intensity’ (The Guardian), explores post-1944 solo repertoire, pushing the instrument to its limits. Bartok’s Solo Sonata, an ‘Everest’ of the violin repertoire, sits at the heart of this recording which also includes Penderecki’s Cadenza, and miniatures by Carter, Gyorgy Kurtag and George Benjamin. Waley-Cohen never loses poise - The Strad Seventy-seven minutes of unaccompanied violin, and strenuous modern repertory at that, may make this disc a daunting prospect, but Waley-Cohen's devotion to her cause is palpable, and her interpretative flair likewise. This is a sequence bursting with vitality; and the choices, all interesting, compose a little map of modernism - The Sunday Times It's brave for a young artist to settle on a seemingly hard-core programme of solo repertoire, but it's a measure of Waley-Cohen's commitment and energy (not to mention prodigious technique) that it succeeds utterly - Classical Music Magazine The programme provides a fascinating survey of solo violin music of the last 25 years and her playing, often forceful and uncompromising...carries real conviction. The more delicate pieces, for instance the lovely Benjamin 'Lauer Lied', are just as persuasive - Gramophone The opening of the Bartok Sonata is powerful and arresting, and there's passion and musical imagination throughout, the fiendish multiple stops and alternations between bowed and plucked notes assured in tone and precise in intonation - BBC Music Magazine -
The creation of the Song Cycle as a new art form in the early 19th Century was paved with musical experiments and innovations. On this disc we illustrate the progress made by the great Lied composers of the day toward the cyclical perfection finally achieved by Beethoven and Schubert, and since emulated by Schumann, Loewe, Wolf, Fauré, Britten, Shostakovich and so many others. A Song Cycle is distinguishable from a collection of songs or a Liederspiel by some type of interior cohesion: a unifying theme, text from a single source, a narrative. It could be a musical connection: recurring devices and motifs, key relationships between songs, or perhaps a fixed performance order. Usually, a combination of these criteria is necessary to bestow on any song collection the title of Song Cycle. -
For a period of the 20th Century, due to his talent and association with Benjamin Britten, Peter Pears was perhaps the world’s most famous classical singer. Pears inspired Britten to create great works of art precisely because Pears was a compelling artist with an exceptional voice, an inquisitive mind, a knowledge of art, history, literature and poetry. They became a self-perpetuating duo, inspiring each other to even greater heights of artistry, technical ability, and emotional certainty. This album of works by Lennox Berkeley, Benjamin Britten, Arthur Oldham, Richard Rodney Bennett and Geoffrey Bush is performed by tenor Robin Tritschler, who is joined by cellist Philip Higham, guitarist Sean Shibe and pianist Malcolm Martineau. Praise for Robin Tritschler and Malcolm Martineau: ★★★★★ Performance, ★★★★★ Recording "[The artists] give the music a strong perspective of their own. With lyrical penetration, technical sovereignty, strong expressiveness and great clarity in both small and large details, they convey the music in the best possible way" - FONO FORUM ★★★★ Performance, ★★★★ Recording “Robin Tritschler’s sweet-toned voice is a continual delight, as is Malcolm Martineau’s sparkling, pearly, luminous piano sound” - BBC Music Magazine ★★★★ "In the opening song and throughout the album one can hear the burnished tone and immaculate diction of Tritschler’s beautifully focused and projected light tenor and, as always, Malcolm Martineau’s piano playing is superb." - Classical Source THE BEST CLASSICAL ALBUMS OF 2024 "This is a powerful and rewarding release. The music, mostly accompanied by the excellent pianist Malcolm Martineau, is uniformly strong...I listened with plenty of pleasure, buoyed by Tritschler's intelligence, the music, and its multiple shades of feeling" - The Times -
Described by The Telegraph as “the creme de la creme of young British-based musical talent”, and praised in BBC Music Magazine for their “irresistible combination of arresting programing and vocal flair assembled around pianist Joseph Middleton”, the newly formed Myrthen Ensemble brings together rising stars in the world of art-song and Lieder. This disc features performances by Mary Bevan, Clara Mouriz, Allan Clayton, Marcus Farnsworth and Joseph Middleton. Joseph Middleton writes to introduce the recording: “The moon has, since antiquity, inspired artists, musicians and wordsmiths. The programme on this disc looks to its many characteristics for inspiration. The songs are at turns consoling, sometimes seductive in serenades and occasionally paint the moon as a threatening force through its extinguishing of the suns rays. The moon’s silver beams cast their magic in music by Brahms and Schumann in the first of these CDs and in the second, inspire the exquisite treatment of Clair de lune by a selection of the finest French song composers. Short English nocturnal overtures begin each disc.” ★★★★ This is a lovely disc, one of those in which the different items seem to set each other off - Planet Hugill A particular attraction is the inclusion of less well-known duets and quartets, which add to the convivial atmosphere - Financial Times The four voices blend beautifully in quartets - Gramophone There is much to relish... and for those, like me, who love art-song as much as the Myrthen Ensemble do, you know even better is to come - Music Web International -
Sounds for the Soul 2" is a poignant project created in collaboration with Belle et Bien as part of the series "Mes Belles Rencontres" (My Beautiful Encounters). It features eight intimate conversations with individuals who have touched by cancer, either as patients themselves or as loved ones of those affected by the disease. Each participant shared their own experiences with the disease and selected a piece of music that resonated with their journey. This collection of music is both powerful and beautiful, reflecting the emotional depth of these stories and offering solace and inspiration to others facing similar challenges. -
World-renowned violinist Sebastian See-Schierenberg is joined by Flamenco guitarist Ramon Ruiz and pianist Sophia Lisovskaya in this compilation of works drawn from and inspired by the music of Spain and Latin America. The programme includes works by Isaac Albeniz, Manuel de Falla, Xavier Montsalvatge, Enrique Granados, Franciso Tarrega & Astor Piazzolla.
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Emmanuel Despax returns to Signum with a disc of JS Bach transcriptions. The title quotes Victor Hugo’s ‘The Hunchback of Notre-Dame’ (“Breathe, Hope”), brought to Despax’s mind following the news of the fire at Notre-Dame Cathedral, where he had attended many concerts of Bach’s music as a child. Despax describes Bach’s music as being “of such clarity, coherence and expressive power, that it is able to transcend its original medium, and to some extent, style.” This virtuosic programme combines both well-known transcriptions, such as the mighty Bach-Busoni ‘Chaconne’ and Saint-Saën’s ‘Overture’, with the first recordings of several arrangements by the late 19th/early 20th century pianist Theodor Szántó’s – featuring his monumental and uncompromising transcriptions of the Fantasia and Fugue in G minor, and the Passacaglia and Fugue in C minor. Emmanuel Despax has gained worldwide recognition as a singular artist, whose interpretations bring a rare sincerity and imagination to the music. A remarkable performer of romantic and post-romantic music, he has been invited to give recital performances in the UK (Wigmore Hall’s London Pianoforte Series, Cadogan Hall, Chipping Campden and Petworth Festivals, and the Royal Concert Hall in Nottingham, where he was appointed artistic director in 2020 of a complete Beethoven piano sonata cycle). Summer 2021 will see the release of a Brahms album including the Sixteen Waltzes Op. 39 and Piano Concerto No.1 with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Andrew Litton. ★★★★★ Performance, ★★★★ Recording "Despax favours a Fazioli piano, exquisitly captured here" - BBC Music Magazine "Pianist Emmanuel Despax is a name to remember. His Spira, Spera with romantic and in several cases large-scale Bach transcriptions is truly brilliant. The playing is brilliant and is characterised by rich sound and rhythmic tension" - Opus Magazine, Sweden -
As the grand finale of the upcoming animated feature film, “Cosmic Rhapsody,” "Star Among the Cosmic Clouds" is more than just a musical piece; it's the emotional crescendo of an epic tale. Created by the visionary team of Susan Lim and Christina Teenz Tan, this film promises to be a stunning visual and auditory experience, and this song is its heart. It’s a powerful ballad of sacrifice, courage, and the enduring legacy of a heroine. -
The four works on this disc, all composed in the 1940s, embrace the lingering end of one musical tradition and the vigorous upsurge of another. Mellifluous, retrospective and playful, the Duet Concertino and Prelude to Capriccio were works of Richard Strauss’s Indian Summer – an old man’s refuge from the barbarism of war and its aftermath. What the public thought of them was incidental, even irrelevant. In the same decade, Aaron Copland and other younger American composers were reaching out, via radio, recordings and film, to a new mass audience. The European influence of Appalachian Spring and the Clarinet Concerto, though inescapable, was minimised in a populist, vernacular idiom that absorbed native folk music and jazz. Richard Stamp unites some of the finest instrumentalists from the UK and Europe in these performances – featuring celebrated orchestras the Academy of London and the Royal Northern Sinfonia with renowned Austrian soloists Ernst Ottensamer and Stepan Turnovsky. Stepan Turnovsky joined the Vienna State Opera and the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra in 1978 and has kept the position of Solo Bassoonist there since 1985, performing with conductors such as Herbert von Karajan, Leonard Bernstein, Karl Böhm, Carlos Kleiber amongst many others. The late Ernst Ottensamer was a former principal clarinettist at the Vienna Philharmonic and an avid performer of chamber music – founding numerous ensembles and collaborating with musicians such as Sir Simon Rattle, André Previn, Daniel Barenboim and Rudolf Buchbinder amongst others. In 2005 he found a clarinet trio with his sons Daniel and Andreas Ottensamer – themselves the Principal Clarinettists of the Vienna Philharmonic and Berlin Philharmonic Orchestras. This present performance represents his last concerto recording. -
Santtu conducts Stravinsky: The Rite of Spring is the third digital release by Philharmonia Records. Recorded live at the Royal Festival Hall in 2021, the Philharmonia Orchestra delivers an explosive performance of Stravinsky’s score under the baton of Principal Conductor Santtu-Matias Rouvali. "Rarely has [the bassoon solo] sounded more songlike ... Rouvali is balletic" - Gramophone -
‘Rêverie in London Rain’ is the first solo piano piece I've released, beginning its life as a theme in a film which I then expanded. The channel-crossing title is a nod to both the French composers who influence this style, and the experience of being lost in thought as you wander along the banks of the Thames on a grey, drizzling day. I think within the music you can hear the raindrops' - Rebecca Dale -
The second volume in a ground-breaking seven-part series, The Mozartists and director Ian Page’s ‘Sturm und Drang’ recordings incorporate iconic compositions by Mozart, Gluck and, above all, Joseph Haydn, but it also includes largely forgotten or neglected works by less familiar names. All of the music featured on this second recording was composed between 1765 and 1770, with three turbulent minor-key symphonies alternating with sacred and operatic arias. The ‘Sturm und Drang’ movement swept through all art forms in between the early 1760s and 1780s, with the general objective to frighten and perturb through the use of wildly subjective and emotional means of expression, envoking ground-breaking extremes of passion and sentimentality. "The fierce agitation of the outer movements of Haydn’s Symphony No. 39 certainly exemplify such qualities [Sturm und Drang], just as the dynamic sweep and hair-trigger precision of Ian Page’s players demonstrate their skill and commitment in articulating them" - BBC Music Magazine "Page and his players once again demonstrate their total identification with this music in playing of dizzying drive and accuracy...Once again, high artistry conspires with scholarship and strength of concept to create a programme that scintillates from start to finish" - Gramophone “This disc will give much pleasure and confirms that within the Sturm und Drang style there is great diversity. It’s a satisfying debut recording for Ränslöv and continues Page’s sterling work with The Mozartists and Classical Opera” - Opera Today -
Like the first two releases in The Mozartists’ ongoing ‘Sturm und Drang’ series, this recording comprises three highly dramatic and turbulent orchestral works interspersed with similarly highly-charged vocal items. The repertoire dates from between 1771 and 1788, and again includes one of Haydn’s great minor-key symphonies – this time arguably the greatest of them all, the ‘Trauer’. For the first time in the series Mozart is also represented, in the form of his extraordinarily visceral and darkly chromatic Adagio and Fugue in C minor, and the disc opens with an outstanding G minor symphony by the Czech composer Leopold Kozeluch, whose quality, sweep and lyricism will surprise many listeners. The two vocal works are genuine rarities. Schweitzer’s Alceste was one of the earliest attempts to create German tragic opera in the vernacular, and it launches with an aria of searing intensity. The scene from Paisiello’s Annibale in Torino – the twenty-third of his eighty-seven operas –features an exquisite but brief arioso before leading into a stormy G minor aria. The soloist is the exciting young American soprano Emily Pogorelc, and Ian Page again conducts his award-winning period-instrument ensemble. "Overall...this makes for another exceptionally satisfying addition to a series that is special not just for the thought and scholarship that goes into it, but Page’s direction of his fine players. It is throughout beautifully balanced and paced, while at the same time musically highly insightful" - Early Music Review "...exceptional disc from Signum Classics...Ian Page and his Mozartists deliver performances of the highest artistic standards mixed with a profound knowledge of a musical period that overflowed with emotional fervour and groundbreaking extremes. The vocal pieces sung by American soprano Emily Pogorel are despatched with scintillating virtuosity and sparkling elan. This is a disc that will give much pleasure to many in general, and especially to those interested in discovering more about this period of transition between the baroque and classical eras. I unreservedly recommend not only this issue, but the whole cycle" - Classical Music Daily “With a stellar performance by American soprano Emily Pogorelc [she] fascinates the listener with exquisite but brief arios. [Leopold Koželuch’s Symphony in G minor is] performed with a superb quality by Mozartist musicians, who highlight its beautiful tonal modulations and expressive energy. In the joyous fourth movement [of “Mourning”], Page infuses a precise, tight sense of rhythm into his musicians and confers delightfully engaging emanations of tenderness” – Sonograma Magazine “The bomb-proof technical standard of the [Mozartists’] playing would surely have delighted Mozart. And winsome justice is done to the beautiful slow movements of Kozeluch’s and Haydn’s symphonies. The stand-out feature here is the sensational contribution of American soprano Emily Pogorelc. Her singing here has superb technical sureness, state-of-the-art command of the music’s wild emotional switchbacks, and firework-display virtuosity to match." Performance **** Recording **** - BBC Music Magazine "Ian Page and his orchestra are wonderful advocates for this powerful music" - Gramophone -
This is the first project in a seven-volume series exploring the ‘Sturm und Drang’ movement, which swept through all art forms in the between the early 1760s and 1780s. The purpose of this movement were to frighten and perturb through the use of wild and subjective emotional means of expression. This series of ‘Sturm und Drang’ recordings incorporates iconic compositions by Mozart, Gluck and, above all, Joseph Haydn, but it also includes largely forgotten or neglected works by less familiar names. The music featured on this disc was all composed in the 1760s. It includes ballet and opera as well as symphonies, but is drawn together by the hallmarks of the remarkably visceral and dynamic style of music that we now call ‘Sturm und Drang’. All downloads include booklets. “Well they seize on the contrasts there, don’t they? The ensemble really does make an impact.” - BBC Radio 3 Record Review "The Sturm und Drang movement is all about high drama, something Ian Page and the Mozartists, playing with scintillating edginess, offer in abundance here…The evocative orchestral final scene from Gluck's Don Juan serves as an arresting opener" - The Sunday Times ★★★★ Performance ★★★★ Recording "[Don Juan] played with fantastic attack and vigour…A genuinely fascinating start to what will doubtless be an illuminating, if emotionally harrowing series" - BBC Music Magazine "This is a splendid collection that whets the appetite for further exploration of this intriguing repertoire" - Opera Magazine "Page’s projects with The Mozartists are distinguished not only by exemplary standards of performance but also by the ambition and imagination that underpin them…[Skerath] is suitably dramatic in first recordings of arias from operas by Jommelli and Traetta…What horns (Gavin Edwards and Nick Benz), and with what freedom they are encouraged to make their mark!...The playing throughout is excellent and the programme is as deeply satisfying as the project’s entire conception" - Gramophone -
Subito: suddenly, or immediately. And something else besides – a moment of revelation or transformation, charged with surprise. When Witold Lutosławski gave this title to the showpiece that he wrote for a violin competition in Indianapolis in 1994, he evoked all these qualities, and more – that delighted astonishment; the brilliant, piercing moment of musical communion between performer and listener that comes with true virtuosity. On her debut disc, Julia Hwang has taken that idea – of virtuosity as communication – and embraced it from four very different directions. Grieg’s Violin Sonata No. 3 blends virtuosity with traditions both local and international, to say something unambiguously personal. Vaughan Williams The Lark Ascending refines violin technique into expression as pure as the song of a skylark. Lutosławski’s Subito creates a brief, dazzling moment whose very brilliance is its own meaning; and Henryk Wieniawski, entertainer par excellence, spins fantasy from another man’s tunes in his Fantaisie brillante sur des motifs de l’Opéra Faust de Gounod – enriching them in the process. This disc continues Signum’s series of discs with St John’s College Cambridge, following their two critically-praised Choral CDs of 2016.