Standard FLAC Archives - Page 32 of 41

Sibylla

Price range: £8.00 through £14.00

Literally meaning ‘rooster song’ or ‘cock crow’, Gallicantus takes its name from monastic antiquity; the name of the office held just before dawn, it was a ceremony which evoked the renewal of life offered by the coming day. Dedicated to renaissance music and directed by Gabriel Crouch, the membership of this early music group boasts a wealth of experience in consort singing.

Renowned for their critically-acclaimed and researched programmes, Gallicantus present Sibylla. At the heart of the programme is Orlandus Lassus’s 16th Century Prophetiae Sibyllarum, which sets to music the texts of ancient Sibylline prophecies telling of the coming of Christ.

One of the composer’s most renowned and celebrated works, it is performed alongside settings by the ‘Sibyl of the Rhine’ Hildegard von Bingen, as well contemporary responses to Lassus’s work. Dmitri Tymoczko’s Prophetiae Sibyllarum sets poems by Jeff Dolven which recast the sibyls’ role: this time to the teller of grim truths of present life in post-industrial America. As an epilogue the album finishes with Elliot Cole’s ‘I saw you under the fig tree’ (part of his suite Visions) – a simple 4-part setting beneath an extraordinary countertenor glissando, setting Jesus Christ’s response to Nathaniel.
★★★★★ The extraordinary Gallicantus sing with micrometrical precise articulation and flawless pitching - Choir and Organ This CD is evidence of an intimate understanding of this challenging music and is as fine an account of the score as has been committed to CD to date - Early Music Review

Select options This product has multiple variants. The options may be chosen on the product page Details
Open To Light [Digital Only]

Price range: £8.00 through £9.75

Lewis Wright is an award-winning British vibraphonist, composer and drummer based in London. As a vibraphonist, he was nominated for Rising Star in the 2016 Downbeat International Critics Poll, and was awarded Ensemble of the Year in the 2016 Parliamentary Jazz Awards with Empirical and the Worshipful Company of Musicians prize in 2011. He has performed at venues such as the Sydney Opera House and the Royal Albert Hall, and has been a featured soloist with Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln Centre Orchestra.

Select options This product has multiple variants. The options may be chosen on the product page Details
Spinning [DIGITAL ONLY]

Price range: £8.00 through £14.00

“The album started life as a collection of piano improvisations saved as voice- notes on my phone. Expanding the ideas during a series of slow evenings after work, I discovered there were some pieces I would always come back to and play again and again. Each voice note had been recorded at random times, some months apart, others years apart, and it began to sound like a musical diary of my private thoughts and feelings from over the years. When I came to record the pieces I invited some friends to play Cello and Recorder, as I decided I’d had enough of playing piano by myself.” - Ben Pearson

Select options This product has multiple variants. The options may be chosen on the product page Details
Sleep – Ivor Gurney [Digital Only]

Price range: £0.99 through £1.50

“Words and music rarely come together so perfectly as in this song. John Fletchers’s text is made all the more poignant given the composer, Ivor Gurney’s own struggles with mental health" - Grace Davidson

Select options This product has multiple variants. The options may be chosen on the product page Details
Sleep, Jesus, Sleep (Spy, Isuse, Spy) [DIGITAL ONLY]

Price range: £0.99 through £1.99

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

Select options This product has multiple variants. The options may be chosen on the product page Details
SOLI

Price range: £8.00 through £14.00

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

Select options This product has multiple variants. The options may be chosen on the product page Details
Sometime I Sing

Price range: £8.00 through £12.00

A lyrical collection of chamber works for tenor and guitar – Sometime I Sing unites Gramophone award-winning tenor Mark Padmore with Mexican guitarist Morgan Szymanski in settings of texts by Thomas Wyatt, Vikram Seth, John Donne and Edward Thomas by the composer Alec Roth. Roth is a UK-based composer who works across a wide range of musical genres, including stage works, vocal, choral, orchestral, instrumental, and Javanese gamelan – his former posts include Founder/Director of the Royal Festival Hall Gamelan Programme and Southbank Gamelan Players; Music Director of the Baylis Programme, English National Opera; and Associate Composer, Opera North. A superb disc of music by a prolific and successful composer who has eschewed the passing modernisms of our days. ... this is a disc which deserves widest distribution and take up on radio programmes - Musical Pointers With the elegant guitarist Morgan Szymanski, one of Britain's finest tenors explores song settings by Alec Roth. Poems by Vikram Seth are treated mysteriously: slow-moving harmonies, evocative lyrical lines. The 16th·century poet Thomas Wyatt is set more playfully, as befits his wry epigrams on love, lust and mortality. And a bonus: English folksongs, arranged as artfully as Britten did - The Times

Select options This product has multiple variants. The options may be chosen on the product page Details
Song’s First Cycle

Price range: £12.00 through £21.00

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.

Select options This product has multiple variants. The options may be chosen on the product page Details
Songs for Peter Pears

Price range: £8.00 through £14.00

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

Select options This product has multiple variants. The options may be chosen on the product page Details
Songs to the Moon

Price range: £8.00 through £14.00

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

Select options This product has multiple variants. The options may be chosen on the product page Details
Sounds for the Soul 2

Price range: £8.00 through £14.00

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.

Select options This product has multiple variants. The options may be chosen on the product page Details
Sounds of Spain and the Americas

Price range: £8.00 through £14.00

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.

Select options This product has multiple variants. The options may be chosen on the product page Details
Stainer: Crucifixion

Price range: £8.00 through £12.00

Founded in 1836, the Huddersfield Choral Society has long been a major part of the town’s vibrant musical tradition. Under a succession of distinguished principal condutors and chorus masters it has developed an international reputation as the UK’s leading choral society. Although enjoying a close working relationship with any leading professional orchestras and conductors, the Society is a independent and self-governing amateur choir, drawing talented singers from a wide area across Yokshire and the north of England. This is the Huddersfield Choral Society’s fourth release with Signum Records. Other releases include SIGCD074 Messiah, SIGCD079 The Hymns Album and SIGCD108 The Carols Album. ★★★★ The Crucifixion is a work of its time, but a performance as good as this one shows that its expressive quality is timeless - The Daily Telegraph This style of performance by the Huddersfield Choral Society under Joseph Cullen’s highly sensitive direction provides a vital instance of how The Crucifixion was conceived – that is, to be sung with romantic, emotional conviction, by a choir that revels in the sound of rich, chromatic harmony - Gramophone This is an excellent recording wholeheartedly recommended - Classic FM

Select options This product has multiple variants. The options may be chosen on the product page Details
Star Among the Cosmic Clouds [Digital Single]

Price range: £0.99 through £1.50

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.

Select options This product has multiple variants. The options may be chosen on the product page Details
Stokowski: Philadelphia Rarities (CALA Signum)

Price range: £8.00 through £12.00

Select options This product has multiple variants. The options may be chosen on the product page Details
Strauss / Copland

Price range: £8.00 through £12.00

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.

Select options This product has multiple variants. The options may be chosen on the product page Details