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The three works on this 2CD set further confirm Chilcott’s status as one of the world’s most popular active choral composers. The Angry Planet was a commission inspired by conductor David Hill for the BBC Proms in 2012, and combines the precision and skill of the BBC Singers and The Bach Choir with the exuberance of a host of young persons and Children’s choirs including The Young Singers, London Youth Choir and Finchley Children’s Music Group. -
Tamsin Waley Cohen is joined by pianist Huw Watkins for a new disc exploring folk- inspired Bohemia from before the First World War – featuring works by Antonin Dvořák, Josef Suk and Leoš Janáček. Waley-Cohen captures the score’s spirit of infectious bonhomie to perfection… this gifted duo refreshingly exchanges the percussive tendency and angular introspection of some recent accounts for a spiritually intense espressivo reminiscent of Yehudi Menuhin in his prime - The Strad Just fresh, thoughtful and committed interpretations shot through with poetry and alertness - Gramophone The performances are all well prepared, well integrated, well-conceived and beautifully played. Altogether a cherishable disc - MusicWeb International English violinist Tamsin Waley-Cohen’s flexible and versatile technique is assured, especially demonstrated in Dvořák’s and his son-in-law Suk’s Four Romantic Pieces...They have an affinity with this music and play lyrically ...This is classy playing from both performers. - AUSTA National Journal -
Together with familiar music from Prince Igor, this CD features the world premiere recording of the unusual Requiem, (which is based on “Chopsticks”), and Glazunov’s orchestration of the charming Petite Suite. Australian conductor Geoffrey Simon is resident in London and has appeared there with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra, Philharmonia Orchestra, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, London Chamber Orchestra, London Mozart Players and English Chamber Orchestra. The Philharmonia Orchestra is a British orchestra based in London. It was founded in 1945 by Walter Legge, a classical music record producer for EMI. Among the conductors who worked with the orchestra in its early years were Richard Strauss, Wilhelm Furtwängler and Arturo Toscanini; of the Philharmonia’s younger conductors, the most important to its development was Herbert von Karajan, who though never formally chief conductor was closely associated with the orchestra in the late 1940s and early 1950s. The Philharmonia became widely regarded as the finest of London’s five symphony orchestras in its first two decades. All downloads include booklets. -
BBC Music Magazine Award-winning choir Tenebrae perform a sumptuous selection of motets by Johannes Brahms and Anton Bruckner. Choral Recording of the Year: Performance ★★★★★ Recording ★★★★★ A beautifully balanced programme - BBC Music Magazine ★★★★★ Complex, rich and beautiful... performances are everything we have come to expect from Tenebrae, likewise Signum's recorded sound - Classical Music ★★★★ Richly Expressive - The Observer Tenebrae score on all counts. They submit with impressive stamina and unfailing intonation to Bruckner’s instrumental scoring and phrasing - Gramophone The dense harmonies suit this well-established professional choir perfectly - The Guardian Beautifully performed, seraphic sequence - The Sunday Times -
Marking 70 years since Enescu’s death, celebrated violinist Charlie Siem returns to Signum Classics performing the Brahms Violin Concerto, and works by George Enescu with previous collaborators, conductor Oleg Caetani and the Philharmonia Orchestra. This release features a world premiere recording of the Brahms Violin Concerto cadenza written by George Ensecu. ★★★★½ Fono Forum - “Light, fluid, almost weightless and dusted” ★★★★ The Times“The perfect conclusion to an obviously desirable album” - Best classical albums of 2025 so far. -
This new disc from the Philharmonia completes the collection of Brahms symphonies conducted by Christoph Von Dohnányi. These live performances are about subtle shading and unexaggerated, probing thoughtfulness, bringing out the Classical rather than the Romantic side of Brahms - Classic FM Magazine A very sensitive interpreter… the slow movement [of the First Symphony] is very lyrical with some effective instrumental dovetailing and plenty of light and shade, and the finale generates an impressive sense of joyous release - GramophoneBoth performances are well played by the Philharmonia from whom the conductor obtains a sound that is lean and muscular - MusicWeb International -
This album features the second half of Brescianello’s Opus 1; works 1 – 6 were released as Behind Closed Doors in 2022. La Serenissima passionately believe that Brescianello is a composer who deserves greater recognition with the result that many of his works have been included in releases dating from 2019, our first release on Signum. Solo concertos for violin alternate with Sinphonias for strings and continuo; both forms illustrate Brescianello’s talent for fusing virtuosity with the sweetest of melodies. Also included on the album is an orchestral suite in A major that finishes with a rousing Giga.★★★★★ Performance, ★★★★★ Recording "His [Chandler's] playing is brilliantly skilful, immediate and engaging. The handling of the cadenza at the end of the Sixth Concerto is especially impressive." - BBC Music Magazine"Chandler and La Serenissma give a very colourful picture of Brescianello's music, which is not lacking in individuality" - CONCERTO -
Signum Classics is proud to release an album of string works by the award-winning composer, Brian Elias. Spanning almost half a century, this survey of Brian Elias’s chamber music for strings arose from a retrospective staged in 2020 by the Music@Malling festival in Kent. His first album on Sig- num, it is released alongside ‘Music for Wind’ and will be launched at Music@ Malling in September 2024. The album artwork is by celebrated artist Anish Kapoor. All Music Classical Highlights October 2024 EDITORS CHOICE "This is the finest album of contemporary chamber music I have encountered this year...Brian Elias' String Quartet (2012) is a gem that should be in the repertoire of every British Quartet...A tour de force of compositional ingenuity...The Castalian Quartet play it for all its worth in a performance that is little short of a revelation...Clein's performances are the album's high points (the magic is particularly strong in Of Elutropia)" - Gramophone “Amply gifted as an orchestral composer...purified intensity, immediacy and unrestrained lyricism” - Paul Griffiths, The Sunday Times "It’s hard to imagine more committed or more persuasive accounts of the string music of Brian Elias than the ones gathered together here. The Indian-born British composer is a senior figure in UK music, with an appropriately broad and considered output to match...It’s a deeply rewarding disc whose exquisitely crafted music is matched by performances of authority” - The Strad -
Released as part of a double launch, ‘Music for Wind’ is an album of world pre- miere recordings by composer Brian Elias, winner of two British Composer Awards. He has had previous compositions performed and recorded extensively by leading orchestras and soloists including the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the Brit- ten Sinfonia among many others. The album artwork is by world-renowned artist Anish Kapoor. “Every inflection tells, the balance of sound is exact, and the sound seductive in the best traditions of glamorous 20th century orchestral writing.” - Paul Driver, The Sunday Times "Marvellously well played - not least the 2016 Oboe Quintet by Nicholas Daniel and the Sacconi Quartet...recommendable" - Gramophone "The playing of David Zucchi is remarkable and very controlled. [Five Bagatelles for Clarinet and Bassoon] The performance by Mark Simpson and Amy Harman is superb. This is an important addition to the repertoire for this combination" - Clarinet & Saxophone Magazine -
Britten’s powerful and masterful evocation of the North Sea in all its moods has to audiences all over the world become inextricably linked with the Aldeburgh that was home to George Crabbe (author of the ‘The Borough’ from which the story originates) in the eighteenth century and Britten in the twentieth.Steuart Bedford leads a vast and accomplished ensemble on this new live recording, created shortly before the group’s unique staging of the work on the beach at Aldeburgh as part of the town’s world-renowned festival. The mix here is imperceptible and the sound unobtrusive; engineer Mike Hatch deserves a credit twice the size and conductor Steuart Bedford pulls off an extraordinary feat of coherence and endurance. But it’s Oke who makes the case for Peter Grimes and steals the show. There used to be two great Grimes on record: Peter Pears and Jon Vickers. Now there are three - Sinfini Music -
Joining several discs from Signum celebrating 2013's Britten Centenary Year comes a new collection of the three Suites for Solo Cello, performed by star UK cellist Jamie Walton. Recorded in the Britten Studio at Snape Maltings, Aldeburgh, the three suites were dedicated to Mstislav Rostropovich, with the passionate third in particular inspired by Rostropovich’s rich and romantic performances of Bach’s unaccompanied suites.
Britten’s suites for solo cello are not perhaps an easy listen any more than they are easy to play, but Jamie Walton’s absorbing performances of all three seem to expose and explore the emotional heart and soul that went into the writing of them - The Daily Telegraph
None of this music holds terrors for Walton, with his big, bold tone and formidable technique - The Sunday Times
A musical triumph, captured in first-rate sound - Sinfini Music
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Following their acclaimed recordings of Berlioz’s Grande Messe des Morts and Mendelssohn’s Elijah, Paul McCreesh has once again assembled the mass forces of Gabrieli Consort & Players and Wrocaw Phiharmonic Choir to record one of the iconic masterpieces of the twentieth-century oratorio repertoire.The work reflects Britten’s long-held and committed pacifist beliefs. Composed to mark the consecration of a new Cathedral in Coventry, Britten combines the Latin text of the Missa pro Defunctis with nine poems by the First World War poet Wilfred Owen, which vide a moving (and frequently uncomfortable) commentary on the liturgical text.This series has already garnered substantial critical claim and a number of prestigious awards, including a Gramophone Award, BBC Music Magazine Award and two Diapason d'Or awards.It’s a very well-paced performance, and Susan Gritton, John Mark Ainsley and Christopher Maltman are excellent soloists, totally engaged with Britten’s combination of the Latin Mass for the Dead and Wilfred Owen’s war poetry. It’s an outstanding recording for the Winged Lion Label from Signum Classics - BBC Radio 3 CD Review -
Continuing Signum’s series of live orchestral releases with the Philharmonia Orchestra, on this new disc Christoph von Dohnányi leads a performance of Bruckner’s Symphony No.4, Romantic. Bruckner stands out from other 19th-century symphonists; his large-scale works demonstrate a unique fusion of conservative and radical elements, notably influenced by composers such as Wagner and Beethoven. He appended not only the title 'Romantic' but even included a programme for the Fourth Symphony, sometime after composition. Though he later withdrew it, the scenario is a mediaeval Romantic ideal, where knights awaken to the sound of horns, rejoice and repair to prayer, before the inevitable hunt and ensuing festivities. Orchestral Disc of the Month: There's much worth celebrating on this excellent new recording of Bruckner's Fourth Symphony - Gramophone The performance is notable for some really sensitive chamber-music-like interaction between wind and strings and particularly subtle phrasing from the violas in the chorale melody - BBC Music Magazine A powerful live account of Bruckner's Fourth, played in the Robert Haas edition... a vast, thrilling drama of tension and relaxation, and triumph - The Times Dohnanyi makes the finale something of a tour de force - Classical Source -
Recorded in 2014 at the begninning of a series marking his 85th birthday season, Christoph von Dohnányi leads the Philharmonia Orchestra in a rousing live performance of Bruckner’s monumental Ninth Symphony, which stands alongside the other epoch-defining Ninth symphonies of Beethoven and Mahler. [A] beautifully prepared account... Dohnanyi's new recording is distinguished by the clarity with which it presents Bruckner's score as well as the excellence of its sound - Gramophone Dohnanyi's is a considerable performance in its own right. The Philharmonia plays very well for a conductor who they clearly and rightly esteem - MusicWeb International The recording is everything you'd wish from a Bruckner recording. You'll get the grand and the detail all in silky sound. Very highly recommended - Audiophilia A wonderfully passion-filled performance by the Philharmonia in Salzburg and an excellent CD edition of this occasion - North East Music Magazine The performance is as devastating an experience as it should be, and one of the most powerful that the whole literature of music can provide - BBC Music Magazine Maazel's Seventh is very decent...the clangorous coda is fantastic - The Arts Desk A wonderfully passion-filled performance by the Philharmonia in Salzburg and an excellent CD edition of this occasion -NE:MM -
Led by Mark Williams, the Choir of Jesus College, Cambridge continue their critically-praised series of recordings on Signum with this new recording of works by British composers Britten and Byrd. William Byrd and Benjamin Britten, their respective careers separated by about three hundred and fifty years, share one very significant characteristic. They were both, in quite different ways, outsiders. As a devout Catholic existing within an alien environment – a state which ultimately viewed Catholicism as the equivalent of sedition – Byrd was obliged to pursue a kind of double life, expressing his spiritual exile in music of emotional intensity. Like Byrd, Britten became highly regarded by the establishment for his artistic achievements, but reservations regarding his homosexuality prevented his complete acceptance. Both his pacifism and his sexual orientation made him an outsider. -
William Byrd‘s unparalleled legacy of sacred and secular music, written for both public and private consumption, was one in which a sophisticated musical mind seamlessly blended contrapuntal prowess and a specifically expressive intent. In the 400th anniversary year of his death (2023), it seems apposite that this recording should renew our acquaintance with some of his finest sacred music – that which exemplifies the oscillation between the rituals and traditions of Latinate Catholicism, and the requirements of a mid-16th century reformed liturgy. Included here is a recording (released on LP only in 1981) of the Saint Thomas Choir from the years of Gerre Hancock’s leadership. It allows us to hear Byrd’s complete Great Service, the flip side of Byrd’s Latinate expression. Despite the Great Service being music in the vernacular, written for the reformed Anglican liturgy embodying Thomas Cranmer’s 1550s exhortations for textual intelligibility (‘for every syllable, a note’), Byrd sets his canticles with compelling musical complexity. They were never published in his lifetime, and a specific date for their composition has yet to be substantiated. "This is a well thought out project, the singing is first rate and the recording quality is clear and bright." - Cross Rhythms "These recordings are superb. Six stars out of five." - Organists' Review "We cannot have too many recordings of music this good, and when it is performed as well as it is here, we are all winners. The Choir of Saint Thomas Church, New York sings the mass with as much beauty, feeling and expertise as any historically informed ensemble... although tempi are varied judiciously during the course of the Mass, this is never to the detriment of the clarity of Byrd’s eloquent polyphony, with its sublime melodies, harmonies … and dissonances! This is a truly radiant recording." - Early Music Review