Chamber music by Sir Arthur Bliss (1891-1975)

Related Artists: Juliette Bausor, Daniel Bates, Katherine Spencer, Beatrice Philips, Laura Lutzke, Adam Newman, Hannah Sloane

Catalogue No: 5060192781045

Reviews

A splendidly played, sensitive recital – recorded in three different locations, not that one would notice – that explores little-known crevices of the repertoire (MusicWeb International)

Bausor’s flute-playing was mesmerising (Classical Source)

Bates had a beautiful cantabile style (Classical Source)

Songs by Alexander Dargomyzhsky (1813-1869)

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Related Artists: Anastasia Prokofieva, Sergey Rybin

Catalogue No: 5060192780987

Reviews

When we think of Russian song in recital, it tends to be songs by Mussorgsky (1839-1881), Tchaikovsky (1840-1893), and Rachmaninov (1873-1943) that performers reach for first, and even then, quite a small group of songs by each composer. But on disc, things are starting to get more interesting, in 2016 Katherine Broderick and Sergey Rybin recorded a disc of Mussorgsky songs which explored the links between the composer and French Impressionism [see my review], then in 2018, Anush Hovhannisyan, Yuriy Yurchuk, and Sergey Rybin recorded a disc of Romances by Rimsky-Korsakov (1844-1908) [see my review], and now pianist Sergei Rybin is joined by soprano Anastasia Prokofieva on Stone Records for The Secret Garden, Romances by Alexander Dargomyzhshky, a selection of 26 of the composer’s songs. Alexander Dargomyzhshky (1813-1869) is one of the missing links between Mikhail Glinka (1804-1857) and the composers of Mussorgsky and Tchaikovsky’s generation. Dargomyzhshky’s father was the illegitimate son of a nobleman, and the young Alexander was musically talented early and his teachers would include one of Hummel’s pupils. In 1833, Dargomyzhshky met Glinka who encouraged the young man and Glinka would be a mentor and friend for 22 years. It was Glinka’s influence that encouraged Dargomyzhshky to consider composing as a profession, rather than simply something for the salon. Though like the composers born in the 1830s and 1840s, Dargomyzhshky also had a day job in the civil service. Whilst he was heavily influenced by French Grand Opera, and spent six months during 1844 travelling to Berlin, Brussels, Paris and Vienna when it came to Russian music Dargomyzhshky was looking for a deeper truth. He was interested in the way words were set, would experiment with declamatory, recitative-like writing which would heavily influence later generations of Russian composers. Perhaps because he didn’t write ‘ear flattering melodies’, his music never quite got the attention that it deserved. He wrote almost exclusively for the voice, leaving four complete operas, two incomplete operas and nearly 100 Romances. His songs trace his stylistic evolution from classical through Romantic towards Realism, first songs for the salon, then Russian folk songs, larger-scale ballades and realistic, satirical scenes. The record booklet gives us plenty of information about the composer, his songs, the texts and their authors, but does not seem to include dates for the songs. This is a shame as it would be interesting to know where the individual songs fit into Dargomyzhshky’s development. Sergey Rybin says in his booklet note that they have concentrated on the earlier aspects of his career. We certainly begin in the salon, setting French, and throughout the recital, there are songs that seem to be firmly aimed at the salon. But in others, whilst there is the use of closed forms, the word-setting has greater freedom to it which makes the songs intriguing. By the time we reach the title song Vertograd (The Secret Garden), there is a real freedom in Dargomyzhshky’s approach, which continues in The fire of desire burns in my blood. The result is to intrigue and to make you wonder why the songs are not better known. Many of these songs are little gems, as Dargomyzhshky shows himself sympathetic to setting the text in an expressive way, despite the apparent tyranny of a closed dance-form in the piano. I would have liked to hear more of  Dargomyzhshky’s other song styles, but Prokofieva and Rybin’s selection of material stays close to Dargomyzhshky’s writing for the salon. The songs are performed here with great charm and sympathy by Prokofieva and Rybin. This is one of those discs that makes you wonder why we have not heard these songs before (though Malcolm Martineau gave us four songs in the 1840s volume of his Decades project, see my review). And what it also does is when my appetite to hear the songs from later in Dargomyzhshky’s career when he moved away from the salon. **** (Planet Hugill)

Agreeable songs well worth investigating (MusicWeb International)

Piano music by Bach, Brahms, Liszt, Medtner & Schubert

Related Artists: Viv McLean

Catalogue No: 5060192781014

Reviews

A passionate and diverse survey, virtuoso style (Fanfare)

Medtner’s Fairy Tale Op 8/2 is the star of the recital, beautifully shaped. Liszt’s ‘Mazeppa’ from the Transcendental Études is characteristically exciting (International Piano)

A collection of new music for solo and looped cello gathered, arranged, curated and performed during the 2020 Covid-19 lockdown

Related Artists: Clare O’Connell

Catalogue No: 5060192781052

Reviews

wood-textured, ancient, mysterious, elusive and organic (David Le Page)

Soprano arias and songs by Richard Wagner

Related Artists: Jenufa Gleich

Catalogue No: 5060192780138

Reviews

CRITIC’S CHOICE – A pleasure … exquisite piano singing … singing with beauty and grace … I’d like to hear her in this full role … I look forward to hearing more from her (Opera News)

An interesting disc introducing a talented artist … the voice soars … Gleich brings to this repertoire an appealing voice, clear and unmannered … negotiates its athletic contours impressively … impressive control …a total success (The Wagner Journal)

This is at one and the same time a surprisingly and unexpectedly successful disc … On the basis of this recital disc I cannot wait to hear Jenufa Gleich in complete Wagnerian recordings (MusicWeb International)

The second CD in a four-disc series that will comprise the first complete recording of the songs of John Ireland (1879-1962)

Related Artists: Mark Stone, Sholto Kynoch

Catalogue No: 5060192781007

Reviews

Stone’s survey of the songs of John Ireland reaches the halfway mark with works published between 1912 and 1928, setting words by Shakespeare, Rossetti and Emily Brontë, as well as his contemporary poets James Vila Blake, Ernest Dowson and Arthur Symons. Stone and Kynoch catch the essentially English nostalgia of the haunting, wistful songs with robust humour in the folksy, rollicking numbers. (The Sunday Times)

Music for violin and piano by Boulanger, Debussy, Poulenc & Ravel

Related Artists: Anna Ovsyanikova, Julia Sinani

Catalogue No: 5060192780963

Reviews

The first thing to say about this debut recording from the young London-based Russian duo of Anna Ovsyanikova and Julia Sinani is that it’s refreshing to see Debussy’s omnipresent Violin Sonata in some less omnipresent company for once. Yes, to be sure, it’s an all-French programme, as is so often the case for this piece. However, their Ravel isn’t the ‘official’ Violin Sonata of 1927 but instead the single-movement Sonata No 1 he penned in 1890 but then abandoned, and which was posthumously published in 1975. Then there’s Debussy admirer Lili Boulanger’s two pieces for violin and piano, the 1911 Nocturne (originally for flute and echoing the Prélude à L’après-midi d’un faune with its opening descending line) and the Cortège of 1914, which while hardly profound or groundbreaking are still enjoyable as sweetly perfumed Gallic bijoux. Rounding off the programme is Poulenc’s Violin Sonata of 1943, and if you’re listening digitally then this comes both in its 1943 form and also with Poulenc’s 1949 reworking of the final movement, prompted by the death of its dedicatee, Ginette Neveu, in a plane crash. So full marks for a programme that manages on paper to be both distinctive and instinctive, and these two words could equally be applied to how it sounds. The Debussy itself is notable for sitting at the slower end of the tempo spectrum, whether over the Allegro vivo’s time-suspended meno mosso and tempo rubato markings or in its marked pulling on of the brakes for the concluding movement’s Peu à peu, très animé section (4’42”) preceding the final flourish. Serious and steady rather than fluidly capricious, with Ovsyanikova’s attractively full and velvety tones complemented by correspondingly cloaked tones from Sinani, it’s all a sound world that I’d have placed as Russian school even had I not known who was playing. So while I’ve heard a wider range of colours and dynamics in these pieces from others – give me Janine Jansen’s more delicate and nuanced Boulanger Nocturne any day – it certainly has its own charm, and I love the fruity sharpness and overall ker-pow with which Ovsyanikova opens the Poulenc. The album was recorded in both the Lutheran Church of St Catherine in St Petersburg and St Paul’s, Knightsbridge, and while we’re not given the details I’d hazard a guess that the Poulenc was recorded in a different venue to the rest, its violin sounding just a tad closer to the ear. (Gramophone)

The third disc in a four-disc series that will comprise the first complete recording of the songs of Roger Quilter (1877-1953).

Related Artists: Mark Stone, Stephen Barlow

Catalogue No: 5060192780956

Reviews

This is an interesting and very impressive disc, one in which Mark Stone and Stephen Barlow once again show themselves to be an excellent partnership, I have enjoyed their disc of the Butterworth songs (5060192780024), and Volume 1 of the Delius songs (5060192780062), as well as Volume 1 of the Quilter (5060192780956) all on disc; I only have a download of Volume 2 (5060192780307). Here, Stone has at times a youthful bloom to his voice whilst Stephen Barlow’s piano playing is perfectly intoned with the voice, showing what skill he has as an accompanist as well as being a very fine pianist in his own right. The recorded sound is very good, whilst the booklet notes by Mark Stone are also excellent and are akin to Graham Johnson’s in the way he introduces the composer as well as each of the songs and translates each of the songs in French and German. A thoroughly researched and well performed disc, one I have no doubt, that will give delight to any fan of Roger Quilter’s music, and of English art songs as well. (MusicWeb International)

Recorded as long ago as 2007 — production delays prompted Stone to set up his own label — the voice heard in this selection of songs and arrangements is youthful, healthy and handsome, utterly devoid of affectation in his diction and manneristic musical effects. The highlights are the popular Drink to Me Only, The Ash Grove and wistful-melancholic Irish and Scottish folk songs, but the entire programme is a tonic for the ears. (Sunday Times)

Mark Stone is in fine voice here, and you certainly do not need the printed words. Throughout he brings a lovely freshness to the vocal line, particularly in the arrangements, and throughout is sympathetically partnered by Stephen Barlow. (Planet Hugill)

Usually, in this kind of collection, I suggest that one should sample a few songs at the time. Here, I feel that the singer and pianist have thought carefully about the contents in this collection and the order of the songs; it seems to me ideal to set aside eighty minutes, a comfortable chair, possibly a drink and just soak up this life-affirming music. This disc will certainly be returning to my stereo very soon. I hope that I may have the opportunity to hear the previous volumes and look forward to the next and final volume with enthusiasm and anticipation. (MusicWeb International)

Rover Quilter was a discreet but influential presence on the English musical scene in the first decades of the 20^th century. He was dogged by ill-health, and probably by the stress of his covert homosexuality. He was rich, generous, philanthropic, and was instrumental in helping Jews flee the Nazi menace in Austria. Apart from the music to a popular children’s play called Where the Rainbow Ends, his musical output was almost all songs. This CD consists of his arrangements of English, Irish, Scottish, and Welsh songs, including such traditional favourites as “Drink to me only”, “Greensleeves”, “Believe me, if all those endearing young charms”. Quilter’s arrangements have a fluent charm that Mark Stone and Stephen Barlow render with relaxed grace. And it’s worth noting Stone’s remarkable achievement – as performer, translator, liner-note writer, – and, most important of all, director of the record company which he has founded, and with which he flies the flag for underrated English music. (Independent)

Piano music by Frédéric Chopin (1810-1849)

Related Artists: Viv McLean

Catalogue No: 5060192780970

Reviews

Frederic Chopin’s music is among the most performed and oft-recorded of its genre. This presents an interesting challenge for modern pianists: how might one approach the music of a composer whose performance traditions are so well-established? Here, Viv McLean invites us to explore the complex and sometimes competing facets of Chopin’s musical personality. The album title provides some insight. It doesn’t simply describe the works included on the album—other types of pieces are included as well—but also suggests a lens through which the works are to be viewed. If the nocturne signifies Chopin’s love for the human voice and the polonaise represents his love for the national dance of his homeland, McLean’s approach seeks to marry the two, finding songs in the dances and dances in the songs. As a result, the performances are richly textured. His playing is improvisatory yet logical, sensitive but confident. This is a worthy addition to any collection (Piano Magazine)

Extraordinary originality, superb simplicity, and fingers of steel hidden behind muscles of velvet. He is an otherworldly young man – he plays with the genius one finds in those who know how to forget themselves, naturally placing themselves at the right point to meet the music, this mystery of the moment (Le Monde, Paris)

Songs by Reynaldo Hahn (1874-1947)

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Related Artists: Anastasia Prokofieva, Sergey Rybin

Catalogue No: 5060192780888

Reviews

A Russian duo brings a lightness and freshness to Hahn’s lovely melodies. Despite a considerable musical output covering works for the stage and large-scale orchestral works, it is for his songs that Reynaldo Hahn is best known. There is a handful of well-known ones, melodies which singers love to bask in, but there are plenty more which repay investigation. On this new disc of Reynaldo Hahn’s songs L’heure exquise on Stone Records, soprano Anastasia Prokofieva and pianist Sergey Rybin given us a wide selection, from Si mes vers avaient des ailes! which was an instant success in 1888 (when he was 14!) right through to Au fil de l’eau and Mon reve etait d’avoir.. from the 1934 film La Dame aux Camelias, to a pair of songs from 9 Mélodies retrouvées published posthumously in 1955. The selection casts its net widely though the majority of songs date from before 1914, which reflects Hahn’s output which declined partly because he served during World War I, and then after the war devoted time to conducting, being general manager of Cannes Casino Opera House and writing criticism for Le Figaro. But it is also because Hahn belonged to the pre-World War One world, to the beau monde, and as he got older and Paris belonged to Stravinsky and Les Six, musically Hahn did not move and stayed true his revered teacher at the Paris Conservatoire, Massenet. The CD booklet includes an excellent essay by Richard Stokes which provides plenty of background on the songs and their texts, but in fact gives us no hint of the criteria for selection, or for arrangement. Certainly Prokofieva and Rybin ignore the published order of the songs, selecting individual songs from collections, but then everyone does. (Planet Hugill)

Reynaldo Hahn was born in Caracas. His parents moved to Paris when he was just three years old. He composed concertos, operas, instrumental works, chamber music and ballet music – and some 125 songs. Hahn often sang his songs to his own accompaniment. There are celebrated reports of him performing them in the salons of the time ‘with an interminable cigarette dangling from his lips, not as a pose but out of habit’. This welcome new collection sung by the delectably-voiced lyric coloratura Anastasia Prokofieva comprises 25 of Hahn’s songs, all delivered beautifully controlled as to shape and line, and sensitively coloured as to spirit and context. She is accompanied equally strongly and persuasively by pianist Sergey Rybin. As I listened, I ticked off each song that impressed me and that I might select to comment on; but I soon noted that I was ticking practically every one, I was so transported by the beauty of the music and the artistic strength of these performances. To mention but a few… First, Hahn’s gorgeous À Chloris, his glorious, languorous Bach pastiche using a bass line of the Air on a G-string to underpin such words of love as “If it is true, Chloris, that you love me… I do not believe that even the kings themselves know happiness equal to mine…” Moving forward in time, there is Fêtes galantes, Hahn’s setting of Verlaine’s that perfectly captures the atmosphere and spirit of Watteau and Fragonard; and, as Richard Sales in his excellent notes for this CD remarks of the accompaniment, “… you can hear the twanged note of the mandolin in the left hand treble clef in both the prelude and postlude and the final words And the mandolin chatters Amid the quivering of the breeze”. Sales also reminds us and comments that Hahn’s song Si mes vers avaient des ailes! composed when Hahn was just thirteen ‘has become, rather unfairly, his most famous song’. For me, there are one or two songs that are outstanding gems amongst so many pearls. I love the haunting melody of L’énamourée (The enamoured) with an equally haunting graveside tribute in words to a dead lover. And I am equally transported by the sentiments movingly expressed by Hahn’s music to Victor Hugo’s Reverie. This is an exquisite Hahn collection, exquisitely delivered and thoroughly recommended. (Musicweb International)

Chamber music by Schumann, Gade & Mendelssohn

Related Artists: The Phoenix Piano Trio

Catalogue No: 5060192780949

Reviews

An intelligently programmed disc, with two familiar trios framing the less well-known Novelletten by Gade. The Phoenix Trio are in splendidly vibrant form throughout, but especially in the Mendelssohn **** (BBC Music)

Robert Schumann’s F-major Piano Trio (Opus 80) opens this Leipzig-centric recording with a burst of energy that takes the listener with it, and also establishes the Phoenix Piano Trio (Jonathan Stone, violin, Christian Elliott, cello, and Sholto Kynoch) as an estimable ensemble, driving Schumann’s Sehr lebhaft with dynamism but also light and shade and knowing just when to ease off the gas a little. This opening movement is also indicative of David Rowell’s perfectly engineered sound; intimate yet airy. Schumann’s remaining three movements are also brought off with style and discernment, revealing the composer’s confidences, mood-swings and likeable quirks. If the work as a whole isn’t Schumann at his supreme best (he might have found it tricky to follow the standout opening movement), then there can be no doubt as to the masterpiece status of Felix Mendelssohn’s C-minor Piano Trio (Opus 66). Following a surreptitious yet ardent Allegro energico e con fuoco (exactly that from the Phoenix members) is a blissful Andante espressivo, then a feather-light mercurial Scherzo (trademark Mendelssohn), the musicians deftly matching the prescribed Molto allegro quasi presto. The second-subject basis of the final movement, Allegro appassionato, is one of those Heaven-sent melodies – noble-heroic – that you listen to in wonder (where did Mendelssohn find that from?), nowhere more so than on its ultimate utterance, most-tenderly addressed by Kynoch. In case you are wondering how Copenhagen-born Niels Gade (1817-1890) fits into the Leipzig scene, well Mendelssohn conducted his music, and Gade moved there in 1843 to assist him and also assist him. A couple of years later Gade substituted for an ailing composer to conduct the premiere of Mendelssohn’s E-minor Violin Concerto (Ferdinand David as soloist) and succeeded him as conductor of the Gewandhaus Orchestra, a short-lived appointment given war broke out between Prussia and Denmark and Gade returned to Copenhagen. His five Novelletten are charming, leaning more to Schumann (whom Gade also knew on friendly terms) than Mendelssohn. (Colin’s Column)

It’s interesting to see what can be achieved with a little bit of imaginative programming. It’s not too much of a leap to pair Niels Gade with the two composers with whom he was on close terms in Leipzig in the 1840s, Mendelssohn and Schumann – and if pressed, I’d probably have described his music as most closely resembling Mendelssohn’s. Yet if this attractive programme from the Phoenix Piano Trio demonstrates anything, it’s Gade’s temperamental kinship to Schumann: that same fondness for short forms, and that balancing act between tender inwardness and headlong, euphoric verve. The Phoenix Piano Trio capture all those qualities with unaffected freshness and charm, both in Gade’s Novelletten and in Schumann’s relatively more familiar F major Piano Trio. The opening of each of these two works, in fact, is practically supercharged … in the many passages of lightness, lyricism and delicacy, these performances are thoroughly engaging: the playful lilt of Schumann’s third-movement intermezzo; Sholto Kynoch’s limpid piano-playing in Gade’s Larghetto; and the unforced, plain-spoken tone of the two string players. It’s real chamber music, in other words, though the closing performance of Mendelssohn’s woefully underrated C minor Trio lacks nothing in terms of fantasy or symphonic sweep – and the speed and agility of the Scherzo (one of those fairy music moto perpetuos) positively takes the breath away. In many ways, a rewarding disc. (Gramophone)

On 31 October 1847, the Danish composer Niels Gade visited Clara and Robert Schumann in Dresden, with the news that Felix Mendelssohn was seriously ill in Leipzig. Mendelssohn died a few days later after a series of strokes; Schumann and Gade were pall-bearers. This disc from the Phoenix Piano Trio (Sholto Kynoch, piano, Jonathan Stone, violin, Christian Elliott, cello) celebrates the links between the three composers who all came to know each other in Leipzig in the 1830s and 1840s. The links between Schumann and Mendelssohn are well known, but the presence of the Danish composer Niels Gade is more intriguing, yet when Mendelssohn died it was Gade who was seen as his natural successor in charge of the Gewandhaus Orchester. The Prussian/Danish war of Schleswig-Holstein put paid to that and Gade, returning to Denmark, would live until 1890, becoming a somewhat old-fashioned figure in the Wagnerian flush of the later 19th century. When Schumann wrote a mad rush of chamber music in 1842, he never quite finished a piano trio, and when he returned to chamber music in 1847 he wrote two, the Piano Trio in D minor Op. 63, and the Piano Trio in F major Op. 80. The first rather troubled, the second (the one on this disc) rather friendlier. Perhaps one stimulus was that his wife had already written her piano trio, her magnum opus, in 1846. The first movement of Schumann’s Piano Trio No. 2, however friendly, is full of drama. Its extrovert opening is well captured by the players, with more thoughtful moments as the movement develops and some distinctly Bachian writing in the development. As with much of Schumann’s piano chamber music, this is a piano-led piece but Sholto Kynoch never pushes himself forward overmuch and what impresses is the thoughtful give and take between the players. The atmospheric slow movement opens with a wonderful passage with the two strings weaving quiet lines over Kynoch’s throbbing chords, the sympathy of the three creating real magic. The third movement is a sort of melancholy waltz with a strange syncopated rhythm which makes it lurch along, hoppity-kick. The players make it rather haunting and with hints of underlying unease. The finale is light textured and exhilarating, and rather recalls Schumann’s piano writing. In fact, Schumann’s piano based chamber music can often seem an extension of his piano solo writing, but here the trio almost make that a virtue and all three players contribute equally to the thoughtful atmosphere. It was Schumann who seems to have used the term Noveletten for his piano pieces Opus 21, and Gade adopted it for his 1853 pieces for piano trio which were written in Copenhagen. The work consists of five contrasting movements, which showcase Gade’s melodic felicity and feeling for the chamber textures of the genre. The first lively, dramatic and scherzo-ish with attractively varied textures formed from three independent lines, the second movement graceful and fluid, with lovely intertwining lines and the spirit of Schumann not far away. The players make the third movement strongly characterised, and full of interesting rhythms, with a delicate middle section, then comes a lovely a song without words, again with a lovely fluidity to the scoring, and the finale full of Schuman-esque charm and impetuous drama. Mendelssohn’s second piano trio dates from 1845, just two years before his death and a period when he managed to cram in writing music such as the Violin Concerto, along with being administrator and conductor of the Gewandhaus Orchester in Leipzig. The piano writing in both Mendelssohn’s trios is virtuoso (he had rewritten his first trio at composer Ferdinand Hiller’s urging to make it more ‘modern’). The result can sometimes turn the works into mini-piano concertos without a sympathetic performance such as the one it gets here. The first movement is fast, but quiet and very atmospheric, with very mobile dynamics and some wonderful textures, moments of urgent excitement. A sense of the dynamism of the textures and the vivid dynamics is something which seems to characterise all the movements in the piece. Neither string player has a really fat sound, so they combine intensity with elegance, and Kynoch’s piano is finely virtuoso without ever turning the work into a concerto. The slow movement starts out as a song without words, with the piano eventually being joined by the strings to develop the texture with some lovely singing lines. The scherzo is full of vivid scurrying, the fairies were very much back, with the three players giving us some brilliant playing, and excitement too. The Finale begins lyrically passionate, again with a very mobile texture with a lovely give and take between the players. And then the music dissolves into a chorale, then Mendelssohn combines the two into something lyrically passionate. (Planet Hugill)

I daresay this isn’t the first recording to focus on the confluence of talent in Leipzig in the middle of the 19^th century, but in the piano trio genre, it is certainly the first time that a Gade piece has been included with those of his “old friends” (Schumann’s words). The Schumann Piano Quintet is one of my favourite chamber works, so I have always found it odd that I have struggled to warm to any of his three trios. Schumann’s description of his second trio was that it “makes a friendlier and more immediate impression” than the stormy first and the jaunty opening certainly bears witness to that. I’m pleased to report that the Phoenix Piano Trio is nudging me towards a greater appreciation with a performance of sparkle, charm and emotion. The five miniatures that Gade named after the Schumann piano set are certainly a very appropriate inclusion as the influences of his “old friends” are very obvious. I will probably offend aficionados of the composer by saying that melodic invention wasn’t his strongest suit, but the alternating fast-slow movements are always enjoyable company with plenty of rhythmic vitality and interest. The fourth movement Larghetto con moto is particularly charming (MusicWeb International)

English and American choral masterpieces

Related Artists: Mark Ford, Jonathan Schranz, The Purcell Singers

Catalogue No: 5060192780925

Reviews

This is a lovely collection in every way. The singing is beautiful, the program is very wisely chosen, and the recording is spacious without being muddy. There is a sufficient range of musical styles here to hold one’s interest over the disc’s one hour length. The Purcell Singers was founded in 1994 by Mark Ford, who continues to serve as their music director. The group should not be confused with the Purcell Singers that were founded in 1932 by Imogen Holst. I am not sure whether this group chose its name to honor the earlier ensemble or not. These a cappella choral works all date from the twentieth century, either from England or America. There are some unfamiliar pieces and some that will be well known to lovers of choral music. Morten Lauridsen’s O Magnum Mysterium has been recorded many times, and while I will not claim that the present performance tops all the others, I can confidently say that it is as good as any I have heard. The Purcell Singers, whether conducted by their founder Mark Ford or by frequent guest conductor Jonathan Schranz, seem never content to just sing the notes correctly. They are sensitive to the texts and the colors of the music, communicating those elements vividly. Samuel Barber’s Agnus Dei is the composer’s own arrangement of his Adagio for Strings (he knew a hit tune when he found one), and it is as lovely and effective in this choral setting as in either the original string quartet form or the full string orchestra version. Benjamin Britten’s Flower Songs were composed in 1950 as a 25th wedding anniversary present for Leonard and Dorothy Emhirst, good friends of the composer who were, among other things, keen botanists. Thus the subject of the lovely cycle, which finds Britten at his most straightforward and direct. The major work on the disc, which gives the CD its title, is When David Heard by Eric Whitacre. This 13-minute score was composed in 1999, and its origin is surely part of the reason for its power. It was commissioned by Dr. Ronald Staheli through the Brigham Young University Singers on the occasion of the death of Staheli’s son in an automobile accident. Whitacre took his text from the Second Book of Samuel, “When David heard that Absalom was slain, He went up into his chamber over the gate, and wept. And thus he said, ‘O my son, my son Absalom!’ Would God I had died for thee! O Absalom my son, my son!” You can see how these grieving sentiments would be enormously powerful, and Whitacre has applied great imagination in depicting the emptiness felt by King David without becoming maudlin. I found this performance much more impactful than an earlier recording with the Brigham Young University Singers, partly because the actual recorded sound has more presence here (the earlier recording was overly reverberant) and partly because the Purcell Singers inflect the text with far greater specificity. Everything on this disc was a pleasure to hear. From the hushed beauty of James Erb’s arrangement of Shenendoah to the powerful anthem Bring Us, O Lord God by the British composer William Henry Harris, the wide range of emotion makes for a totally absorbing experience. Excellent notes along with complete texts round out the picture. Five stars: A lovely and moving collection of choral works, beautifully sung and recorded (Fanfare)

This mixed bag of a programme from the Purcell Singers ranges from Elgar (a characterful account of the popular My Love Dwelt in a Northern Land) to Eric Whitacre’s When David Heard, by way of Barber’s Agnus Dei, Howells’s Take Him, Earth, for Cherishing, and Britten’s Five Flower Songs, among others. The conducting is shared our between Messrs Ford and Schranz. The Purcell Singers make a pleasing, well-blended sound, beautifully showcased on many tracks on this CD, but perhaps nowhere more so than in James Erb’s arrangement of Shenandoah … more often than not they create a very special choral magic, such as in Morten Lauridsen’s popular O magnum mysterium **** (Choir & Organ)

Although these are all new recordings, this programme is intended as a retrospective of favourite pieces The Purcell Singers have performed since conductor Mark Ford founded the London-based chamber choir 25 years ago. Its 40 members make a warmly-blended sound in the opening track, Elgar’s ‘My Love Dwelt in a Northern Land’, with alertly sharpened accents on the pulsing rhythms of verses three and four, and a sudden flaring of emotion when the dead lover’s heart is contemplated in the final line, ‘colder that the clay’. That mix of fulsome tonal blend and insightful word-pointing continues throughout the recital, in a feelingly shaped Barber ‘Agnus Dei’, a dynamically proactive take on Harris’s eight-art ‘Bring us, O Lord God’ and a probing account of Howells’s ‘Take Him, Earth, for Cherishing’. Britten’s ‘Flower Songs’ pose bigger technical challenges, but the Purcell Singers meet them impressively in a punchy, crisply articulated ‘Marsh Flowers’ and a version of ‘The Ballad of Green Broom’ which is nimbly playful while avoiding archness. Eric Whitacre’s 13-minute ‘When David Heard’ is another major test of technique and concentration, and while the clustered harmonies don’t always emerge with pinpoint clarity the searing emotional arc of the piece is compellingly communicated, with telling demarcations between the successive stages on its journey of grief and lamentation. Conducting duties are shared between Mark Ford and Jonathan Schranz, and the sound is excellent. ****/***** (BBC Music)

The tenth disc in the first complete recording of the songs of Hugo Wolf (1860-1903), recorded live at the Oxford Lieder Festival, featuring the settings of Goethe.

Related Artists: Louise Alder, Fflur Wyn, Katarina Karnéus, Rowan Hellier, Adrian Thompson, Roderick Williams, Neal Davies, Sholto Kynoch

Catalogue No: 5060192780918

Reviews

When an individual is “outed” to a new acquaintance as a classical musician, the first question that invariably arises is “Who is your favorite composer?” I suspect that although most performers of art song might be expected to name Schubert or Schumann, most would instead offer up Hugo Wolf. The Austrian composer’s collected lieder are the musical equivalent of an enormous box of fine chocolates. Each morsel is sumptuous, full of intriguing flavors ranging from the delicate to the shockingly potent. The power of Wolf’s music lies in the application of a wide-ranging Wagnerian harmonic palette to a variety of texts. Wolf was attracted to poems from all sources, from high-minded poets like Goethe to the folksy village banter found in the Italienisches Liederbuch. Although he composed quickly, Wolf somehow managed to incorporate a staggering amount of detail in every one of his songs, the music perfectly dovetailing with the meaning of the poem. It is perhaps this specificity which always impresses. The critic Ernest Newman believed that Wolf understood the psychology of Goethe in a way no other composer (including Schubert) could. In a misguided attempt to promote Wolf, Newman furiously bashed Schubert’s settings of the poems from Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre, claiming that Schubert merely selected “pretty poems” for his songs rather than attempting to comprehend Goethe’s texts as Wolf did. It is of course not necessary to attack Schubert’s songwriting ability or intellect in order to praise Wolf’s Goethe settings; the younger man’s music speaks for itself. Listen to the three tragic Harfenspieler songs in which the mysterious harper sings of his guilty secret, a secret that will have major ramifications for other characters in the novel. Wolf’s harmonies take very unexpected turns, underlining the torturous emotions of the harper. The accompaniment of these songs is sparse, making audible the emptiness of the harper’s heart. It is a successful musical evocation of energy sapped from years of self-blame. Contrast this with the sumptuous, yearning, desperate, and ecstatic “Kennst du das Land.” That song emanates from a different character from Wilhelm Meister, the beautiful Mignon. “Kennst du das Land” dramatizes not only Mignon’s longing for her homeland, but also her unaware sensuousness and mysterious origins. The piano texture is orchestral, filled with tremolos, massive chordal attacks, and widely-spaced lines that Wolf carefully delineates in the score. The vocal part is blatantly operatic in its scope, calling for a voice which is far beyond anything a 13-year-old could summon in real life. His setting of Goethe’s beautiful poetry is spot-on, and never fails to spark a response in the listener. This CD includes the first 19 of the 51 Goethe Lieder performed in the printed order. The CD was recorded live during the Oxford Lieder Festival, and is taken from two different performances. Credit must first be given to the wonderful pianist Sholto Kynoch, who plays with great sensitivity and color throughout. The fingerbusting Der Rattenfänger is dispatched with verve and no sense of stress, in total defiance of the intense demands made on the pianist by Wolf. The extreme chromatic nature of Wolf’s piano writing means that it can be very easy to take a wrong turn; considering that the recordings were made live in concert, the accuracy of Kynoch’s playing throughout the disc is in itself impressive. With the exception of Katarina Karnéus, the female singers are given little to do, but they sing beautifully when called upon. Louise Alder’s Philine is delightful, perfectly capturing the empty-headed and playful actress depicted in Wilhelm Meister. Karnéus has long been familiar to lovers of art song, her debut album for EMI featuring songs of Mahler, Marx, and Strauss. Her singing of the Mignon lieder is deeply moving, featuring kaleidoscopic colors, impeccable phrasing, and exemplary diction. I hope that she can be persuaded to record more Joseph Marx lieder, as well as more Strauss. The men are equally strong in their assignments. The singing of Roderick Williams is always a joy; his vital, masculine timbre is a perfect fit for the muscular Rattenfänger, as well as the Cophtisches Lieder. Neal Davies’s subtle and perceptive performances of the Harfenspieler songs are a major achievement. I am used to hearing the last track Epiphanias sung by a single performer, but on this album a number of the singers were utilized in order to emulate the song’s first performance, which featured the three children of Wolf’s girlfriend. The song is a boisterous depiction of the Three Kings of the nativity, all of whom are more interested in getting drunk than worshipping the Christ child. Although the CD includes some known Wolf settings, many of these lieder are not often heard on recital programs. Listeners who wish to explore Wolf for the first time may want to find a more mainstream collection of the “greatest hits” variety, but those who wish to hear an in-depth exploration of the Goethe lieder will enjoy this album. This is the penultimate release in this series, I look forward to the final instalment (MusicWeb International)

Vaughan Williams’ settings of A E Housman for tenor, piano and string quartet

Related Artists: Daniel Norman, Sholto Kynoch, Brodsky Quartet

Catalogue No: 5060192780901

Reviews

PRAISE FOR NORMAN’S PREVIOUS BRITTEN DISC ON STONE RECORDS:

Both sets of performances are very fine. Those from Oxford around Norman are easier on the ear … The Oxford performance has a wider-ranging essay by recent Britten biographer Paul Kildea … Both discs are well recorded. (International Record Review)

This release is  a valuable addition to the Britten discography (Classical Iconoclast)

Those expecting five “canticles” will not be disappointed (Fanfare)

Cello sonatas by Lawrence Rose and Shostakovich

Related Artists: Katherine Jenkinson, Alison Farr, Nicholas Holland

Catalogue No: 5060192780895

Reviews

You compose with an impressively confident and clear voice. I can express nothing but admiration for your continued achievement. Bravo. (Gerald Elias, Boston Symphony Orchestra)

The string writing was very well-written indeed! Wonderful music. (Peggy Nolan, Eblana String Trio)

Everything seems to grow organically. (Jeremy Hulin, Maastricht Conservatorium)

Chamber music by English living composer Nicholas Simpson

Related Artists: Charlotte Trepess, Zelkova Quartet

Catalogue No: 5060192780871

Reviews

Now in his early sixties, Nicholas Simpson studied composition during the 1980s with John Tavener at Trinity College, London. However, one is more likely to detect the influence of late 19th- and early 20th-century tonality on the two string quartets heard here. The disc’s title, ‘Remembered Music’, is taken from a line by the poet Kathleen Raine, whose On a Deserted Shore forms the basis for the earliest featured work. Composed in 1988, Remembered Music for voice and quartet is an evocative setting that benefits from a thoughtful and sensitively shaped response to the text from soprano Charlotte Trepess. Simpson’s style has sometimes been compared with his older namesake, Robert, but his music bears as much the trace of Eastern European and Scandinavian influences. His predilection for developing ideas from small, germ-like motifs is evident in both quartets. Bartók’s late Sixth Quartet is suggested in the String Quartet in G minor (2013), which opens hesitatingly with a rising and falling two-note figure. Passed around between the ensemble in a question-and-answer-type texture, this two-note idea takes on a more intensive character as the movement unfolds. A three-note pattern is heard at the beginning of a dynamic, dancelike second movement, which soon transforms itself into a syncopated folk-like tune. A slow third movement revisits the first’s two-note idea against gradually rising, wedge-like harmonic shifts that call to mind the sound world of Einojuhani Rautavaara. The first movement of Simpson’s earlier String Quartet in C evinces a mosaic-like structure, while its Beethoven-inspired finale amply demonstrates the composer’s solid contrapuntal technique. The Zelkova Quartet display impressive control and command over the material throughout. Simpson reveals in the booklet notes that he only truly re-embraced composition during the 1990s, when ‘the great serialist terror was coming to an end’. Sympathetic listeners will no doubt identify with Simpson’s unfussy tonal style; others more willing to embrace modernist ideals and the spirit of the avant-garde may well dwell ruefully on the rather perverse notion that, as a point of comparison, James Dillon’s String Quartet No 2 was being written at almost exactly the same time as Simpson’s String Quartet in C. (Gramophone)

Remembered Music is a disc of chamber music by Nicholas Simpson, a one-time pupil of John Tavener (1944-2013). He was born in Manchester and studied (at Nottingham University) and practised law (in London). After a spell playing guitar in rock bands he moved to studies at Trinity College of Music. There he won the Chappell Prize for composition and the Ricordi for conducting. His worklist includes three very substantial symphonies, a piano concerto, chamber music and an oratorio, Recreation. Going by title alone (admittedly chancy) Simpson also has a well-tuned sense of humour. I have not heard them but the following promise well: orchestral works: Blighty, Ilkley Moor Sans Chapeau and Bachianas Mancuniensis. There is a piano solo called Dropping Anka and Four Reasons Why Jazz is Rubbish for wind quintet. He is currently work away at an opera on Jim Crace’s 1995 Booker-shortlisted novel Quarantine. Simpson is not a complete neophyte when it comes to recordings. His clarinet quartet Mardale Changes was issued by Delphian in an anthology project. This work refers to the bells heard from the now flooded and sunken Mardale Church. These world-première recordings are given with impressive skill and concentration by the Zelkova String Quartet. They are very much a family affair. The quartet is named after the Zelkova tree. Simpson’s two string quartets – each in three movements – lie almost two decades apart. They are not numbered; not yet. The character adopted by the composer or which has seized his creative imagination is deadly serious. Serious, yes, but frankly tonal and often melodic – witness the middle movement of the 1994 Quartet. At times he had me thinking of another Simpson: Robert. This is especially in relation to the older composer’s quartets 4-6 which are modelled after the Beethoven Rasumovsky quartets. Another composer evoked was Tippett but not the dense lyricism of the Tippett of the 1930s. My thoughts turned to two works where, in Tippett’s later years, he struck out in new directions and was gripped by an over-weaning lyrical impulse: Rose Lake and the middle movement of the Triple Concerto. The G minor work has a central Dvořákian hustle and bustle to it which is all the more affecting because it is framed by two meditative movements. In neither of the quartets is Simpson’s language likely to be an obstacle to discovering appreciation or even pleasure in this music. It is noted that in what can be a very severe genre Simpson has the music talking to the majority of modern listeners by keeping the total length of the works to less than 24 minutes and even then balancing the ‘plot’ in three movements. The 1994 quartet is at first convulsed by a jerky and persistent figure but this is followed by a cool and chastened lyricism. The finale of this quartet is at times smilingly lively and is very moving. Between the two quartets we hear Remembered Music to a text by one of John Tavener’s friends, Kathleen Raine (1908-2003). The words are rooted in the perfection of love, of loss and in the natural world of the West Highlands for which both Raine and Simpson had and have a deep affection. They are cradled quietly and sung with steady security and commanding control by Charlotte Trepess. Hers is a name we have heard before and you may also have heard her in Albert Herring. The sung verses are printed in full in the booklet. Remembered Music would go well in a concert with Warlock’s The Curlewand Butterworth’s Love Blows as the Wind Blows. All three Simpson pieces are recorded for Stone in pristine quality by David Coyle. The liner-notes, which are by the composer, are cleanly laid out. They’re quite personal, disarming and seemingly candid. The disc has a quite short playing time. This is a pity as the music is as engaging as it is serious. (MusicWeb International)

Settings of poems by Emily Dickinson

Related Artists: Nadine Benjamin, Nicole Panizza

Catalogue No: 5060192780864

Reviews

Benjamin and Panizza achieve near perfection … This release is highly recommended. (Journal of singing)

Nadine Benjamin’s renditions of 20th- and 21st-century musical settings of poems by Emily Dickinson are a great tribute. The singing is beautifully controlled, with care for the text **** (BBC Music)

This Dickinson programme is built around Copland’s classic Twelve Poems (1950), but his successors, Luigi Zaninelli (b1932) and Juliana Hall (b1958), belong to the same tradition. Hall’s cycles, To Meet and Flower (written for Benjamin in 2009) and In Reverence (1985), deserve wider airing. Benjamin’s clear diction and beautiful singing are backed up by her pianist’s committed playing. (Sunday Times)

The recorded sound is very good, andt the booklet offers good notes and full texts. This disc is a real winner, especially for the Hall songs, which should be performed more often. (MusicWeb International)

A wonderfully sung and played recital by two worthy artists who have assembled a fine combination of styles of high-quality art songs. I finished the feast quite well satiated, and you will surely as well. (Fanfare)

Christmas music from Ardingly College

Related Artists: Ardingly College Schola Cantorum, Richard Stafford

Catalogue No: 5060192780857

Reviews

Chamber music for flute, oboe, clarinet, viola & piano

Related Artists: Juliette Bausor, Daniel Bates, Matthew Hunt, Adam Newman, Olga Jegunova

Catalogue No: 5060192780840

Reviews

John Cage’s music arranged for guitar

WATCH VIDEO

Related Artists: Aaron Larget-Caplan

Catalogue No: 5060192780833

Reviews

One scenario I yearn to witness is a quiz-master demolishing anotherwise unassailable contestant by asking him to name a work by John Cage, other than 4’33”. Possible answers are numerous, but known only to those who’ve done their homework. What Cage apparently didn’t do was compose for guitar, leaving a gap that is definitively filled by this ear-opening release from American guitarist Aaron Larget-Caplan. Drawing on Cage’s catalog for piano and prepared piano, Larget-Caplan eases the listener into the proceedings with the hypnotic soundscape of A Room, the word “minimalist” being invoked for a second time in the performer’s notes, alongside a disclaimer that “Cage did not use the term.” Whatever the genre, the two-part textures have a transparency ideally suited to the guitar. This is enhanced by Larget-Caplan’s tidy and understated playing, the feeling of brightness and focus well-captured by engineer Steve Hunt. Likewise Three Easy Pieces, in which the tonal/modal language prompts Larget-Caplan to suggest the first two pieces “could easily be mistaken for 19th century guitar compositions.” Few are likely to confuse Cage with Carulli, but the comparison is not without merit. As the album progresses, occasional sharp edges emerge, most notably in the deliciously noisy Bacchanale, arranged for two prepared guitars. However, anyone hoping this CD will perpetuate the false image of Cage as merely a purveyor of the impenetrable will leave empty-handed. (Classical Guitar)

It’s evening, the end of a busy day. Aaron Larget-Caplan’s record is spinning on my cd player while I write this notes. It’s the third or fourth time that I listen to it, without interruption. I lost the count, I looped it. For the first two plays I remained focused, I listened to all the music in succession, with concentration and attention, then I let the music flow and I started to concentrate my thoughts on what I wanted to write. Bad day today in Italy, wind, rain, high water, while I write bad weather continues to scourge my country, so it’s nice to be at home, in the evening, to write and listen to this music. Aaron Larget-Caplan did a great job: he made the first complete monograph of music by John Cage for classical guitar. Cage has never written for guitar, we know, but this doesn’t really matter to an experimenter of his level. John Cage was one of the most revolutionary musicians of the twentieth century, whose work has been able to broaden the horizons of contemporary music. His innovative spirit, that has considered music as a sound, a sound that is also silence and noise, has been of unparalleled originality. He didn’t believe in the centrality of a single philosophical culture or current, and his use of indeterminacy and chance led to a wider, global relational dimension, rich in oscillations and contaminations between different cultures. The fact that Aaron Larget-Caplan decided to “enter” the structure of Cage’s music and “convert” it for his classical guitar doesn’t detract from the composer’s vision but interpenetrates his work by giving his creations the opportunity to be examined from other points of view. I suggest this record to those who have a mainly “noisy” idea of Cage’s music. These compositions, made between 1933 and 1948 show a much more intimate and even melodic soul and can be an excellent introduction to those who want to approach for the first time to his music. Highly recommended. (NeuGuitars)

This disc, quite properly, knows no fear in its blend of delicacy, complexity and amiable simplicity (MusicWeb International)

John Cage on guitar? Why not? Though the American maverick never wrote explicitly for the instrument, some of his early piano music was adaptable enough for guitarist Aaron Larget-Caplan to arrange for his instrument. The results, out now John Cage: Guitar, are often enticing and plenty appealing. Larget-Caplan’s program consists of seven Cage pieces, all of which originated in the 1930s and ‘40s, a couple of which are remarkably prescient. The opener, A Room, for instance, anticipates the Minimalist procedures of a later generation or two. And the prepared-guitar closer, Bacchanale, sounds a couple decades younger than it is, almost like a kind of high-brow anticipation of Jimi Hendrix. In between come Cage’s Three Easy Pieces, which sound like just that: a set of short, contrapuntal exercises that exude not a little bit of charm, especially the central “Duo.” Chess Pieces and Dream are more substantial. The former is adapted from a composition that appears in a 1944 Cage painting while the latter, a ruminative essay, was originally conceived as a dance piece. In a Landscape is another affecting, resonant meditation. Then there are Six Pieces, a set of radiant miniatures for violin and guitar, in which Larget-Caplan’s joined by violinist Sharon Leventhal. Cage’s writing here is highly specific – the violin part, for instance, indicates which string each note is supposed to be played on – but the music itself is anything but restrained, ranging from the quiet ecstasy of “Melody 1” to the jaunty syncopations of “Melody 3” and the subdued glow of “Melody 6.” Larget-Caplan’s performances are excellent. Technically, he’s got everything under control, no matter how involved the arrangements get. What’s more, his playing brims with charisma and understanding: Cage can be a tough composer to really bring to life. Larget-Caplan (and Leventhal, in Six Pieces) manage the feat impressively. (The Artsfuse)