SOMM Recordings is pleased to announce Birdsong, a fascinating cross-gender exploration of art songs associated with the female voice by baritone Roderick Williams, accompanied by pianist Andrew West.
Celebrating 25 Years of Excellence
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Vaughan Williams
A Vision of Aeroplanes solo: Victoria Adams
Prayer to the Father of Heaven
Mass in G minor (solists: Elizabeth Adams, Nicola Starkie, David Emerson, William Gee)
Lord, Thou hast been our refuge (solists: Elizabeth Adams, Lucy Morton, Richard James, Andrew Randall with Jonathan Sheppard (trumpet)
Holst
The Evening Watch Op. 43 No. 1 (solists: Richard James, Eloise Waterhouse)
Sing me the Men
Howells
The House of the Mind
SOMM Recordings announces the first complete survey on disc of George Dyson’s music for solo piano including five premiere recordings performed by Simon Callaghan in a specially priced two-CD set.
Callaghan is joined by Clíodna Shanahan for the first recording of the two-piano version of Concerto Leggiero, a mature work originally composed for piano and string orchestra. Almost classical in its sense of economy, the two-piano arrangement boasts a remarkable lyricism.
Birmingham Conservatoire Chamber Choir
Paul Spicer, Director with Ben Kennedy piano*, Matthew Firkins timpani+ and Birmingham Conservatoire Brass Ensemble**
“In the hands of Paul Spicer, Howell’s music acquires an enhanced richness and insight into the phrasing of the composer’s long, contrapuntal lines. A lovely disc.” Gramophone (SOMMCD 0140), Choral Music by Herbert Howells).
This fourth disc in SOMM’s series of recordings with Paul Spicer and his Birmingham Conservatoire Chamber Choir gives us most of Barber’s utterly beautiful, neo-Romantic choral music. Barber wrote a great deal of choral music written in a traditional nineteenth-century tonal idiom, despite the fact that his critics called it ‘utterly anachronistic and passé’, a criticism to which he remained largely impervious. There was no denying however, that his technical brilliance and emotional immediacy placed him at the forefront of American music.
Somm Recordings celebrates the sublime choral music of Richard Rodney Bennett – best known to a wider audience for his Academy Award-nominated scores to the films Murder on the Orient Express and Far from the Madding Crowd – with 11 first recordings and a vivid new recording of his choral masterpiece, The Glory and the Dream.
Performed by the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire Chamber Choir, directed by Paul Spicer and with dexterous support from organist Nicholas Morris, The Glory and the Dream features 12 varied and vivacious choral pieces composed over more than 50 years. The disc’s striking title work sets Wordsworth’s ode Intimations of Immortality to music that conjures childhood rapture and adult fears with the utmost finesse and feeling and features a fearsomely complex and challenging organ accompaniment.
SOMM Recordings is pleased to announce the release of Mirage, a recital of piano music by Stephen Dodgson performed by Osman Tack in his impressive label debut.
Featuring 22 first recordings, Mirage is the third volume in a series marking the 10th anniversary of Dodgson’s death in 2013, and celebrates a composer of “urbane and civilised” music, as Robert Matthew-Walker describes it in his informative booklet notes.
The recital spans seven decades from 1956’s Eight Fanciful Pieces – “a judiciously varied suite… bound by the directness of utterance that so distinguished Dodgson’s music” – to his second set of Six Bagatelles composed in 2005 when “his inspiration burned brightly in his eighties”.
Trio Op. 11
Trio Op. 121a ‘Kakadu Variations’
Trio Op. 38
Gould Piano Trio
Robert Plane Clarinet
This is the third of four fabulous concerts given by the Gould Piano Trio at St. George’s, Brandon Hill, Bristol and captured live on disc by SOMM. The concert recorded on this third Volume took place in February 2012 as part of a simultaneous live broadcast by BBC Radio Three for later transmission. The Gould Piano Trio are joined here by the popular clarinettist Robert Plane (former principal clarinettist of the BBC National Orchestra of Wales and the CBSO) who features in two of the three works on the CD.
Alexander Baillie, Cello
John Thwaites, Piano
In recent years SOMM has established a strong reputation for its promotion of British Music counting, among unique recordings in its catalogue, several prestigious World Premieres which had been hidden in music library vaults unpublished and undiscovered until SOMM made them available on disc and promoted them worldwide through its distribution network. Included among these are the Vaughan Williams Fantasia, Bax Concertino, Frederick Austin Concertino, the William Mathias Piano Concerto No. 1, and the Piano Music of Reginald King.
This impressive double disc is no exception. It boasts the well loved Cello Sonatas of Bridge, Delius, Ireland and Rubbra as well as two world premieres, the Cello Sonatas by Rebecca Clarke (1919) and Ivor Keys (1960). Clarke was Stanford’s first female pupil at RCM and became a professional violist, having taken lessons with Lionel Tertis. Listening to her Viola (or Cello) Sonata, described as “sensuous, Bacchanalian and intoxicating and languid” by turns, reminds us that she felt closest to the music of both Debussy and Ravel.
Birmingham Conservatoire Chamber Choir
Paul Spicer, Director
Frederick Delius
John Ireland
SOMM celebrates two significant anniversaries this year: the 150th anniversary of Frederick Delius and the 50th anniversary of John Ireland, both composers whose choral and vocal music represents some of their most interesting work.
Beethoven Complete Piano Trios Vol 1. Gould Piano Trio
Lucy Gould, violin; Alice Neary, cello; Benjamin Frith, piano
Recorded live at St. George’s Bristol
SOMM are pleased to announce the recording of Beethoven’s Complete Piano Trios with the internationally renowned Gould Piano Trio, beginning with Vol. 1. This dynamic group who this year celebrate their 20th Anniversary have been exploring the remarkable variety displayed in the trios, which reveal so many different facets of Beethoven’s complex character. Three volumes have already been recorded before a live audience during the Gould Trio’s concerts at St. George’s, Bristol in October and December 2011 and February 2012. The Trio’s first concert, on October 5th last year, which was recorded by SOMM as the first volume of four, was a wonderful introduction to this stunning series and the BBC Music Magazine’s website review by Reviews Editor Rebecca Franks is typical of the enthusiasm shown by the audience on that first night.