Hyperion Records celebrates The Romantic Piano Concerto with two 50 CD boxed sets

In 1990, a meeting between Hyperion Records and the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra discussed recording plans. The results were three discs with Jerzy Maksymiuk conducting, Piers Lane in piano concertos by Moskowski and Paderewski, Nikolai Demidenko in piano concertos by Medtner, and Stephen Coombs and Ian Munro in Mendelssohn's concertos for two pianos. Hyperion's The Romantic Piano was born. The project’s modest initial aim had been only to restore to the public a few glories of the Romantic concerto repertoire. By its close it covered 235 works, 185 of them piano concertos. By 2023, volume 87 featured pianist Simon Callaghan, in his fourth disc for the project, in concertos by Reinecke and Sauer with Sinfonieorchester St Gallen, conductor Modestas Pitrėnas.

Now Hyperion Records is planning to issue two 50CD boxed sets to bring together the discs from the series. The first release, The Romantic Piano Concerto 1991–2007 Edition, lands on 10 April 2026, with a second set following on 16 October 2026. 

The project brought about a renewal of the repertoire which has helped works to return to global concert programmes after long absences and for the narrowed canon of concerto works to be widened, enabling the public to appreciate, for example, all five of the Saint-Saëns Piano Concertos [recorded by Stephen Hough with City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, conductor Sakari Oramo along with four other concertante works on volume 27] rather than just the 2nd and occasionally the 5th. Or for Busoni’s vast Piano Concerto [recorded by Marc-André Hamelin with City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, conductor Mark Elder on volume 22] to be successfully programmed at the London Proms.

Bearing this out, the pianist Piers Lane, whose Moszkowski and Paderewski Piano Concerti formed the very first album in the series and who made seven discs, recalls that he has since regularly played the Moszkowski in concert. He comments: "This epic series of recordings is a glorious testament to Hyperion’s curatorial and archaeological approach to less-known repertoire, and also to Mike Spring’s boundless enthusiasm, instinct, knowledge and curiosity about all things piano."

The 1991–2007 Edition brings together Volumes 1 to 43 of the series, alongside a handful of bonus concerto recordings from the same period. Artists featured include Sir Stephen Hough, Marc-André Hamelin, Piers Lane, Steven Osborne, Howard Shelley and Martin Roscoe, performing with orchestras including the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra.

Each boxed set is presented as a 50 CD original-jackets collection with a newly compiled booklet. Alongside introductory texts by Stephen Hough and Piers Lane, new essays by producer Andrew Keener and series founder Mike Spring reflect on the project’s origins, its practical challenges, and the painstaking research involved in manually locating and preparing rare orchestral materials.

One of the series’ champions, Sir Stephen Hough [who recorded four volumes including not only the Saint-Saëns volume, but complete Tchaikovsky concertos, and works by Sauer, Schwarenka, Mendelssohn], reflects on the symbiotic expansion in the size and power of the instrument and the music composed for it in the Romantic era: "Hyperion’s celebrated series of recordings highlighted this phenomenon with enormous enthusiasm and zest over the past decades, with scores of scores unearthed, revealing some astonishing yet unknown works. As they are gathered together in a box it gives us another opportunity to marvel at the sheer variety and fecundity of the form."

The Romantic Piano Concerto 1991–2007 Edition - Hyperion Records, see website for further details.

In search of Louis Spohr: WDR Chamber Players record six discs of Spohr's string chamber music for Pentatone

Carl Heinrich Arnold (1793-1874) - String quartet in the Spohr house, c. 1840
CC BY-NC-SA © Internationale Louis Spohr Gesellschaft e.V., Spohr Museum Kassel

Two years older than Weber, as a violin virtuoso hailed as a "German Paganini", a pioneer in the use of the conductor’s baton and an important figure in the transition from Classical to Romantic music, Louis Spohr wrote ten symphonies, ten operas, 18 violin concertos and much else besides. 

Yet his reputation has never really risen following his death in 1859 when he was seen as a representative of the old order rather than a precursor of the new. The Neue Berliner Musikzeitung called Spohr "the last representative of that noble school whose roots reached deep into classical soil." 

His opera Faust, which is not actually based on Goethe but on Faust plays and poems by Friedrich Maximilian Klinger and Heinrich von Kleist, is an important work in German Romantic opera. It premiered in 1816 in Prague with Weber conducting, five years before Weber's Der Freischutz, and Meyerbeer conducted it in Berlin the same year. In 1851 Spohr turned it from singspiel into grand opera. Yet for all the work's importance, when it was staged in Bielefeld in 1993, it was probably the work's first staging since 1931!

Spohr remains best know for his Nonet, not so much because it is played frequently as because it became iconic, the precursor of many such works by other composers. Spohr's chamber music was often written for his own performance and there is a significant amount of it, including 36 string quartets! 

Now, having explored Brahms' string quintets and sextets, the WDR Chamber Players (all members of the WDR Sinfonie Orchester) have returned to Pentatone for The Romantic Room: Chamber Works by Louis Spohr. This expansive, six-disc set features Spohr's four double string quartets, seven string quintets and string sextet. The music spans Spohr's career, his first quintet dates from 1814 whilst they spread to 1850. His sextet dates from the revolutionary year of 1848, and in a brief note in his personal catalogue he refers to the work as "Written in March and April during the glorious people’s revolution for the revival of Germany’s freedom, unity, and greatness."

Full details on the Pentatone label. Happy exploring.

Two violas: Peter Mallinson on exploring the surprisingly fertile ground of music for two violas with fellow viola player Matthias Wiesner

Matthias Wiesner, Lynn Arnold & Peter Mallinson recording Two Violas: Regeneration at St Peter's Church, Boughton Monchelsea, Kent in 2024

Viola players Peter Mallinson and Matthias Wiesner have been exploring the perhaps surprising yet remarkably fertile ground of music for two violas (both with and without keyboard). In March, they release their fourth disc, Two Violas: Regeneration on the Meridian label with pianist Lynn Arnold, features arrangements of Bach and Elgar, original works by York Bowen, Alexander Wunderer and Orlando Gibbons, alongside new pieces by Sally Beamish (herself a viola player, see my 2019 interview), Detlev Glanert, Raymond Yiu and Peter Letanka.

Peter explains that when they started exploring this repertoire, there were a few pieces that 'floated their boat' but they did not realise quite how much material there was, and that it was good to be able to showcase works that were far more than simply interesting fillers. They also began commissioning pieces and arrangements of existing material. Peter points out that many places, concert societies, need to have works in the programme by composers that people have heard of. After all, the line-up of two violas (with or without piano) is not an obvious one. If you say string quartet, people have a clear idea of the music, so having names people recognise is helpful. And Peter feels that they are nowhere near running out of repertoire.

The new disc's theme is the loose one of Regeneration. All their discs have had a theme, but Peter admits that themes come second, repertoire comes first. For him, it is interesting finding different ways of grouping pieces together and such groupings can help people to think about the music in new ways. Each of the pieces on the new disc involves regeneration of one sort or another, though Peter admits that it is a fine line between inspiration and regeneration.

In search of the lost string quartet: the 1923 version Howells' In Gloucestershire newly reconstructed and recorded

Herbert Howells' wrote a relatively small but important body of chamber music, mainly dating from his early maturity, circa 1916–1923, notably his Piano Quartet, the Rhapsodic Quintet for clarinet and strings, the Phantasy Quartet. His third string quartet In Gloucestershire was written in 1916 but has an extremely complex history. 

The original score disappeared, Howells left it on a train, and he subsequently worked on the piece, recomposing from memory. Quite what relationship this work of the 1920s has to the original, we will never know. And in fact, no score of the work survives from the 1920s either, what we have is Howells' published version from the 1930s. Yet with Howells, nothing was ever finished and it will come as no surprise to find that the published version (the one used on previous recordings of the work) has three movements that are different to the version from the 1920s!

Luckily, parts have survived, and a set of copyists parts from 1923 exists. These were used for a performance that may have been the one at the house of Marion Scott, a friend of both Howells and Ivor Gurney. These parts have now been edited by the academic, Dr Jonathan Clinch, and Joseph Spooner, cellist with the London Chamber Ensemble Quartet. The quartet has been playing the work and now they have released a disc, on SOMM records which pairs the 1923 version of Howell's In Gloucestershire with String Quartet No. 6 by Charles Wood, Howells' friend and teacher. Wood's quartet, his last, dates from 1916, the year Howells first wrote In Gloucestershire.

On Monday, there was a launch event for the new SOMM disc, when the London Chamber Ensemble Quartet, ( violinists Madeleine Mitchell and Gordon MacKay, violist Bridget Carey and cellist Joseph Spooner) performed music from the disc, giving us a chance to hear two movements from Howells' In Gloucestershire and the final movement from Woods' String Quartet No. 6 along with one of Howells' Three Pieces for Violin and Piano, Op. 28 arranged for string quartet by Madeleine Mitchell.

Full details from the SOMM website.

70th birthday celebrations for composer Richard Blackford continue with performances, publications & recordings

Richard Blackford

Composer Richard Blackford celebrated his 70th birthday last month, and the celebrations are spreading out across the year with performances, publications and recordings.

His new cantata, Babel, based on the Biblical stories of Noah's flood and the tower of Babel for choir, organ, piano duet and percussion has just been published and is being released on disc on Lyrita in March, with David Hill conducting the Ikon Singers, on a disc that also includes Blackford's La Sagrada Familia, his symphony inspired by Gaudi's masterpiece in Barcelona, with the composer conducting the BBC National Orchestra of Wales. Also recently published is Clarissa's Tango for violin and piano, which Clarissa Bevilacqua, violin [to whom I chatted last year, see my interview] and Thomas Hoppe, piano have released as a digital single.

Also in March, Nimbus Records is releasing Blackford's Songs of Nadia Anjuman with soprano Elizabeth Watts and the Britten Sinfonia, which set English translations of poems by the Afghan poet Nadja Anjuman (1980-2005) who was 15 when the Taliban captured Herat, and who at 25 was beaten to death by her husband. The cycle was premiered by Elizabeth Watts and the Britten Sinfonia in 2023.

His cello concerto, commissioned by the Czech Philharmonic, will be premiered in the Rudolfinum, Prague, by Alisa Weilerstein in 2024. The orchestra gave the premiere of Blackford's violin concerto, Niobe in 2017 with violinist Tamsin Waley-Cohen, a work that they recorded in 2018 [see my reivew]

Performances planned include 

• Mirror of Perfection: Wimbledon Choral Society, Cadogan Hall (16 March)
• Pietá: Dorchester Choral Society (16 March), a work that we heard the London premiere of in 2019 [see my review]
• Mirror of Perfection: Worcester Cathedral (16 March)
• Mirror of Perfection, Three Rossetti Songs and Songs of Nadia Anjuman: Presteigne Festival (24 & 25 August)
• Babel: Bournemouth Symphony Chorus at Christchurch Priory (14 September)

A Phoenix Rising: Wigmore Hall's Pride event with the Fourth Choir and a new disc of songs by LGBT composers

Pride news. Unusually there is a flurry of classical music activity around Pride this year. Unusual, because habitually LGBT classical musicians have tended to keep a lower profile. Tenor Brian Smith Walters has a debut recital disc out which features works by LGBT composers, many in the classical canon but others less well known. A single from the disc, by Angela Morley, is out on Friday 23 June, on which date, you can also go to see Nicholas Chalmers conducting the Fourth Choir at Wigmore Hall's Pride event! And on 7 July, there is a Classical Pride event at the Barbican with Oliver Zeffmann conducting the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra (see my article)

Tenor Brian Smith Walters, who recently sang the role of Siegmund in Regents Opera's production of Wagner's Die Walküre [see Florence's review for Planet Hugill], is releasing a recital album on Navona Records with pianist Adam Johnson. Titled A Phoenix Rising: An LGBT Song Chronology it features an array of songs by LGBT composers including Britten (arranging Purcell), Schubert, Saint-Saens, Tchaikovsky, Maude Valérie White,  Reynaldo Hahn, Roger Quilter, Karol Szymanowski, Charles T. Griffes, Aaron Copland, Samuel Barber. and Amanda Ira Aldridge. 

British-born Amanda Ira Aldridge (1866-1958) was the daughter of African-American actor Frederick Aldridge. A singer and teacher, she also composed, often under the name Montague Ring. There are two more contemporary composers on the album, Angela Morley and ANOHNI.

Angela Morley (1924-2009) was an English composer who became familiar to BBC Radio listeners in the 1950s under the name of Wally Stott, providing incidental music for The Goon Show and Hancock's Half Hour. Morley transitioned in 1972 and thereafter lived openly as a transgender woman. Later in life, she lived in Scottsdale, Arizona, Smith Walters' home town and the two met there during the 1990s. 

The album features a song by Morley with words by her widow, Christine Parker. It is a world premiere recording. The tune itself was the theme tune to the made-for-TV movie Madame X, yet after Angela passed, Christine arranged the tune for voice and piano and penned the words. The song, Don’t Ever Try (To Make My Heart Understand), is being issued as a single on 23 June. 

Full details from the Navona Records website.

The Fourth Choir, which celebrates its 10th birthday in 2023, makes its debut at Wigmore Hall on Friday 23 June with a late-night concert featuring music written exclusively by queer composers. The concert, titled Love, Loss & the Whole Damn Thing, takes place during Pride month and is conducted by Nicholas Chalmers (BBC Singers, Nevill Holt Opera) and presented by BBC Radio 3’s Petroc Trelawny. 

The evening features music by Samuel Barber, a celebration of a lifelong queer relationship by the Canadian composer, Stuart Beatch, which sets a poem written as a queer riposte to a well-known piece by Eric Whitacre. There is Jennifer Higdon’s witty Telegram which references both Elvis and Emily Dickinson, the motet Help Us O Lord by Aaron Copland and Michael Tippett’s setting of the spiritual Deep River, plus music by Benjamin Britten, Meredith Monk, Michael Bussewitz-Quarm, Peter Maxwell Davies, Kerry Andrew, William Linthicum-Blackhorse and Leonard Bernstein. 

Full details from the Wigmore Hall website.

La terra impareggiabile: NMC Recordings' Annual Friends' and Supporters' Celebration

To Pushkin House last night (24 November 2022) for NMC Recordings' Annual Friends' and Supporters' Celebration, its first such in-person event for three years. Besides celebrating three years of exciting recordings, the event was a chance to hear some live music and, of course, catch up with people.

Baritone Marcus Farnsworth and pianist Huw Watkins performed three songs from Richard Causton's song cycle La terra impareggiabile. Setting poems by Sicilian-born poet Salvatore Quasimodo (1901-1968), the ten songs of the cycle were composed between 1996 and 2007, and refined over a further decade, forming the mainstay of Causton's output during that period. The complete cycle forms the centrepiece of the recent disc of Causton's music, La terra impareggiabile.

The composer Imogen Holst is an important figure in NMC's history. Imogen Holst was determined that the income from her father's estate be used to support new music and she created the Holst Foundation with this purpose, and the foundation was an early supporter of NMC Records. As a reflection of this, NMC has set up the Imogen Holst fund to allow the company to continue its mission of supporting new music by young and not so young British composers.

We heard some of Imogen Holst's music, her A Hymn to Christ sung by four National Youth Choir of Great Britain Fellows (NYCGB). Since 2018, NMC has had a partnership with NYCGB for the Young Composers scheme whereby three composers work for a year with the various choirs of NYCGB, artistic director & principal conductor Ben Parry and a range of composer mentors. The scheme comprises residential courses, workshops, peer and professional mentoring and performance showcases, and a digital release on NMC.

On Thursday the four NYCGB Fellows sang The Waiting Sky by Oliver Tarney, who is one of the mentors on the scheme, and a work by Kristina Arakelyan, My Love is Come to Me which features on the January 2022 release, NYCGB Young Composers 3 which also features music by Anna Disley-Simpson, Alex Ho and Derri Joseph Lewis. And NYCGB Young Composers 4 will be released in January 2023.

1000 releases and still counting: PARMA Recordings celebrates

PARMA Recordings is a New Hampshire-based record company run since 2008 by CEO Bob Lord. The company is Lord's brainchild, a vertically integrated music production company that would handle all aspects of the music-making process, spanning project development, contracting, in-studio recording and production, audio post, art design, manufacturing, distribution, publicity, publishing, licensing, live performance, and beyond.

The result is a catalogue that can highlight the small producers, and so has an idiosyncrasy that others lack, whilst many are highly personal projects for the artists. 

The company has recently celebrated the release of their 1000th disc, Amplify, on the Navona Records label, from All Classical Portland, consistently ranked in the top three classical music radio stations in the United States. The disc aims to be a response to the industry’s inequities in classical music recordings, and features music by Lauren McCall, Mélanie Hélène Bonis (1858-1937), Keyla Orozco, Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson (1932-2004) and Jasmine Barnes.

Full details from Navona Records.

Bruckner explorations at St Florian's Abbey and beyond: Remy Ballot, Altomonte Festival Orchestra & Klangkollectiv Wien

Remy Ballot & Klangkollectiv Wien

Now, I don't really write very much about the music of Anton Bruckner, but news of a new Bruckner symphony cycle and a relatively new Viennese orchestra has me intrigued. Around 20 years ago, a French violinist, Remy Ballot, having graduated from the Paris Conservatoire, went to Vienna and started playing regularly with the first violins of the Vienna Philharmonic. He also started taking private lessons with Celibidache.

Ten years ago, Remy Ballot became the principal conductor of the Altomonte Festival Orchestra at St Florian 's Abbey. Bruckner was a choirboy at the abbey and would be organist there for ten years, but his association with it was very long and he was also buried there. The orchestra, which was founded in 1996, has a strong association with the Brucknertage, the annual Bruckner festival at St Florian's.

Ballot has started to achieve something like cult status with Brucknerians and his concerts at St Florian's are highly popular. Luckily, Ballot and the orchestra have been recording Bruckner's symphonies live at the abbey (as part of the Brucknertage festival), released on the Gramola label and in 2024 Gramola will be issued a boxed set of the complete Bruckner symphonies recorded by Ballot and the Altamonte Orchestra at St Florian's. The only other complete cycle recorded at the abbey is that of Valery Gergiev.

In 2018, a group of Viennese musicians decided to set up a new orchestra, dedicated entirely to the repertoire of the first Viennese School, also using Viennese instruments - Klangkollektiv Wien. Remy Ballot became their chief conductor, and having released recordings of Schubert, Beethoven, Mozart and Haydn (also on Gramola), they have a recording of Bruckner's Symphony No. 1 in the pipeline.

Min-Jung Kym's Concert for Ukraine

Today (27 May 2022), pianist Min-Jung Kym is releasing a new digital-only charity album on Signum Classics to raise money for the Foundation of France’s Ukraine fund. The album features a live recording of Kym’s Concert for Ukraine which took place in Paris last month, which also raised money for the fund. All revenues from the recording will be donated directly to the Foundation

The programme constitutes a journey across Europe through Germany, Poland and France with music by Bach, Chopin, Schumann and Brahms, before arriving in Ukraine with Mussorgsky’s Great Gate of Kiev from Pictures at an Exhibition.

 

Streaming details - Link Tree

Composing is not something that you decide to do, it chooses you: I chat to composer Richard Danielpour about his new work which arose directly out of the events of 2020

Richard Danielpour

Like many creative artists, last year's events affected composer Richard Danielpour both personally and artistically. One of the results of this has been the creation of a striking sequence of piano pieces, An American Mosaic, which he wrote for pianist Simone Dinnerstein and which she premiered (online) last year and the recording of which came out earlier this year. It is a work which, in both its subject matter and the manner of its arising, comes directly out of last year. Richard intends it as a work of consolation, many of its individual movements are named for those who worked (and are working) hard to mitigate the effects of the pandemic. 

But there is much else going on musically in Richard's life, including plans for a new opera and I spent an engaging hour chatting to him last month via Zoom. We spoke at a time conditioned by the time difference; Richard has lived in Los Angeles for four years, having spent 35 years as a New Yorker. 

Richard explains that An American Mosaic's genesis arose from unique circumstances. During March 2020 he had trouble sleeping; he is asthmatic and had been warned he needed to avoid contact and so was isolated for 40 days. Not surprisingly, he suffered problems with anxiety and sleeping. He was usually awake in the early hours, and having had an idea for an opera at the beginning of 2020 he used the time to start work on an opera libretto (of which more anon). He found that listening to Simone Dinnerstein playing Bach helped him get back to sleep, notably her recording of Bach's Goldberg Variations (which legend says were written to help an insomniac aristocrat). 

Richard Danielpour: An American Mosaic - Simone Dinnerstein - (Image from IMG Artists)

This listening became something of a ritual for around a month, and he wanted to write to Dinnerstein to thank her. She was unknown to him, but when his choral work, The Passion of Yeshua had been premiered at the Oregon Bach Festival in 2018 Dinnerstein had also appeared at the festival; she and Richard had only missed each other by a day, So Richard got into contact with the festival's then director of artistic adminstration, Michael Anderson.

At the time, Richard was finding it too stressful to watch the news on television, but he kept abreast of events via the New York Times, and he felt that he wanted to write a piece that reflected the times. And when he contacted Michael Anderson at the festival, Richard told him about the idea for the piece, and it was Anderson who suggested that Dinnerstein might perform Richard's new work. So contact was made by email, then they Facetimed and she loved the idea; Oregon Bach Festival commissioned what would become An American Mosaic.

Just play, and play, and play: Nicola Benedetti releases her first period performance album with Baroque on Decca

Violinist Nicola Benedetti, having explored Baroque repertoire in a number of ways, is releasing a Baroque album in July on Decca. This will be her first album in period-setup with gut strings and she will be supported by the Benedetti Baroque Orchestra which includes such period performances luminaries as violinists Kati Debretzeni and Matthew Truscott, lutenist Elizabeth Kenny and harpsichordist Steven Devine, performing concertos by Vivaldi plus a concerto grosso by Geminiani.

Not every violinist finds the world of period-performance invigorating, but violinist Alina Ibragimova moves between the two worlds whilst cellist Jan Vogler, when I interviewed him in 2016, talked about the refreshing challenge of playing with gut strings. Benedetti has been nothing if not adventurous in her repertoire and she gave us a taste of what we might expect with her striking Vivaldi concerto performances with Arcangelo and Jonathan Cohen at the 2020 BBC Proms. 

And she explains her introduction to performing in this world, 'The sound world of early eighteenth-century Italy first came into full three-dimensional focus for me when I met Italian conductor, harpsichordist and founder of the Venice Baroque Orchestra, Andrea Marcon. Having listened obsessively to his recordings, I was both honoured and humbled by the opportunity. “Just bring your violin and see what happens”. You can imagine how ill-equipped and ill-prepared I was feeling. I took comfort in assuming it would be more talk than playing, but that’s certainly not what Andrea had in mind. To him, the music of Vivaldi is talking. It’s the best kind of conversation you can conjure up and provides the fastest way to get to know someone. Just play, and play, and play.'

As well as releasing the disc, Benedetti and her Benedetti Baroque Orchestra are giving a series of live performances at Battersea Arts Centre between 18 and 21 July 2021. And for the first time her Benedetti Foundation will present Baroque Virtual Sessions for three weeks in July. Following the enormous success of previous Virtual Sessions which have taken place during the pandemic, the Benedetti Foundation will work with musicians of all ages and stages on Geminiani's La Folia which features on the Baroque album.

Further information about the Baroque album from Decca and from Benedetti's website.

Beethoven complete cello sonatas from Ailbhe McDonagh and John O'Conor

Irish cellist Ailbhe McDonagh and pianist John O'Conor celebrated Beethoven’s 250th anniversary year with a double album of his complete sonatas for cello and piano recorded at St. Peter’s Church, Drogheda, Ireland. The set has been released is on the Steinway & Sons music label.

Beethoven's five cello sonatas are remarkable because they span his whole career. The two sonatas of Op. 5 come from his early Viennese years, though they were written for a visit to the Prussian court in Berln and still give prominence to the piano. The great A Major Sonata (Op. 69) is the single representative of his incredible middle period, and shows Beethoven re-inventing the form and giving both instruments equal prominence, whilst the two Op. 102 sonatas epitomize his late works. 

Ailbhe McDonagh and John O'Conor have made a short documentary about the project, which is one of those which might not have happened if last year's events hadn't cleared their diaries. O'Conor is known for his performances of Beethoven, but had not recorded the Cello Sonatas before, whilst he has a long connection with Ailbhe McDonagh having taught her piano.

You can hear a movement of the third sonata on YouTube, and listen to the album here:  Spotify | Apple Music | YouTube

Dame Ethel Smyth wins a Grammy!

In all the fuss about winners of last week's Grammy awards one win rather got neglected. 

That of Dame Ethel Smyth.

In truth, of course, Dame Ethel didn't win the award personally, but the award for Best Classical Solo Vocal Album went to the premiere recording of Smyth's late masterpiece The Prison, performed by mezzo-soprano Sarah Brailey, baritone Dashon Burton and the Experiential Chorus and Orchestra conducted by James Blachly which was issued on Chandos records [read my review of the recording, and see my interview with James Blachly]. 

This is a remarkable achievement on many counts, what with a work that few people had heard of, which hardly featured in lists of Smyth's achievements and which had hardly been performed since Smyth's death in 1944 let alone recorded, an orchestra which had never made a commercial recording before along with a recording project which was funded via crowd-funding (on Kickstarter) by an all-American team.

You can see Sarah Brailey's acceptance speech on YouTube, find further information from the Grammys website and find the recording via this link tree.

The Lim Fantasy of Companionship for Piano and Orchestra

In 2019, I was able to attend recording sessions at Abbey Road Studios where Belgian-American pianist Tedd Joselson, the London Symphony Orchestra and conductor Arthur Fagen (musical director of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra) were recording an intriguing new work for piano and orchestra.  [See my report from the recording sessions].  

The Lim Fantasy of Companionship for Piano and Orchestra is the brainchild of Dr Susan Lim (a pioneer in the field of transplantation, robotics and stem cell research) with project co-creative director Dr Christina Teenz. They commissioned composer Manu Martin to write a work which explores concept of an inanimate-human companionship in music.

The recording has now come to fruition and is being issued on Signum Classics in April 2021.

Beethoven • Wagner • Verdi - Lise Davidsen releases her second studio recording

Norwegian soprano Lise Davidsen will be releasing her second studio recording, Beethoven • Wagner • Verdi, on Decca Classics on 26 March 2021, an eagerly awaited (in the hackneyed phrase, but very true) follow-up to her debut disc in 2019. 

We caught Davidsen in March 2020 as Leonore in Beethoven's Fidelio at Covent Garden, her role debut [see my review], and the year also saw her role debut as Sieglinde in Wagner's Die Walküre at the Deutsche Oper, Berlin (a role she also sang at the Paris Opera). We also caught Davisden's 2020 Metropolitan Opera debut as part of the Met Stars Live in Concert series when she and James Baillieu gave a recital from Oscarshall Palace in Oslo [see my review].

For the new album, Davidsen is accompanied by the London Philharmonic Orchestra, conductor Sir Mark Elder. For the album she returns to the role of Leonore from Fidelio with 'Abscheulicher!' alongside Beethoven's concert aria Ah! Perfido. Davidsen also returns to the title role in Cherubini's Medea (which she sang in Wexford in 2017) with Medea's Act One aria 'Dei tuoi figli la madre'.

Alongside these will be arias from Mascagni's Cavalleria Rusticana, Verdi's La forza del destino and Otello, plus Wagner's Wesendonck Lieder, testifying to the young soprano's desire not yet to be pigeonholed.

Can "High Art" Be Inclusive? American ensemble Imani Winds hosts two on-line panel discussions as part of the launch of its latest recording on Bright Shiny Things

On 5 February 2021, Bright Shiny Things will be releasing a new disc Bruits from Imani Winds (Brandon Patrick George, flute; Toyin Spellman-Diaz, oboe; Mark Dover, clarinet; Jeff Scott, French horn; and Monica Ellis, bassoon) which features three world-premiere recordings, Vijay Iyer's Bruits, Reena Esmail’s The Light is the Same and Frederic Rzewski’s Sometimes,

All three works deal with current social and political issues, and tell stories about people whose lives have made a difference in our world. Vijay Iyer's Bruits was written during the the trial of George Zimmerman for the killing of a young black man named Trayvon Martin, Reena Esmail's The Light Is The Same uses two contrasting Hindustani raags—Vachaspati (dark and brooding) and Yaman (light and innocent), which have almost identical notes, but when they are played sound very different and Esmail uses these two raags to symbolize “how we are so close to each other and are separated by so little".  The subject of Frederic Rzewski’s Sometimes is Dr. John Hope Franklin (1915-2009) a historian who wrote about the Reconstruction era of American history, the time right after the Civil War, “when people of color (particularly African-Americans) were first allowed to hold political offices, become judges, and had hitherto unknown economic and social freedom,”  

As part of the recording launch, Imani Winds is presenting two free Zoom discussions with panelists including members Imani Winds and composers Vijay Iyer and Reena Esmail. On 22 January 2020 the discussion is Can “High Art” Be Inclusive? and on 29 January the discussion is The Myth of “Other” in Classical Music. The discussions are at 7pm EST, which translates to 12pm UK time so they are for British night owls!

You can register for both free discussions at Zoom.

A thirty-year gap and clarinettist Ernst Ottensamer's last concerto recording: conductor Richard Stamp talks about the challenge and rewards of bringing his latest disc to fruition

The Academy of London

In 1991, conductor Richard Stamp and the Academy of London, the ensemble that he founded, recorded Richard Strauss' prelude to his opera Capriccio and the Duet Concertino for clarinet and bassoon with two principals from the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra,  Ernst Ottensamer (clarinet), and Stepan Turnovsky (bassoon). The recording was for a planned Richard Strauss disc as part of an ongoing series of discs of the composer's work on Virgin Classics which included orchestral songs with Gundula Janowitz and an award-winning recording of Metamorphosen. Finally, in 2014, Richard Stamp was able to complete recording the disc with two works by Aaron Copland including the Clarinet Concerto with Ernst Ottensamer; this would be Ottensamer's final concerto recording. The resulting disc of music by Richard Strauss and Aaron Copland came out on Signum Classics earlier this month. So why the nearly 30 year wait between recording and disc? I met up with Richard Stamp by Zoom to find out more.

Richard Stamp

Born in the USA and trained in Vienna, Richard had founded the Academy of London in 1980. He had a strong interest in Austrian music and musicians and besides the Academy of London, he ran the largest series of Austrian orchestral concerts in the UK. The Academy of London's ongoing link with Virgin Classics included projects to record music by Richard Strauss and by Aaron Copland. By 1991, the plan was for a Richard Strauss disc to cover the prelude to Capriccio, the Duet Concertino with principals from the Vienna Philharmonic and the incidental music to Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme. And there were plans for further Aaron Copland works to follow-up Richard's recording of Copland's Lincoln Portrait with Anthony Hopkins. The recording of the first two Strauss works happened, but then Virgin Classics was suddenly sold to EMI. The company had a significant backlog of unreleased CDs and Richard's projects were quietly dropped. 

However, Richard's Austrian concerts continued and at one of these Ottensamer gave his first performance of Copland's Clarinet Concerto. It was a work which Ottensamer had long wanted to play but had not been able to do so in Vienna, and after the performance, Ottensamer said that he would love to record it.

But recordings and plans simply sat on the shelf. Richard had a period of illness, and there just wasn't the sponsorship around to record Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme to complete the Richard Strauss disc. Eventually, Richard was introduced to Signum Classics and the plan was hatched to complete the recording projects. Money was raised, and the master tapes of the sessions from 1991 were re-edited, and Copland's Appalachian Spring (in its original version for 13 wind instruments) and Clarinet Concerto were recorded at the Sage Gateshead with the Royal Northern Sinfonia, with Ottensamer finally getting his wish to record the concerto. (Ottensamer died unexpectedly in 2017, three years after making the recording). The resulting disc is the one which has been issued, completing a process which started 30 years ago.

Contemporary Piano Soundbites

During the lockdown, pianist Duncan Honeybourne commissioned a series of piano miniatures by diverse composers including Graham Fitkin, John McLeod, Sadie Harrison, Francis Pott, Luke Whitlock, David Lancaster, John Casken and pieces by young and emerging composers, and he premiered these in video recitals recorded at home alongside a fundraising project for Help Musicians UK's hardship fund. 

Now Honeybourne has recorded a selection of the pieces as Contemporary Piano Soundbites for a disc on Prima Facie Records, and profits from the sale of the CD will also go towards the fundraising for Help Musicians UK.

Recorded under social distancing conditions in July, Honeybourne's original intention in the pieces was to harness the zeitgeist of the present situation, and create an artistic keepsake of an extraordinary phase of our history. There are 23 pieces on the disc, by 22 composers ranging from one born in 1934 to one born in 1998, with several younger composers making their first appearance on disc.

The disc is currently available from the Prima Facie website, and will be available to download from 6 November 2020.

Vienna 1910: the Alban Berg Ensemble Wien in sophisticated and vibrant accounts of works by Mahler, Schoenberg and Richard Strauss

Mahler Adagio - Symphony No. 10, Schoenberg Chamber Symphony No.1, Strauss Der Rosenkavalier: Suite; Alban Berg Ensemble Wien; Deutsche Grammophon
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 6 July 2020 Star rating: 5.0 (★★★★★)
Three contrasting works from Vienna just before the First World War in chamber versions which bring out both the contrasts and the commonalities between these works, in sophisticated and vibrant performances

The decade before the First World War can often be portrayed as some sort of Golden Age, Stefan Zweig portrayed it as such in his memoir The World of Yesterday, written however whilst he was in exile in America during the Second World War. And historian Barbara Tuchman, having written a book exploring the first month of the First World War, The Guns of August (published in 1962), proceeded to write another book The Proud Tower (published in 1966) to explore exactly that, looking the fractured era from 1890 to 1914 to find out whether it was such a golden age via topics as diverse as the Dreyfuss Affair, anarchism, German art and culture, and socialism.

Musically, the split between the culture of a later age and an earlier one can be seen to be marked by two fracas, both taking place in 1913. In March 1913, Arnold Schoenberg conducted a concert given by the Vienna Music Society in the Musikverein, Vienna, of Anton Webern's Six Pieces for Orchestra, Alexander von Zemlinsky's Four Orchestral Songs on poems by Maeterlinck, Schoenberg's Chamber Symphony No. 1, and two of Alban Berg's Altenberg lieder. The audience began rioting and the concert concluded prematurely. And two months later, in Paris, the audience at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées famously rioted at the premiere of the ballet The Rite of Spring, perhaps objecting to Igor Stravinsky's music, perhaps to Vaslav Nijinsky's choreography.

Yet, neither of these events is quite as clear cut as might be seen. Schoenberg's Chamber Symphony No. 1 had been successfully premiered in Vienna in 1907, and the premiere of Schoenberg's Gurrelieder, conducted by Franz Schreker, at the Musikverein in Vienna in February 1913 had been a huge success but the composer refused to acknowledge the applause, offended by the attitude of previous conservative audiences. And the reaction at the March 1913 concert was to a certain extent in retribution! Similarly, there have been suggestions that the extreme reaction in Paris was engineered for publicity, and certainly Diaghilev's company went on to give five performances of the ballet in Paris and four in London. It was in fact the events of the First World War which conspired to cause the ballet to be dropped and by the time the company came to revive it in the 1920s, Nijinsky's choreography had been forgotten and it was re-worked by Leonid Massine.

Alban Berg Ensemble Wien (Photo Andrej Grilc)

Schoenberg's Chamber Symphony No. 1 is a work which looks both backwards and forwards, giving a prescient hint of the composer's later styles but also linking through to the work of his predecessors. It is the work where Schoenberg first started to part company from the late Romantic musical world of late-Wagner, and move on towards 12 tone music and serialism.

On this new disc (released 17 July 2020) from the Deutsche Grammophon, the Alban Berg Ensemble Wien has assembled three works from this period, the Adagio from Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 10 and Richard Strauss' Der Rosenkavalier Suite, Op. 59, both written in 1910, and Schoenberg's Chamber Symphony No 1 from 1907.