A Brief Introduction Rediscover Passiontide through exquisite vocal motets from master composers of the Baroque era. Bringing together three beautiful Passiontide works for tenor soloist and small ensemble, this recording revisits some of the most outstanding, but little performed repertoire of the Baroque in powerful performances from talented musicians of Birmingham Conservatoire. Adrian Green Executive [...]
Neil Ferris, Convivium Singers and Christopher Cromar, Piano: Jonathan Dove’s The Passing of the Year out now on Naxos Records. Jonathan Dove is one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary music, and his writing for choral forces is charged with intensity and beauty. The Passing of the Year is dedicated to the memory of [...]
A Brief Introduction… Hugh Benham is organist and choir director at St. Boniface Anglican Church in Chandler’s Ford, Hampshire, and active in The Guild of Church Musicians. He is a writer of academic and educational articles and books, and a chair of examiners for GCE Music. Some of the choral items on this disc were [...]
A Brief Introduction… Peter Philips (1560/1 – 1628) has long existed on the margins of English music. Resident in England until 1582, Philips spent the rest of his life in exile in the Netherlands. It is presumed that Philips’s Catholicism was the motivation behind this move, as Catholics were not permitted to openly practice their faith in [...]
Introduction Felix Blumenfeld (1863-1931) was a student of Rimski-Korsakov, friend of Rachmaninoff and Sriabin, and friend of Vladimir Horowitz. His colourful, virtuosic piano works will appeal to lovers of the late-Romantic era – of Liszt, Tchaikovski and the Russian piano school in particular. Jonathan Powell – Pianist Recorded at the Music School, Durham University, August [...]
On this Disc Trio for Flute, Cello & Piano Originally written in 2002, this four-movement work, like all the pieces on this disc, was substantially revised for this recording. It has a somewhat light, Gallic character, as perhaps befits the medium: the opening Allegretto is a sonata movement in fast triple time, including an exposition [...]
Composer’s Note I wrote the first of my (many) piano sonatas at the age of 19, having been bowled over by the first London performance of Messiaen’s Turangalila Symphony. This piece, with its contradictory extremes of intellectual loftiness and gleeful vulgarity, seemed to open a door to creativity, giving me permission to find vocabulary to [...]
On this Disc The pieces on this recording are a sample of DISCANTVS’ repertoire, which is largely sacred and from the fifteenth to eighteenth centuries. As a group, we enjoy performing music which has a certain gravitas, that rather elusive factor where the music seems to enable the singer and listener to hear something beyond [...]
