Sarah Connolly

This latest release documents premiere recordings of works by Mark-Anthony Turnage, the London Philharmonic Orchestra’s Composer in Residence. Ten years after its rst performance at the Aldeburgh Festival, Marin Alsop conducts a studio performance of Turnage’s remarkable work for mezzo-soprano and chamber ensemble, Twice Through the Heart. The piece is a collaboration with poet Jackie Kay and explores the real-life story of an abused woman imprisoned for the murder of her husband. The music is lyrical but abrupt, painful but often quiet and reective; one of the composer’s most nely crafted, intensely moving and technically accomplished works. ‘It’s almost made for Sarah’s [Connolly] voice’, says Turnage, ‘she gets very close to the heart of it’. The Torn Fields was also recorded in the studio, and is sung by baritone Gerald Finley, for whom Turnage wrote the work in 2000-02. This often nightmarish, vivid glimpse of the destruction of war using poetry from 1914-1918 is another example of the composer’s extraordinary ability to create vocal lines that embody their texts. Turnage has himself commented on the huge challenges he experiences when writing vocal music, but concedes that ‘writing for Gerald Finley makes it easier…he is, in my view, one of the greatest baritones around’. Sandwiched between these works is a recording made live at the world première of Turnage’s Hidden Love Song in January 2006. The soloist, Martin Robertson, is another close friend and regular collaborator with Turnage, and this performance reveals the sensitive, delicate nature of Turnage’s musical gift to his wife Gabriella Swallow.

Handel: Solomon

Handel was 63 years old when he composed Solomon, one of his final masterpieces.The plot is simple with Act 1 dealing with the inauguration of the newly completed temple, and ends with Solomon beckoning his Queen toward the cedar grove, where one suspects it is not just the 'amorous turtles' that 'love beneath the pleasing gloom'. Act II is based around the well known story of two women arguing over who is the mother of the new-born baby, and Solomon's sharp thinking to find a solution and Act III portrays the visit of the Queen of Sheba (also known as the Queen of Egypt and Ethiopia), and her amazement at the glory and splendour of Solomon's court.With a relatively small and diverse cast of characters (Solomon, Queen of Sheba, two Harlots, Zadok the Priest and a Levite) it falls to the chorus, as builders and inhabitants of this 'golden' city, to emphasis the grandeur and splendour of Solomon's kingdom and to literarily provide the pillars of the whole piece.These grand choruses, seven of which are in eight voice parts, add to the texture and opulence of the oratorio mirroring the glory of the court and religious intensity. This 'perfect marriage of music and English words', as Winton Dean has called it, caused the composer serious financial difficulties in 1749 on account of the exceptional forces it required - but today, under the baton of Daniel Reuss, with an unbeatable British cast, finds a performance totally devoted to its noble cause!

Mahler: Des Knaben Wunderhorn

The Exquisite Hour

J S Bach - Advent Cantatas

Bridge - Orchestral Works Volume 6

Most items are premiere recordings

Heroes and Heroines: Handel Arias