New Releases

The latest release by the Signum Quartett showcases music written during the 20th century.

Berg, Bartók and Schnittke all took different approaches in their quest to further the development of the string quartet and this makes for an interesting and varied programme.

Nigel Hess is a British composer, best known for his television, theatre, and film soundtracks, which include the theme tunes to Wycliffe, Dangerfield, Hetty Wainthropp Investigates, and Ladies in Lavender starring Dames Judi Dench and Maggie Smith. The composer found additional fame recently when he wrote a Concerto for Orchestra and Piano for Lang Lang, recorded in 2008 on the UCJ label.

Works by Hess are performed here by the Central Band of the RAF, one of the premier military bands in the UK today, and conducted by Hess himself. The Band is always in great demand, undertaking more than 370 engagements a year, representing the Royal Air Force at every major military event, and performing at all of the principal concert venues in Britain. The Band is also internationally renowned, having the distinction of being the first band outside the USA to receive the John Philip Sousa Citation for Musical Excellence. Past tour schedules have included concerts in The Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Hong Kong, USA, Australia, and Russia.

New London Pictures takes its theme from today’s modern London. ‘Millennium Bridge’ depicts the pedestrian’s journey across the landmark bridge over the Thames, starting at the Tate Modern Museum, and then onwards towards the imposing St Paul’s Cathedral. ‘The London Eye’ describes the stunning bird’s-eye view of London from the iconic Ferris wheel situated on the South Bank of the River Thames. ‘The Congestion Charge’ alludes to the fee that was imposed on London motorists in 2003, depicting Londoners attempting to go about their daily business in the face of overwhelming odds.

The Old Man of Lochnagar is a children’s book written by HRH The Prince of Wales. The story revolves around an old man who lives in the cliff caves near the royal estate of Balmoral in Scotland, where the Royal Family spends much of its summer holidays. In 2007, the National Youth Ballet of Great Britain received permission to create a new ballet based on this story, for which Hess wrote the score. The concert overture Monck’s March tells the story of General Monck’s strenuous historic journey, involving seven thousand troops, from Coldstream in Scotland to London during the winter of 1660.

Shakespeare Pictures originates in incidental music composed for productions of Much Ado about Nothing, The Winter’s Tale, and Julius Caesar by the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford-upon-Avon and London. The source music was later expanded and re-orchestrated to form the new three-movement suite for symphonic wind orchestra recorded here.

The name of Ignacy Feliks Dobrzyński is still not well known outside his native Poland, but there was a time when he vied for attention in Warsaw’s musical circles with his near-contemporary Fryderyk Chopin who went on to become the country’s most famous composer. The career of Chopin flourished after he left Poland. Dobrzyński on the other hand remained in Warsaw and saw his own compositional ambitions thwarted by the difficulty of working in Russian-occupied Poland.

The works on these discs date from a time when Dobrzyński was a young man. He was only seventeen when, in 1824, he wrote his Piano Concerto. With this work Dobrzyński followed in the footsteps of composers such as Hummel and Field, associated with the style brillant, but made more than a passing nod to Weber and to late eighteenth-century idioms.

The Second Symphony followed in 1834. Revising the symphony much later, Dobrzyński wrote a new slow movement for the piece in 1862, and it is in this version that the symphony has since been performed. Uniquely, both slow movements are included on this disc. The tone that Dobrzyński adopted for the music is urgent and impassioned, probably a reflection of the occupied and divided Poland of the 1830s.

Dobrzyński considered the opera Monbar, or The Filibusters his masterpiece. Setting a pirate tale, the work displays plenty of orchestral swashbuckling, offering throughout clearly depicted themes, such as tropical storms, fighting, love, and, of course, treason. The opera had to wait twenty-five years for its complete premiere, under the composer’s baton, in Warsaw, in January 1863. Even then the opera only had three performances before the break-out two weeks later of the January Uprising, a Polish protest against the occupying forces. Monbar was subsequently shelved and not heard again until a concert performance in Warsaw in 2010.

Łukasz Borowicz was appointed Artistic Director of the Polish Radio Symphony Orchestra in Warsaw in 2007; he has appeared as a guest conductor with orchestras including the Konzerthausorchester in Berlin, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in London, Düsseldorfer Symphoniker, Prague Symphony Orchestra, Russian National Philharmonic Orchestra, and BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra. The Polish-born pianist Emilian Madey is also active as a composer, conductor, and lecturer at the Chopin University of Music in Warsaw.

This disc of popular works by Emmanuel Chabrier marks the beginning of a new series of French repertoire, performed by the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande under its newly appointed Artistic Director, Neeme Järvi.

After three attempts at comic opera, Chabrier finally achieved success in 1877 with L’Étoile, the plotline of which is set in the court of the somewhat emotionally unstable King Ouf. A couple of years previously, Chabrier had written a short Lamento for orchestra, a work which would not perhaps be considered revolutionary by today’s audiences, but which caused the committee of the Société nationale de musique to hum and haw over it for eighteen long months before finally letting it loose on the Parisian public in 1878.

From July to December 1882, Chabrier took his family on an extended holiday to Spain, during which he kept himself busy by noting down the Spanish folk tunes and dance rhythms he encountered on his way. He put many of them into his orchestral masterpiece España, a work overwhelming in its orchestral colour, which is such a characteristic feature of this composer. The impressions of his Spanish holiday can also be heard in the Habanera.

For six years Chabrier worked on Gwendoline, a two-act dramatic opera on a libretto by Catulle Mendès, set in Britain in what he called ‘barbarous times’. Inspired by Wagner and Berlioz, the Overture sets the scene perfectly for a drama of violence, treachery, and passion. A month after Gwendoline was premiered in Brussels in April 1886 the Opéra-Comique in Paris agreed to put on Chabrier’s next opera, Le Roi malgré lui, a melting pot of complex political intrigue, cheerful arias, and vivacious dances.

In 1880 Chabrier had written his Dix Pièces pittoresques for piano, and over the next few years he orchestrated four of them to form the Suite pastorale, with its gently pulsing ‘Idylle’ movement (which inspired Poulenc to become a composer), the raucous ‘Danse villageoise’, the sultry ‘Sous-bois’, and last but not least the sunny, high-spirited ‘Scherzo-valse’.

Also on this disc is the Joyeuse marche, one of Chabrier’s most popular works, and the Bourrée fantasque, based on a dance from the Auvergne region in France where the composer had spent his childhood.

Now, in its 13th year, The Choral Pilgrimage stands as testament to Harry Christophers’ ongoing mission to bring a wide variety of sacred music back to the kind of buildings for which it was written. Thanks to the enthusiasm and support from audiences, the project continues to thrive and some 20,000 people are expected to attend concerts on this year’s tour.

The 2013 tour began on 2nd March in Guildford Cathedral, and will take in a total of 34 concerts around the UK and Ireland before a concluding concert in Greyfriars Kirk, Edinburgh on the 26 October.

Allegri’s Miserere is the single most famous piece of sacred music ever written. Although it is instantly recognisable with its haunting tones, mythology surrounds it, and this year’s Choral Pilgrimage allows Harry Christophers to explore its evolution and enduring appeal.

James MacMillan dedicated his powerful and emotional setting of the Miserere to Harry Christophers and The Sixteen who premiered the work in 2010 and recorded it shortly afterwards. Alongside Allegri, MacMillan is one of the few composers to ever set the full Miserere to music.

His exquisite version is one of the highlights of this year’s programme.

Arguably the greatest composer of liturgical music of all time, Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina is often billed as ‘The Prince of Music’ and by some ‘The Saviour of Church Music’. Palestrina was a towering figure in Renaissance polyphony and shines out amongst the many great composers of the time for his immaculate craftsmanship and sheer output of works. The Sixteen have recorded three volumes of Palestrina’s works on their own label CORO, the latest of which includes repertoire from the 2013 tour and is included in this special collection.