AND THE BLACKBIRD SANG: Choral Music

AND THE BLACKBIRD SANG: Choral Music

Excalibur VoicesAnna Markland pianoDuncan Aspden director EMR CD094 An invigorating issue of fascinating material, Excalibur Voices are a well-balanced ensemble whose phrasing, if not always the tidiest, is natural and musical. They are blessed with good low basses,...
PIANO QUINTETS: Godfrey, Hodgson, Walthew, McCabe

PIANO QUINTETS: Godfrey, Hodgson, Walthew, McCabe

I Musicanti stringsLeon Bosch double bass Peter Donohoe piano SOMM CD 0707  Percy Godfrey? No, me neither; but this 1900 Piano Quintet is quite the find. The first movement surges with full-bodied invention, and if procedures are text-book they are also confident...
THE BLESSED DAMOZEL: Songs of Arnold Box

THE BLESSED DAMOZEL: Songs of Arnold Box

Jeremy Huw Williams baritonePaula Fan pianoTheodore Buchholz cello EMR CD086 It is tempting to reverse the customary credits to read ‘for piano and baritone’ as Mozart and Beethoven used to do with their violin sonatas, since Paula Fan certainly earns the title of...
CIPRIANI POTTER: Complete Symphonies Vol. 3

CIPRIANI POTTER: Complete Symphonies Vol. 3

Mélodie Zhao pianoBBC National Orchestra of WalesHoward Griffiths director CPO 555 637-2 Both British music research and British musical life pay surprisingly little attention to 19th-century British music. This has hardly changed since a few epoch-making writings....
Obituary: Raymond Warren

Obituary: Raymond Warren

7 November 1928 – 4 June 2025 Professor Raymond Henry Charles Warren, who has died aged 96, was part of that Interwar generation of British composers that owed a stylistic debt to Tippett and Britten (both of whom taught him). Along with his contemporaries...