SOMM Recordings are releasing two recordings this month featuring British Music while Orchard Classics has a new CD featuring the music of Edward Picton-Turbervill.
The first new release is part of their warmly received series Elgar from the Archives (ARIADNE 5049). This will be volume 4 and is drawn from the remarkable collection of producer and restoration engineer Lani Spahr, containing over 5,000 historic Elgar recordings. This volume presents the Concert Overture In the South (Alassio), Op. 50 and Symphony No. 1 in A flat major, Op. 55.
In the South is a 1954 release featuring the Symphony Orchestra of Radio Leipzig conducted by Gerhard Pflüger (1907–1991). For an East German orchestra and conductor to issue the work of a British composer was not only rare but courageous.
Elgar’s 1908 First Symphony celebrated in 1958 for the centenary of the Hallé Orchestra with a concert led by Sir John Barbirolli that was broadcast and televised. It is this live recording that is presented here. Michael Kennedy, said of the performance: ’In their finest hour, the Hallé and its conductor found the best in each other to do honour to their own traditions’.
The second is entitled Quiet Summer Evening: British Light Classics (SOMMCD 0727) and will be their second recording with the Chamber Ensemble of London, a virtuoso group of hand-picked string players directed by violinist Peter Fisher, whom The Times counts amongst “a handful of the world’s finest musicians. This follows their 2022 SOMM release, Eclogue – British Chamber Music.
The new release draws on the rich tradition of light classical music opening with Rhapsody for Clarinet & Strings by Geoffrey Bush, a composer who was initially taught by John Ireland. Bush’s hauntingly beautiful rhapsody features clarinettist Peter Cigleris, who is also the soloist in 5 Pieces for Clarinet & String Orchestra by Clive Jenkins.
Another work included by Jenkins is his Fantasy for Horn & Strings featuring Alexei Watkins. Bassoonist Sarah Watts is a multi-instrumentalist composer of colourful and inspiring music. Here, she performs her Everywhere Is Somewhere Else, and is soloist for the contemplative Sunday Afternoon by Nigel Brooks and A Little Waltz by Gordon Jacob.
Pieces from former generations include Canto popolare from Elgar’s overture In the South; Lennox Berkeley’s single-movement Andantino, and one of Delius’s earliest surviving compositions, Romance.
Read Martyn Strachan’s review of this CD.
The new album (ORC 100453) from Orchard Classics brings together three works by Edward Picton-Turbervill, centred on Out of Eden, a large-scale meditation on humanity’s relationship with the natural world.
Written for the London Choral Sinfonia and a small group of instrumentalists, Out of Eden creates a rich sound world from modest forces, the score moving between moments of stillness and intensity as it combines choral writing with solo voices and instrumental colour.
The programme is framed by two shorter works. Spell of Creation and Spell of Sleep, inspired by the poetry of Kathleen Raine, offer a more intimate contrast, while Songs of Eden, an instrumental suite, reflects on similar ideas in distilled form.
Performed under Michael Waldron, the London Choral Sinfonia brings clarity and commitment to music that speaks with urgency but also restraint. Together, these works present a distinctive and thoughtful new voice in British choral writing.