PETER JACOBS: Anthology Vol 2

Feb 25, 2025 | CD reviews

Peter Jacobs piano HERITAGE HTGCD 131 Peter Jacobs has a long history of recording British piano music, and this is his latest anthology (I welcomed the first in 2021) for the Heritage Label. As he says, this is a personal selection, with no particular thread or...

IAN STEPHENS: Chamber Music

Feb 25, 2025 | CD reviews

Fitzwilliam String QuartetMandy Burvill clarinetJonathan Small oboe DIVINE ART ddx 21105 This disc includes five examples of Ian Stephens’ chamber music. The first three works use existing musical material. The Celtic Elegy is one of a set of Three Miniatures for...

IVOR GURNEY: Songs 2

Feb 25, 2025 | CD reviews

Marcus Farnsworth baritoneEric McElroy piano NAXOS 8.574599 Part of Naxos’s laudable English Song Series, this is the successor to the Gurney disc by Susan Bickley and Iain Burnside from 2009. As such, it may be considered well overdue and compels the hope that...

Letter: researching the van Noorden family

Feb 24, 2025 | Inbox

I am writing on behalf of the Carl Rosa Trust Ltd., with whom I volunteer. We are searching for information about any living descendants of the van Noorden family. I understand that Walter van Noorden died without any children, but that his brother Alfred did indeed...

John W. Duarte: ‘For the joy of it’

Feb 24, 2025 | Features

‘We made music just for the joy of it’, is a quote, describing the pre-WWII music-making by my father, the British composer, arranger, editor, writer and teacher, John W. Duarte. Jazz was his favoured style, but this was soon overtaken by an interest in the classical...

Wilfred Heaton: His Life, His Music

Feb 21, 2025 | Book reviews

Paul Hindmarsh PHM PublishingISBN 978-1-0369-0132-5 This is a remarkable story of a pioneering composer who wrote largely for brass bands, yet considered that they were, in general, not fully committed to serious music. Wilfred Heaton (1918–2000) fell between two...

New release features long forgotten Elgar recordings

Feb 18, 2025 | News

The continuing collaboration of SOMM Recordings and Lani Spahr has produced another release of long forgotten and neglected recordings which highlight Sir Adrian Boult’s life-long championing of the music of Edward Elgar.  On 17 February, 1918, in wartime London,...

Music news in brief

Jan 28, 2025 | News

Music library reinvented An historic music library – the largest in the North of England – reopened in January after undergoing a major redevelopment. First opened in 1950, the refurbished venue at Leeds Central Library features walk-in recording studios,...

Award for Sir Simon Rattle at 70

Jan 28, 2025 | News

What do most people do for their 70th birthday celebration? Dinner with the family? A party with friends? Exotic Holiday? One of the great champions of British music, and certainly one of the most influential conductors of our times may well have done all of those...

RICHARD RODNEY BENNETT: Orchestral Works Vol. 5

Jan 28, 2025 | CD reviews

Jonathan Aasgaard celloBBC Scottish Symphony OrchestraJohn Wilson conductor  CHANDOS CHSA5266 Slowly the admirable Chandos project to record the complete orchestral works of this composer proceeds. Postwar, the Concerto for Orchestra genre took off, with...