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London Mozart Players – Kenneth V. Jones: Chamber Works (2024)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:05:29 minutes | 1,12 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Lyrita
My first encounter with Kenneth V. Jones was in 2016 when our family moved to the village of Bishopstone in the Sussex Downs. Over the course of several months I was able to learn more of Kenneth’s musical life. As soon as he mentioned having once written a string quartet, it was decided to programme the work during the following Season of Seaford Music Society, of which Kenneth was a long-standing member and whose programming I had recently taken on. Such was the warmth of the reception upon hearing the work that it was decided to explore more of Kenneth’s chamber music output, and thus the idea for this CD was born. We have Kenneth to thank for the fact the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music made the decision, at his suggestion, to include contemporary compositions in their graded examination syllabuses. Several of the short character pieces that Kenneth wrote for the ABRSM remain in the syllabus to this day, and a selection of these is included on this recording. It gave me huge pleasure to be able to present to Kenneth the first edit of the current CD, just a few days before his death in December 2020. He was absolutely thrilled.
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Clive Osgood, Excelsis, London Mozart Players – Clive Osgood: Magnificat (2024)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 31:45 minutes | 1,06 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Convivium Records Ltd.
This new large-scale setting of the Magnificat has been written as a companion piece to J.S. Bach’s famous setting (BWV 243). Although making use of a more contemporary musical language, it uses similar instrumentation, follows the same framework of chorus and solo movements, and makes use of a number of features that are typical of Bach’s music.
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Helena Macherel, Tjasha Gafner, London Mozart Players – Mozart (2024)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:04:30 minutes | 1,08 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Claves Records
Make a recording of two of Mozart’s three flute concertos? For Helena Macherel, it felt like an obvious thing to do. “How could one say no to such an offer?” The patron of the arts, now deceased, who backed her for years, encouraged her in this direction. “I’m not looking for originality at any price, just to let myself be carried away by the beauty of the music, in a quest for truth and authenticity.” To achieve this, she can count on the accompaniment of English musicians well-versed in this kind of challenge: the London Mozart Players, whose experienced members provide not only the ensemble’s conducting but also the chamber partners for the Quartet in D major. “Far from coming up with a fixed vision of the works, I have, on the contrary, encouraged dialogue and exchange with them, and I am delighted with the spirit of freedom that permeates these recordings.”
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Crouch End Festival Chorus, London Mozart Players, David Temple – Fanny Hensel, Felix Mendelssohn: Choral Works (2024)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:11:53 minutes | 1,26 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Chandos
David Temple conducts the Crouch End Festival Chorus and London Mozart Players with a formidable group of soloists on this album celebrating the works of the siblings Felix Mendelssohn and Fanny Hensel (nee Mendelssohn). Fanny’s cantata Hiob, based on the Book of Job, is the second of three cantatas composed between February and November 1831, although it remained unpublished until 1992. Later in her short career, encouraged by her brother and her friend Robert von Keudell, Fanny did begin to publish her works. The Gartenlieder, Op. 3 for unaccompanied choir were composed in 1846, and inspired by the gardens and summerhouse at the family’s Leipzigerstrase residence, in Berlin, where she held her choir rehearsals. Mendelssohn’s Die erste Walpurgisnacht is a secular cantata, a setting of the poem by Goethe, originally performed in 1831. Mendelssohn revised the work extensively in 1843, and it is this later version that is performed here. His Christmas cantata Vom Himmel hoch, based on a Lutheran chorale, was completed in 1831.
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London Mozart Players – Hummel: Piano Concerto in A, O du lieber Augustin, L’Enchantment d’Oberon & Le Retour à Londres (2006/2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:09:50 minutes | 1,14 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Chandos
Howard Shelley continues his survey of Hummel’s works for piano and orchestra and this disc features the premiere recording of Le Retour à Londres.
Howard Shelley has a large and acclaimed discography on Chandos and is acknowledged as a leading exponent of keyboard repertoire from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
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London Mozart Players – Hummel: Piano Concerto in A, O du lieber Augustin, L’Enchantment d’Oberon & Le Retour à Londres (2006/2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:09:50 minutes | 1,14 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Chandos
Howard Shelley continues his survey of Hummel’s works for piano and orchestra and this disc features the premiere recording of Le Retour à Londres.
Howard Shelley has a large and acclaimed discography on Chandos and is acknowledged as a leading exponent of keyboard repertoire from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
(more…)
The Choir of Royal Holloway, London Mozart Players & Rupert Gough – Carson Cooman: As We Are Changed, Op. 1340 (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 01:07:16 minutes | 2,29 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Convivium Records
The present release features a compelling new oratorio by American composer, Carson Cooman, with libretto by Euan Tait. “Our world and our lives are transformational and in constant transformation, and this work is the music of those transformations. The earth we live on does not stay still but evolves and changes; our lives are changed through our own personal struggles, through meetings with those whose difference from us becomes a teacher, with sudden catalytic events, and from the daily, determined creativity of love working and spreading outwards from our humanity” (Carson Cooman).
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Sarah Fox, Dame Sarah Connolly, David Butt Philip, Neal Davies, London Mozart Players, William Vann – Parry: Scenes from Shelley’s Prometheus Unbound, Blest Pair of Sirens (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:10:48 minutes | 1,19 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Chandos
Hubert Parry (1848-1918), regarded by many (including Edward Elgar) as the finest English composer since Purcell, and as the father of the modern English tradition, is best known for his hymn Jerusalem (immortalised by the Women’s Institute and English cricket supporters alike!). His anthem I was glad, written for the coronation of Edward VII, in 1902, has been used also at the coronations of George V, Elizabeth II, and Charles III (who is a proclaimed fan of Parry’s music). He taught composition at London’s Royal College of Music from 1883 to 1895, when he succeeded Sir George Grove as director of the College, a post he held until his death. His distinguished list of pupils included Ralph Vaughan Williams, Gustav Holst, Frank Bridge, and John Ireland. Inspired initially by the German romantics Mendelssohn and Schumann, Parry quickly became a devotee of Brahms and Wagner, whose influences can be heard in much of his output. But, from his earliest works, his own individual voice can be heard very clearly. Commissioned for the Three Choirs Festival, in Gloucester in 1880, his Scenes from Shelley’s Prometheus Unbound is just such an early work. The première received a mixed reception, but despite numerous repeat performances, in Cambridge, Oxford, and London, all with rave reviews, the piece sank into obscurity. Vernon Handley gave a performance for BBC Radio 3 in 1980, to mark the centenary of the première, but this world première recording is the first chance for modern audiences to hear this outstanding work.
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Howard Shelley, London Mozart Players – Kozeluch: Piano Concertos Nos. 1, 5 & 6 (2016)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:15:35 minutes | 1,24 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Hyperion Records
Leopold Kozeluch—another composer-pianist trying to make his way in 1780s Vienna—has not been treated kindly by posterity, suffering that posthumous obscurity shared by so many of Mozart’s contemporaries. But his brand of Rococo galanterie, much in evidence in these three piano concertos, is guaranteed to delight, especially in such affectionately attentive performances as these.
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Sarah Fox, Kathryn Rudge, Toby Spence, Henry Waddington, London Mozart Players & William Vann – Parry: Judith (2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 02:11:12 minutes | 2,24 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Chandos
Recorded after the first London performance for over 130 years, Parry’s neglected oratorio here appears for the very first time. Having been commissioned by the Birmingham Festival, Parry decided to combine the Old Testament stories of Manasseh and Judith. A good deal of the libretto was provided by Parry himself, who took other texts from the biblical books of Isaiah, Psalms, and Judith. Having originally conceived the work in four acts, Parry condensed it into two. Judith was premiered by Richter in Birmingham in August 1888, and it consolidated Parry’s reputation as a choral composer, numerous performances following in Edinburgh and in London. Although popular in his lifetime, Judith fell into obscurity after Parry’s death.
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