Latest Releases

 

Dvořák/Suk — Transcriptions of Dvořák Songs

Antonín Dvořák has long been known as one of music’s supreme melodists, but his songs have not made quite the headway of his best-known works. Now 30 of them are given a new lease of life in transcriptions for violin and viola and piano by his great-grandson, Josef Suk – the viola pieces performed here on Dvořák’s own instrument, restored especially for this recording. With Josef Suk joined here by Vladimir Ashkenazy, this disc offers two of the world’s greatest musicians playing – together for the first time – some of its most beautiful music, in versions never heard before.

Release date: 8^nd February 2010, but digital downloads available through this site

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Friedrich Gernsheim — Piano Quintets

The music of the German composer Friedrich Gernsheim (1839–1916) is gradually beginning to emerge in recordings, revealing him as one of the finest composers of his age. His two piano quintets are tightly constructed, powerfully argued and full of rhythmic energy, and also abound with memorable tunes. They are, in fact, both masterpieces, among the very best of German Romantic chamber music, ranking alongside the Brahms and Schumann works.

Release date: 22^nd February 2010, but digital downloads available through this site

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Franz Liszt — Symphonic Poems, transcribed for solo piano

Although Liszt’s thirteen symphonic poems exist in two-piano transcriptions prepared by the composer himself, it was his Czech student August Stradal (1860–1930) who was to transcribe them for solo piano – versions which demand almost superhuman virtuosity. As Malcolm MacDonald writes in his booklet essay, Stradal’s versions ‘transform these revolutionary orchestral compositions into viable and effective piano works, faithfully preserving their masterly musical substance’.

Release date: 22^nd February 2010, but digital downloads available through this site

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Ferdinand Thieriot — Chamber Music, Volume One

Ferdinand Thieriot (1836-1919) was, like Johannes Brahms, a student of Eduard Marxsen in Hamburg; Brahms remained a friend in later years – and Thieriot’s music does indeed have a Brahmsian warmth and richness. His works, the chamber music especially, was popular during his own lifetime but since his death in 1919 it has been totally forgotten – not least because the archives containing his manuscripts were taken to Leningrad after the Second World War. It is time to rediscover this generous and big-hearted music, which overflows with memorable melodies.

Release date: 22^nd February 2010, but digital downloads available through this site

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Algernon Ashton — Piano Music, Volume One

Algernon Ashton, born in Durham in 1869, is one of the best-kept secrets in British music. His generous output of piano music includes no fewer than eight sonatas, none of them ever recorded before now. Rutland Boughton wrote that Ashton ‘seems to pour out great musical thought as easily as the lark trills its delight in cloudland’, and though Ashton’s piano writing, which lies downstream from Bach, Chopin and Brahms, is phenomenally difficult, what strikes the ear is its spontaneity and melodic richness.

Release date: 31^st May 2010, but digital downloads available through this site

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Salomon Jadassohn — Piano Trios

Salomon Jadassohn (1831–1902) is best remembered as a much-revered teacher at the Leipzig Conservatoire: his students included Busoni, Delius and Grieg; he himself studied with Liszt. Jadassohn’s own compositions, roundly forgotten for a hundred years, are only now beginning to attract attention. As these three trios demonstrate, they are central to the German Romantic tradition, with something of Schumann’s melodic inspiration, the spontaneity of Schubert and Mendelssohn’s classicising elegance – fused together with Jadassohn’s own impeccable craftsmanship.

Release date: 15^th April 2010, but digital downloads available through this site

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Anatoly Lyadov — Complete Piano Music, Volume One

Anatoly Lyadov (1855–1914) is remembered these days chiefly for his Musical Snuffbox, once a favourite encore. Lyadov was indeed a miniaturist – but a far more productive one than his reputation for laziness suggests. His substantial output for piano – never previously recorded in its entirety – reveals a composer with an energetic keyboard manner reminiscent of Schumann, often coloured with a hint of Russian folk-music.

Release date: 15^th April 2010, but digital downloads available through this site

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David Matthews — Complete String Quartets, Volume One

To date David Matthews (b. 1943) has written seven symphonies and eleven string quartets. ‘I have continued’, he explains, ‘along a path similar to that taken by Tippett and Britten: one rooted in the Viennese Classics – Beethoven above all – and also in Mahler, Sibelius and the early twentieth-century modernists. I have always been a tonal composer, attempting to integrate the musical language of the present with the past, and to explore the rich traditional forms.’ This first volume of his complete string quartets presents works written between 1981 and 2001.

Release date: 15^th April 2010, but digital downloads available through this site

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