Pianist Burkard Schliessmann has been distinguished with the award of three Silver Medals at the 2017 Global Music Awards. Known as “music’s golden seal of approval”, the Global Music Awards honored Schliessmann as an instrumentalist and for ‘Outstanding Achievements as a Classical Artist’, as well as for his Divine Art album ‘Chronological Chopin’.
Author Archive for Divine Art Recording Group – Page 5
Howard Skempton is one of Britain’s most individual and skilful composers. A new album of his chamber works has been recorded for release early next year by Métier (our new-music branch) by the British ensemble Sirinu.
The new album is titled ‘The Man, Hurdy-Gurdy and Me’ which gives a hint that Skempton’s works here may include non-traditional instruments and indeed his flair for fascinating and unusual instrumental pairings is a feature of the program – not often does a major composer’s chamber music involve the Hurdy-Gurdy, medieval instruments, or the accordion or even the Indonesian gamelan trio of saron, peking and gendèr.
‘The Man, Hurdy-Gurdy and Me’ (currently at editing and mastering stage) will be scheduled for release in early Spring 2018 on Métier MSV 28580
We wish Howard a very happy birthday, as he enters his 71st year!
Leading British clarinettist Ian Mitchell is to record a program of music for bass clarinet for Métier Records, the new-music arm of Divine Art. The purpose of the album will be to demonstrate that the bass clarinet is not just an optional orchestral instrument but is effective in chamber music for small ensembles. Joined by his long-established and renowned group Gemini, Mitchell will present an album containing many new works some of which have been commissioned by Mitchell and Gemini. The recording sessions are to take place, with Métier Productions producer/engineer David Lefeber, during the autumn for release in mid-2018. Other soloists taking part are soprano Alison Wells and pianist Aleksander Szram.
Following critical acclaim for the two recent albums of Symphonies and other works by Vyacheslav Artyomov (DDA 25143 and 25144) we are working with him on a project to re-issue almost all of the previous recordings of his magnificent music, most of this is being licensed from Melodiya and we hope to conclude the paperwork on the deal very soon. There should be material for seven albums – one actually includes new recordings (of ‘Sola Fide’ a ballet suite) while the re-issued recordings will be issued on the mid price Diversions label – we hope to schedule these for release over next spring and summer. At the same time plans are in hand for another new album… of which more news soon.
Irish mezzo-soprano Aylish Kerrigan is following up her two recent Métier albums with one devoted to the vocal works of Charles Ives and Henry Cowell. In many ways the two (though not at all alike) share the distinction of being exceptionally individual in their writing. Ms Kerrigan, who is accompanied by pianist Vladimir Valdivia, has spent several years honing her individual approach to these unusual and often eccentric pieces to bring out their essence, making them personal statements from composer and singer to listener. The album also includes two short piano solo works by Cowell, and two with flute or piccolo obbligato (supplied by William Dowdall).
The release will be scheduled for late spring 2018. Meanwhile, Ms Kerrigan is now busy recording her next project – a vocal album devoted to Kurt Weill, the composer who in live performance is most identified with the singer.
Ms Kerrigan’s repertoire ranges from Irish Ballads, German Lieder and Theatre Music to a wide range of contemporary compositions. She is a renowned vocal pedagogue and gives concerts, master classes and lectures world-wide. Her one-woman Broadway shows have won her acclaim in Paris, Dublin, New York and Berlin.
Since acquiring Dunelm Records back in 2007 we have re-released several of their fine recordings on the Diversions and Metier labels at a lower price. A new batch of re-releases is now being prepared for the spring of 2018. This will include vols 1-5 of the series of organ recordings by Ronald Frost (Organs of North West England) – volumes 6 and 7 are already available for streaming on Primephonic and purchase on iTunes – as well as contemporary piano music and chamber works. More information to follow – watch this space!
Look out for three new albums in November (our last issues of 2017). We are delighted to present Volume 6 of the Carson Cooman organ music series (“The Cloak with the Stars”). Cooman also appears, this time as performer, in Andreas Willscher’s Organ Symphonies 19 & 20 and a suite ‘The Beatitudes’; and from Métier we focus on works for solo violin and violin/viola duo by Michael Alec Rose, currently teaching at Vanderbilt University, Nashville.
Foremost English oboist (and specialist in advanced techniques) Christopher Redgate is putting the finishing touches to his latest Métier album, “New Music for a New Oboe, vol. 2”. This was originally due to appear in 2014 but Chris suffered a stroke (from which happily he is now totally recovered) and this delayed progress. Now scheduled for release in the first part of 2018, the album will contain new/recent works by Christopher Fox, Dorothy Ker, Paul Archbold, Edward Cowie and Sam Hayden – all first recordings. The album, like its predecessor (vol. 1 – MSV 28529) features the Howarth-Redgate oboe specially developed to cater for the more challenging requirements of the avant-garde, including multiphonics. The oboe was manufactured by Howarth of London.
The EPSS has supported the long and vibrant tradition of English art-song for many years.
These EPSS recordings were made on portable recording equipment and with less than ideal microphone placement and are not to our usual modern standard. However, they contain fine performances and many very unfamiliar and exquisite songs, which will delight any lover of late-Romantic vocal music
Shropshire Lads
Settings of the poems of A.E. Housman by E.J. Moeran, Arthur Somervell, Arnold Bax, Benjamin Burrows, Brian Daubney, Margaret Wegener, Clive Pollard, Calvin Bowman and Stephen Duro. Plus the five excellent finalists in the EPSS competition of 2006.
Songs of Dorset
Here we have fine settings of Thomas Hardy and the dialect poems of William Barnes from Gerald Finzi, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Arthur Somervell, Clive Carey, Roger Lord, Alison Edgar, Judith Bailey and Brian Daubney. Works by the five finalists in the EPSS competition of 2001 are also included.
The Great War
Some of the best known and most moving of English poetry came from the horrors of the 1914-8 war. Here texts by Siegried Sassoon, A.E. Housman, Rupert Brooke, F.W. Harvey and more in settings by Ivor Gurney, Geraint Lewis, John Ireland, Geoffrey Kimpton, Margaret Wegener, John R. Williamson, Duncan Reid, Dennis Wickens, Elaine Hugh-Jones and Jerome Kern. Works by the seven finalists in the 2004 EPSS competition are included.
Lights Out
A wide ranging recital of art songs from Henry Purcell, E.J. Moeran, Ivor Gurney, Sulyen Caradon, Samuel Wesley, Jeffrey Whitton, Sarah Rodgers, Alison Edgar and Laura Shur.
German pianist Burkard Schliessmann has several upcoming performances of works by Godowsky and Liszt airing on Classica.
Leopold Godowsky (1870-1938)
Piano-Paraphrases of Strauss-Songs and Symphonic Metamorphoses on Waltzes and Themes of Johann Strauss.
Die Fledermaus – Alt-Wien (“Old Vienna”), “Whose Yesterdays look backwards with a Smile through Tears”, Triakontameron, No. 11 – Wienerisch – Ein Künstlerleben
Schedule
CLASSICA HD:
- 01.08.2017 16:05:00
- 02.08.2017 00:05:00
- 02.08.2017 08:05:00
- 29.08.2017 19:20:00
- 30.08.2017 03:20:00
- 30.08.2017 11:20:00
CLASSICA ON SKY:
- 02.08.2017 00:20:00
- 30.08.2017 03:35:00
Franz Liszt (1811-1886):
Piano Transcriptions of Schubert Songs.
Die Forelle – Auf dem Wasser zu singen – Horch, horch! Die Lerch’ im Ätherblau! – Leise flehen meine Lieder – Aufenthalt – Der Erlkönig
CLASSICA HD:
- 14.08.2017 17:10
- 15.08.2017 01:10
- 15.08.2017 09:10
CLASSICA ON SKY:
- 15.08.2017 01:25
Kevin Malone‘s composition “The Last Memory” will be performed to the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Arts, Health and Wellbeing at the Party’s public launch at Manchester School of Art on 21 July. The event is generating an inquiry report on how the arts can influence senior government policy makers when drafting legislation regarding about issues of physical and mental health. This is one of the key works on MSV 25138 ‘Mind Music’ proceeds from which are donated to Parkinson’s UK, a major charity in this field.
The performance will be given by Lynsey Marsh, former principal clarinetist with the Hallé Orchestra. Both Lynsey and Kevin lost their fathers to Alzheimer’s, and the work has been recorded by Lynsey, released in February 2017 on Divine Art CD “Mind Music” which is focused on music influenced by neurological disorders.
Malone’s piece is the sole work being performed at the launch. It features a solo clarinetist on stage with a digital delay device which creates 12 identical receding echoes into the performance space, thus providing 13 live musical lines trapped in repeating loops of disorientation, an experience Malone witnessed as his father’s Alzheimer’s condition increased.
The performance is also being broadcast by Vintage FM radio.
Bernard Clarke is broadcasting pieces from Rhona Clarke’s A Different Game (Metier MSV 28561) on three consecutive Nova Programmes (Lyric FM, Sundays 20.00-22.00):
- 23 July: con coro
- 30 July: In Umbra
- 6 August: A Different Game (entire trio)
In early 2018, Metier will release an album of music by Michael Alec Rose for solo violin and violin/viola duo, featuring violinist Peter Sheppard Skærved (pictured) and Diana Mathews (viola). Titled ‘Il Ritorno’, for one of the main pieces, the album will be on MSV 28574.
Rose has received 30 annual awards in composition from ASCAP and has been commissioned by the Walter W. Naumburg Foundation, the Blair and Mendelssohn String Quartets, the Nashville Symphony, and others. His music has been performed widely in the United States, as well as in Europe and South America. He is Associate Professor of Composition at Vanderbilt University’s Blair School of Music in Tennessee.
Working at top speed on a new album for violinist Madeleine Mitchell of contemporary though lyrical (not avant-garde) works by British composers – includng pieces by David Matthews, Michael Berkeley, Michael Nyman, Sadie Harrison and Judith Weir and the Violin Concerto Soft Stillness by Guto Puw – we are aiming for an October release (DDA 25160) though there are several factors out of our hands which could affect that plan.
The Metier label has over the past two years released a number of albums featuring some of the leading composers in Ireland and the latest to be ‘signed up’ is a collection of choral works by composer John Buckley, who has established himself as one of the foremost contemporary voices in the Republic. The recording is to be made later this year and should be available in the first part of 2018 (Metier MSV 28576); performances are by the acclaimed Mornington Singers, directed by Orla Flanagan.
Following their wonderful disc of Romantic Trios (DDA 25102) Australian ensemble Trio Anima Mundi are now preparing a luscious album of English trios to be released on Divine Art (DDA 25158) next year; this will include the Piano Trios of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor and Henry Waldo Warner, the First Trio of Rosalind Elliott, and the Folk-Song Fantasy by Cliffe Forrester.
Métier will release a fascinating new album (currently scheduled for November) with a new set of works by English composer David Braid whose most recent album on Toccata was highly praised. ‘Songs, solos and duos’ features the velvet tone of the electric archtop guitar in a chamber, solo and vocal setting; also includes Braid’s evocative duos for flute/classical guitar and clarinet/piano – plus his 1st Piano Sonata: an eclectic range of recent works from the one of the UK’s most original yet approachable composers, performed by a dynamic set of world-class players. (MSV 28575)
- May 25: We seem to be inundated with new recording projects. Soon to be announced will be a new double album of artsong, for the English Poetry and Song Society; we’re prequelling this new recording with the re-issue of four live concert recitals made between 2002 and 2006 (Diversions DDV 24162-5, August 2017). Many new chamber music discs are on the way from both sides of the Atlantic – more news soon!
- May 2: Having just finished work on the fifth volume of Organ music by Carson Cooman, for release in July, we have just started on the next two! This wonderful series is attracting fine reviews, and given Mr Cooman’s rate of productivity we see it continuing for quite some time. Look out soon for news of two albums of fine Piano Trios from the late 19th and early 20th century – all world premieres too.
Alfonso Soldano
Following the critical acclaim given to the recent release of music by Sergei Bortkiewicz by Italian pianist Alfonso Soldano (Volume 12 of the Russian Piano series), we have invited Soldano to make two more discs. While currently busy with his recording of music by Castelnuovo-Tedesco to be released in the late summer, Soldano will record later this year albums of piano works by Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninov.
Another addition to the series will include the debut recording by dynamic and brilliant Italian pianist Stefania Argentieri in a program of works by Prokofiev.
Recording Details
Russian Piano Music vol. 13 (DDA 25155)
Rachmaninoff: Moments Musicaux, Op. 16; Piano Sonata No. 1, Op. 28; Etude-Tableaux, Op. 39 Nos 1 & 5; Prelude, Op. 23 No. 6
Alfonso Soldano
Russian Piano Music vol. 14 (DDA 25156)
Tchaikovsky: Grand Sonata, Op. 37; Six Pieces, Op. 19; Romance in F minor, Op. 5; Berceuse in A flat, Op. 72 No. 2
Alfonso Soldano
Russian Piano Music vol. 15 (DDA 25157)
Prokofiev: Piano Sonata No. 1, Op. 1; Piano Sonata No. 6, Op. 82; Six pieces from ‘Cinderella’, Op. 102; Suggestion Diabolique; Four Etudes, Op. 2
Stefania Argentieri
A new album for British composer Christopher Fox will be taking shape soon. Our Métier (new-music) label is to release a disc of Fox’s entire output of clarinet music, which handily extends to about 80 minutes. The recording is to take place in London in August, the soloist being Canadian clarinetist Heather Roche, who originally proposed the recording to the composer last year. Fox describes Roche as ‘the most exciting player I’ve heard in a long time’ and everyone at the Métier office is eager to hear the results, as Fox is one of the most experimental and unorthodox composers around, yet makes music which is more approachable then many of the modernists. Fox says that the recording will involve the full family of instruments from the E flat to the contrabass; some tracks will involve electronics and some overdubbing of the instruments.
The release date for this album is likely to be November, or possibly the beginning of 2018 depending on progress in the studio and will be on Métier MSV 28573 (CD and digital).
@divineartrecordingsgroup
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