|
| 
*buy
your copy
|
JS
Bach - The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book II
Peter Hill piano
DCD34101
A
recognised authority in 20th century and contemporary music, Peter
Hill turns for the first time on disc to another of his lifelong
preoccupations - the music of JS Bach. On this new recording, Hill
brings his customary scholarly acumen and crystalline musical intelligence
to bear on Book two of the ‘48’ - music of ‘unsurpassed inventiveness’.
|
| 
*buy
your copy
|
Mozart:
‘Coronation’ Mass in C, Vesperae Solennes de Confessore
Tewkesbury Abbey Schola Cantorum
Charivari Agréable
Laurence Kilsby treble
Jeremy Kenyon alto
Christopher Watson tenor
Christopher Borrett bass
Benjamin Nicholas director
DCD34102
Tewkesbury
Abbey Schola Cantorum and Charivari Agréable come together
for the first time in vividly communicative interpretations of three
of Mozart’s sacred masterpieces. The forces are very much
as Mozart intended – a period orchestra, an all-male chorus
and soloists (including 2009 BBC Chorister of the Year Laurence
Kilsby) drawn from the choir. Under Benjamin Nicholas’s spirited
direction these performances bristle with energy and the invigorating
freshness of youth.
|
| 
*buy
your copy
|
Songs
of the Baltic Sea
National Youth Choir of Great Britain
Mike Brewer conductor
DCD34052
East
meets West on this new recording as two great singing traditions
are brought together, to thrilling effect. Since the collapse of
the Soviet Union the three Baltic states have emerged as powerhouses
of choral innovation and imagination. Mike Brewer and the NYCGB
bring all their customary fervour and virtuosity to bear on this
programme of masterworks from three of Europe's smallest, yet musically
richest, countries.
|
| 
*buy
your copy
|
The
Okavango Macbeth
Libretto by Alexander McCall Smith
Music by Tom Cunningham
DCD34096
The
Macbeth story as played out in a troupe of baboons in Botswana?
This fanciful idea inspired the writer Alexander McCall Smith and
the composer Tom Cunningham to come up with their chamber opera,
The Okavango Macbeth. Set in the Okavango Delta in northern Botswana,
the opera deals with the efforts of an ambitious female baboon,
Lady Macbeth, to encourage her husband the dominant baboon, Duncan.
The response to the opera’s premiere in the No 1 Ladies’
Opera House, led many to conclude that in this extraordinary and
unusual tale a new operatic gem has emerged.
|
| 
*buy
your copy
|
Judith Weir Choral Music
Choir of Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge
Geoffrey Webber conductor
DCD34095
In the first recording devoted entirely to Judith Weir's choral music, the Choir of Gonville & Caius explores her evolving relationship with the medium, from her earliest liturgical commission to the most recent, which was premiered in 2009. Also included in this comprehensive collection are several secular pieces and her two organ works, which are now established classics of the repertoire. The athleticism, intensity and clarity that are hallmarks of the choir's singing are ideally suited to Weir's strikingly original, approachable and fascinating music.
|
| 
*buy
your copy
|
Robert Crawford String Quartets 1-3
Edinburgh Quartet
DCD34091
The Edinburgh Quartet are Scotland's foremost exponents of new music; they have enjoyed a long relationship with Robert Crawford, who is now surely Scotland's musical elder statesman. His three quartets are given haracteristically vivid readings on this recording. They offer a fascinating overview of Crawford's development over the last forty years and the second in particular - with its inspired wit and infectious musicality - deserves far greater renown.
|
| 
*buy
your copy
|
In the Beginnning
Choir of Merton College, Oxford
Peter Phillips & Benjamin Nicholas
directors of music
Beth Mackay Mezzo-soprano
Natasha Tyrwhitt-Drake organ scholar
DCD34072
Founded as recently as 2008, the new Choir of Merton College, Oxford is rapidly emerging as a major force in collegiate choral music. On this their debut recording, the choir’s two directors helm a diverse programme that reflects the range and reach of the choir’s daily repertoire. Bookended by two pieces titled In the Beginning – Gabriel Jackson’s ravishing version of the rarely-set Johannine Prologue, Copland’s glowing account of the first seven days of creation – this disc offers a themed sequence of Renaissance and modern classics, all captured in sumptuous sound in the radiant acoustics of Merton’s famous chapel.
|
| 
*buy
your copy
|
Revenge of the Folksingers
Alasdair Robert
Mairi Campbell
Olivia Chaney
Jim Moray
Concerto Caledonia
David McGuinness
DCD34108
Another hallmark collaboration, this album was created by Concerto Caledonia and guests during a week’s residency in the Suffolk countryside at Aldeburgh. Traditional and original songs are interspersed with old and new tunes from Scotland, all informed by the group’s magpie diversity and by Britten’s folksong arrangements, which they found in Aldeburgh’s library. The resulting alchemy of nu-folk with an early music sensibility defies categorisation.
|
| 
*buy
your copy
|
Songbook
The Trebles of Tewkesbury Abbey Schola Cantorum
Benjamin Nicholas director
Helen Porter piano
Carleton Etherington organ
DCD34097
This ‘songbook’ is unique to the Schola Cantorum choristers of Tewkesbury Abbey. “Essentially, it's a showcase for the Abbey trebles,” their Director of Music Benjamin Nicholas explains. “We’ve been assembling our own Songbook for quite a while now – the songs the trebles sing, from time to time, in boys-only concerts, and that they are taught in individual singing lessons. I’ve always been keen to build each boy up as a soloist, not necessarily with the express idea of them singing lots of solos, but so that they can learn to sing in a soloistic way.”
This is evident most of all in the distinctive singing of 11- year-old Laurence Kilsby, whose gifts won him the BBC Chorister of the Year competition in 2009. On this recording, he features as soloist in two Shelley settings by Roger Quilter, the Bach/Gounod Ave Maria and in John Ireland’s beautiful, sincerely-felt Passiontide motet Ex Ore Innocentium from 1944.
'the trebles splendidly vindicate the tradition that places them at the heart of English cathedral music.'
- Gramophone, April 2009
|
| 
*buy
your copy
|
The Shadow Side
Irene Drummond soprano
Iain Burnside piano
DCD34099
For many years Irene Drummond has been the leading exponent of contemporary song in Scotland. With her partner Iain Burnside -- peerless in this music -- she offers a fascinating snapshot of her repertoire on this recording. From the rarified sparseness of James MacMillan, to the sustained luminosity of Paul Mealor, and the emotionally charged dramatic outbursts of John McLeod, The Shadow Side explores a world of half-lights and visceral intensity.
|
| 
*buy
your copy
|
Rory Boyle: Solo Piano Music
James Willshire piano
Bartholdy Trio
DCD34098
This year 2010 British Composer Award winner Rory Boyle celebrates his sixtieth birthday. Young virtuoso pianist James Willshire’s debut recording explores the full gamut of Boyle’s ompositional personality – from the cragginess of his finely wrought Sonata to the intensely human lyricism of Tatty’s Dancing (itself a sixtieth birthday present for Boyle's wife).
'Willshire shaped and characterised every momenth with freshness and lucidity'
- The Herald
'While Boyle's Scottish roots are never far away, his music has a strong, mainstream European, Stravinsky-based rigour, with its own brand of virile, challenging, but always comprehensible counterpoint, dissonance which is hard-fought yet never gratuitous, an unsentimental lyricism and unerring sense of architecture.'
- Nicholas Cleobury
|
| 
*buy
your copy
|
Bruckner
Motets
Choir of St Mary's Cathedral
RSAMD Brass
Duncan Ferguson conductor
DCD34071
Following
their highly acclaimed recording of the 16th-century John Taverner,
Duncan Ferguson and his Edinburgh choir turn their attention to
one of the nineteenth century’s compositional giants. This sequence
of motets — among them several littleknown gems — is a testament
to Bruckner’s profound Catholic faith and these performances blaze
with fire and fervour in the vast cathedral's icy acoustic.
|
| 
*buy
your copy
|
Wilde
Plays Beethoven
David Wilde piano
DCD34090
These
three piano sonatas outline a progression from the despair of the
Piano Sonata No. 17 in D minor, Op. 31, No. 2, written at the same
time as the start of the famous ‘Heiligenstadt Testament’,
when Ludwig van Beethoven’s realization that his deafness
was complete and permanent drove him to contemplate suicide, via
his courageous fight back, brilliantly expressed in the irrepressible
optimism of the Piano Sonata No. 21 in C, ‘Waldstein’,
Op. 53 towards the lofty spiritual aspirations of the Piano Sonata
No. 31 in A flat, Op. 110.
Fifty
years after his victory in the International Liszt- Bartók
Piano Competition David Wilde’s masterful interpretations
are the fruit of a lifetime’s experience of studying and performing
these towering masterpieces.
|
| 
*buy
your copy
|
Handel:
Alexander's Feast
Ludus Baroque
DCD34094
Handel's
musical illustration of Dryden's Alexander's Feast, first performed
in 1736, was a critical and popular success. A day after the premiere,
the London Daily Post reported 'Never was upon the like Occasion
so numerous and splendid an Audience at any Theatre in London, there
being at least 1300 Persons present'.
Twice
a year some of the UK's finest baroque players and young vocal soloists
come together in Edinburgh's Canongate Kirk to give sell-out concerts
of the great works of Bach and Handel. Ludus Baroque's appearances
are unmissable events in Edinburgh's calendar. Now for the first
time listeners from further afield can experience the vibrancy of
their Festival-fuelled performances in this their debut recording.
Alexander's Feast is the perfect showpiece for the vitality and
abandon of Ludus Baroque and their rising-star soloists.
|
| 
*buy
your copy
|
Carleton
Etherington plays the Grove & Milton organs of Tewkesbury Abbey
Carleton Etherington, organ
DCD34089
Few
ecclesiastical buildings in the United Kingdom can boast possessing
two pipe organs; of those that can, fewer still can rival the quality
of the ‘Grove’ and ‘Milton’ organs in Tewkesbury’s
magnificent Norman abbey. It must have been something of a coup
for the organ builders Michell & Thynne to hear the legendary
organist William Thomas Best proclaim their latest instrument (on
show at the Liverpool Exhibition of 1886) to be “the finest
organ of its kind that I have ever played upon”. Their ‘model
organ’ was designed to be as flexible as possible within the
confines of the smallest number of stops, and the result was an
immediate success: its first appearance at the 1885 Inventions Exhibition
in London caused something of a sensation amongst the organ cognoscenti.
The blind organist Alfred Hollins, not long out of college, was
one of a number of players who gave regular recitals on the instrument
both at the London exhibition, and subsequently the following year
in Liverpool. Tewkesbury Abbey’s other organ known as the
‘Milton’ is a happy example of enlargement and rebuilding
over the decades, resulting in its current incarnation as a flexible
and thoroughly contemporary instrument capable of interpreting a
wide spectrum of the repertoire.
This
recording demonstrates the unique qualities of each instrument in
a programme of concert organ works by some of the finest composers
for the organ of the past
two centuries.
'‘The
Tewkesbury organist, Carleton Etherington, shows sensitivity and
subtlety... ’
- International Record Review
'in
a word, it's splendid'
- Musicweb International
|
| 
*buy
your copy
|
Stanford
Choral Music
Tewkesbury
Abbey Schola Cantorum
Laurence
Kilsby treble
Nicholas Scott tenor
Christopher Borret bass
Carleton Etherington organ
Benjamin Nicholas director
DCD34087
For
their fourth recording for Delphian, the boys and men of Tewkesbury
Abbey Schola Cantorum turn their attentions to that doyen of Anglican
church music, Charles Villiers Stanford. Alongside familiar gems
from the Evensong repertoire, sung with characteristic vigour and
freshness, the programme includes the six little-known Bible Songs,
each followed by its associated hymn. Amongst the soloists - all
members of the choir are Laurence Kilsby, 2009 BBC Chorister of
the Year, making his solo debut on disc.
'‘Under
Benjamin Nicholas, Director of the Abbey's Schola Cantorium, the
choir has developed a strong style, remarkable for its sense of
personal (or corporate) commitment as for the sonority of its tone
and the assurance of its delivery. The trebles splendidly vindicate
the tradition that places them at the heart of Englsih cathedral
music. The men's voices are also powerful and resonant and the total
effect is rich and forthright ’
- Gramophone
|
| 
*buy
your copy
|
O
Virgo Benedicta:
Music of Marain Devotion from Spain's Century of Gold
The Marian Consort
DCD34086
For
their debut recording, the six-strong Marian
Consort explores music from late sixteenth and early seventeenth-century
Spain. This fascinating programme celebrates the rich compositional
fruits of the Siglo de Oro’s intensely competitive musical
culture. These luminary works – all dedicated to the Virgin
Mary – demand performances of great intelligence and vocal
commitment. The youthful Marians respond absolutely, bringing hushed
intimacy and bristling excitement to some of the most gorgeously
searing lines in the history of European polyphony.
'‘Singing
with a rich yet lucid tone and extraordinary blend ... huge contrast
in emotion, from gentle and tender to heated and impassioned ’
- The Herald
|
| 
*buy
your copy
|
Organs
of Edinburgh
Various
Artists
DCD34100
Edinburgh's
churches and concert halls are home to a rich variety of pipe organs.
Open this lavishly-scaled book (30cm x 27cm) and step into a world
of glorious architecture and fascinating history. In amongst these
100 pages twenty-two of the city's most notable instruments and
their venues are surveyed in full colour. Meanwhile 12 illustrious
players - all with deep-rooted Edinburgh connections - demonstrate
the full range and versatility of these instruments on the four
accompanying CDs. The full gamut of the repertoire is here, and
Edinburgh's organs have the voices to match. Isn't it time to lift
the veil from some of the closest-guarded treasures of one of the
world's great cities? Only 2,000 numbered copies will ever be made
available; demand for these is very high, so please place your order
early to avoid dissapointment.
|
| 
*buy
your copy
|
Oxana
Shevchenko
Winner
of the 2010 Scottish International Piano Competition
DCD34061
23-year-old
Oxana Shevchenko from Kazhakstan made an extraordinary emergence
as an artist of the first rank when a distinguished international
jury awarded her first prize in the 2010 Scottish International
Piano Competition. Commissioned as part of her first prize, this
recording is Oxana’s debut disc and reveals an extraordinary
command of structure, rhythmic dynamism and sheer pianistic exuberance.
Works by Mozart, Liszt, Shostakovich and Ravel feature in a programme
full of highly pictorial musical genres.
|
| 
*buy
your copy
|
The
Piano Tuner: Piano Trios from Scotland
Fidelio Trio
Alexander McCall Smith narrator
DCD34084
On
this second recording for Delphian, the Fidelio Trio bring together
works by three of Scotland's leading composers. Alexander McCall
Smith narrates Sally Beamish's The Seafarer Trio with a mingled
intimacy and plangency, lending his inimitable luster to this collection
of world premiere recordings.
‘their
style is electrifyingly unanimous ... ice-cool virtuosity and moody
whispers that colour in equal measure ’
— The Scotsman, April 2008
|
| 
*buy
your copy
|
Michael
Marra with Mr McFall's Chamber: Recorded live on tour 2010
Michael Marra
Mr McFall's Chamber
DCD34092
Recorded
live on tour 2010.
'Marra's
music has broad horizons. His songs' subjects roam across Mull and
Shetland, over the Canadian prairies, to Schenectady, New York home
of swing-era jazz broadcasting and down into Mexico. But his muse
is governed by sound Dundonian principles, including the futility
of going in the huff and the folly of vanity.'
— The Herald, May 2010
‘Mr McFall's chamber are the jewel in the Scottish musical
crown, continually pushing the envelope of repertoire and style.''
— The Scotsman, June 2010
|
| 
*buy
your copy
|
Instruments
from the Rodger Mirrey Collection
John Kitchen
DCD34057
St
Cecilia’s Hall is the oldest purpose-built concert hall in
Scotland, dating from 1763. In 1968 it became home to the Raymond
Russell Collection of Early Keyboard Instruments. This already world
famous collection was further enhanced in 2005 when the University
of Edinburgh received the extraordinary gift of 22 historic keyboard
instruments from Rodger and Lynne Mirrey; the galleries at St Cecilia’s
Hall now house one of the two most comprehensive collections of
early keyboard instruments in the world. John Kitchen’s demonstration
recital couples music with instrument in a way that informs and
entertains.
''As
a champion of the instruments in the Raymond Russell Collection
in Edinburgh, John Kitchen's previous recording shave drawn universal
praise. This latest addition to his discography is destined, I am
sure, to enhance his formidable reputation.’
- Early Music Review, August 2009
|
| 
*buy
your copy
|
Di
Chitarra Spagnolà
Gordon Ferries, Baroque Guitar & French Theorbo
DCD34066
Italian
by birth, Bartolotti was employed as a musician at the enlightened
court of Sweden’s Queen Christina and in the opulent splendour
of the Sun King’s Versailles. His elegant suites for guitar
and theorbo fuse contemplation and virtuosity, distilling the melancholic
beauty of the French Baroque. Largely neglected in modern times,
Bartolotti’s music occupies a seminal place in the early guitar
repertory. Lauded in this field, Gordon Ferries is a choice exponent
of this cosmopolitan composer’s music.
Praise
for Gordon Ferries on Delphian:
‘Dispatched with artistry and supreme stylishness'
— International Record Review, February 2008
‘'A
CD not to be missed’
— Goldberg Magazine, Platinum Five Star Review, February 2006
‘Ferries's
playing is at once crisp, stylish and fun. He moves easily from
one mood to the next, keeping the texture of this program interesting
and varied ... this is a disc to listen to again and again'
— Early Music America, Spring 2006
|
| 
*buy
your copy
|
Concerto
Caledonia:
Late Night Sessions - Live at the Edinburgh International Festival
Concerto Caledonia / David McGuinness
with guests Martin Carthy, Michael Marra, Alasdair Roberts, Katharine
Fuge
DCD34093
Four
concerts at 2009’s Edinburgh International Festival offered
us a great opportunity to draw on our repertoire of the last 17
years, and to invite a few special guests to add some new discoveries
along the way. This CD presents a selection of favourite moments
from those evenings at the Hub, showing just some of the fun that
we had there; everything you hear on this recording happened on
stage in the shows (except the gun going off in the Tattoo at the
Castle next door) … It's guaranteed live, and all the better
for it!
‘be
prepared to be surprised by the reams of insights, wicked and witty,
humorous and heartbreaking, exhilerating and energetic on offer
from McGuinness and his left field outfit ’
— The Herald, August 2008
‘Keening vocal laments and frisky violin reels'
— Classic FM Magazine, April 2005
|
| 
*buy
your copy
|
Bohemian
Rhapsodies
Fell Clarinet Quartet
Colin Blamey, clarinet & bass clarinet
Helen Bywater, clarinet & C clarinet
Marianne Rawles, clarinet & Eb clarinet
Lenny Sayers, clarinet & bass clarinet
DCD34083
The
Fells' journey through Eastern Europe takes in sophisticated reworkings
of Bartók and earthy reimaginings of klezmer, and introduces
some unfamiliar names along the way. The four clarinets lend a wonderfully
suggestive reediness to these laments and dances which enhances
the music's rustic tone. With the Fell Quartet as your guide, this
whirlwind tour of Eastern Europe is sure to be seductive, virtuosic,
and not without some moments of real grit.
‘Their style is electrifyingly unanimous ... ice-cool virtuosity
and moody whispers that colour in equal measure.'
– The Scotsman, April 2008
‘An incredible sound ... slick ensemble ... beautifully expressive
playing. The ensemble gives a flawless performance ... the quality
of the repertoire is matched by the quality of the playing. This
is a group with a bright future.'
– MusicWeb International, August 2008 (CD of the Month)
|
| 
*buy
your copy
|
Choral
Evensong from Tewkesbury Abbey
The Abbey School Choir, Tewkesbury
Benjamin Nicholas, director
Carleton Nicholas, organ
DCD34019
For
thirty-two years the Abbey School Choir sang daily evensong in Tewkesbury
Abbey. One of their final services was captured for posterity by
Delphian. In this recording swansong, the choir offers a treasurable
memento of a uniquely English Office; complete with lessons and
prayers, this sumptuous tapestry of Anglican jewels also includes
the first recording of Gabriel Jackson’s refulgent new setting
of the Evening Canticles. Reborn as Tewkesbury Abbey Schola Cantorum,
the choir was immediately signed by Delphian and has embarked on
a series of much-lauded recordings.
‘I've
been consistently impressed by the work of Benjamin Nicholas and
his Tewkesbury singers on the Delphian label ... the recorded sound
is never short on detail thanks not least to the full-blooded singing
of Tewkesbury's boy choristers and smart engineering. The choir's
men are on top form too ... compelling energy. Terrific choral listening.
’
— Classic FM Magazine, April 2009
|
| 
*buy
your copy
|
Birds
& Beasts: Music by Martyn Bennett & Fraser Fifield
Mr McFall's Chamber
DCD34085
Martyn
Bennett was one of Scotland’s most innovative musicians, combining
the traditional and modern, the local and international. A long-planned
collaboration with Mr McFall’s Chamber was never realised
during his tragically short lifetime. For their second disc with
Delphian, Robert McFall has put together a programme of his own
sympathetic arrangements of Martyn’s music alongside original
works by Fraser Fifield, another of Scotland’s virtuosic musical
innovators. The premiere recording of Martyn’s ‘Piece’
epitomises his sophisticated mastery of fusion.
‘[Bennett]
caused a sensation – and much controversy – in british folk music
… Scottish bagpipe and fiddle music with techno beats ’
— Guardian obituary, February 2005
‘I believe the group – in what it does, and in what it
represents – is potentially the most important single development
on the Scottish musical scene in a long time'
— Michael Tumelty, The Herald, on Mr McFall’s Chamber
|
| 
*buy
your copy
|
Mátyás
Seiber (1905–60): String Quartets Nos 1-3 Edinburgh
Quartet
DCD34082
Mátyás
Seiber’s three string quartets span his career, from the astonishingly
assured student essay of the first quartet, composed at the age
of just eighteen, to the mature synthesis of his third and final
Quartetto Lirico. Seiber’s work was nourished by several of
the twentieth century’s most significant stylistic trends,
from jazz and serialism to the folk music of his native Hungary.
He was also, like many of the mid-century’s most important
artists, an émigré and an influential teacher; Hugh
Wood’s booklet essay pays tribute to his lasting influence
on a generation of British composers.
Recent
praise for the Edinburgh Quartet:
‘a bright sound with a ring of steel around it that is
ideal for modern music’
— Daily Telegraph
‘scorchingly focused performances’
— The Herald (on the Delphian CD The Cold Dancer)
|
| 
*buy
your copy
|
Mike
Brewer's World Tour
National Youth Choir of Great Britain
Mike Brewer conductor
DCD34080
‘Coming
from backgrounds of both English choral music and jazz, I have always
been obsessed by musical connections. I love to perform music of
one culture with singers of another, to help performers to share
an awareness of music in different contexts.
I have
had the good fortune to travel around the world every three years
with the National Youth Choir of Great Britain. In South Africa
I became fascinated by the rhythms and sounds of the music of the
African continent. Mexico and Cuba opened up new vistas of musical
connection for me, from elderly musicians performing the son jarocho
in village tavernas in Veracruz to Afro- Caribbean jazz ensembles
performing unbelievably complex music which arose out of that mix
of cultures.
The
pieces of choral music found here are similarly hybrid, because
in most cases they combine elements from more than one source …’
The
internationally-renowned National Youth Choir is peerless in bringing
to life Brewer's transcontinental choral imaginings. Headed up by
the first commercial recording of Mike’s Hamba Lulu, the programme
journeys us from the Icelandic tundra to the sultry jazz clubs of
Latin America. Is your hi-fi ready to go?
'Praise for NYC on Delphian Records:
‘Sung by the glorious young voices of Mike Brewer's 140-strong
National Youth Choir, coupled with a clear, excellently balanced
recording from Delphian. Brewer fashions from these talented, young
singers a was radiant wash of sound that is simply stunning ’
– Choir and Organ, January/February 2009
|
|
|