Join us this festive season as we look back on 24 of our favourite recordings from our artists over the past year!
Day 1:
Mahan Esfahani: J.S. Bach: Preludes, Inventions, Sinfonias
This is the latest disc Mahan Esfahani has released on Hyperion. It is a collection of miniatures centered around the sets of Inventions and Sinfonias which Bach wrote principally as teaching aids to encourage young keyboard players ‘keen to learn’. Receiving widespread acclaim, critics praised Esfahani’s interpretive flair, expressive freedom and meticulous scholarship.
"...Esfahani’s playing [is] so lively and subtle, that no one should bemoan the absence of grand musical architecture. Hyperion’s recording and engineering spread their own delight by treasuring the dying reverberation of a piece’s last note and taking a helpful breath before plunging us into the next jewel. This is the kind of album you wish would never end." - Geoff Brown, The Times
Listen to Bach Invention No.6 in E major here: https://open.spotify.com/track...
Day 2:
David Parry: Stanford: Shamus O'Brien
Shamus O'Brien is set against the Irish rebellion of 1798, and tells the story of the charismatic Shamus O'Brien, hunted by the English so he can be brought to justice. First performed at the Opera Comique in London in 1896, it was subsequently performed around the world, with much made of the inclusion of a part for a player of Irish, or Uilleann pipes. Founded in 2014, Retrospect Opera, an energetic independent recording company and charity devoted to reviving significant operas and related works of the British Isles prior to 1945, recorded this romantic comic opera in 2023
'In short, this is a magnificent piece of advocacy for an inspired and wonderfully enjoyable opera' - Gramophone Magazine
Listen to the Overture here: https://open.spotify.com/track/30jmlPNnNAb93jRgF9qwB6?si=5dc1299067a94dc6
Day 3:
Amjad Ali Khan & Amaan and Ayaan Ali Bangash: Live in Aspen
Amjad Ali Khan and sons Amaan and Ayaan Ali Bangash enjoy a longstanding collaboration with America’s leading guitarist Sharon Isbin. Their latest album is a live recording released in 2024 on ZOHO Records of their 2022 concert together in Aspen, of ragas arranged for sarod and guitar, uniting their instruments’ respective traditions.
Listen to Sacred Evening - Raga Yaman here: https://open.spotify.com/track/2eXMPOqiUZJacpJHagNUbu?si=71e8d6b1e08d48f8
Day 4:
Clare Hammond: Kenneth Hesketh: Hande - Music For Piano
This album gathers together works written for Clare Hammond over the past eight years, two miniatures from 2011, and Hesketh's six-movement Poetic Conceits, which pre-dates their friendship. Four include memorial pieces, two are birthday gifts, while another celebrates new life. As a group, they illuminate the different strands that make Hesketh's work so rich, compelling, and endlessly fascinating. This is music that rewards repeated listening, whose multi-faceted layers and intricate patterns reveal new associations with each encounter. Both she Hesketh share a certain frenetic mental energy, which he expresses in his composition. In turn, her playing style has influenced the way he writes for the piano.
"As with all things well-crafted and built on a foundation of finely honed expertise, these pieces have a quality of permanence and necessity, and there is nothing superficial or thoughtless here, in both the compositions and the performances." - Dominy Clements, MusicWebInternational
Listen to Hue Hue Hue here: https://open.spotify.com/track...
Day 5:
Francesca Chiejina: Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Carousel
Following the success of last year’s release of Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Oklahoma!, John Wilson and Sinfonia of London turn their attention to Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Carousel featuring Francesca Chiejina as Nettie Fowler.
"Wilson also handpicks a cast of musical theatre performers, adding in operatic mezzo Francesca Chiejina who, as Nettie Fowler, gets to sing the anthemic 'You'll never walk alone' - and does so magnificently." George Hall, BBC Music Magazine
Watch a clip of "You'll Never Walk Alone" here: https://youtu.be/ncZOSJ1HCtk?s...;
Day 6:
Liam Bonthrone: Stainer: The Crucifixion
Duncan Ferguson and the Choir of St Mary’s Cathedral, Edinburgh are joined by two rising-star Scottish soloists and, in the hymns, by a nave-full of local young musicians and the cathedral’s own worshippers to create a true sense of the musical community spirit that the composer had in mind.
“Crucial to a successful interpretation is the quality of the soloists, and conductor Duncan Ferguson has struck gold with tenor Liam Bonthrone and baritone Arthur Bruce.” - Gramophone Magazine
Listen to ‘The Majesty of the Divine Humiliation’ here: https://open.spotify.com/track...;
Day 7:
Nick Pritchard: J.S. Bach: Christmas Oratorio
Recorded by the Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists live at St. Martin in the Fields in December 2022, this new rendition of Bach’s Christmas Oratorio captures fresh energy and warmth. Tenor Nick Pritchard’s expressive performance adds a vibrant touch to this timeless masterpiece.
Listen to No. 41, Ich will nur dir zu Ehren lebe here: https://open.spotify.com/track/2owSzxiTTZ18i3ce68xmxY?si=7ddb22a191c44063
Day 8:
Robert Levin (and Ya-Fei Chuang) / Laurence Cummings: Mozart: Piano Concertos Nos. 6 & 8
Mozart Piano Concertos Nos. 6 & 8: Robert Levin, with the Academy of Ancient Music (AAM), releases the penultimate volume of an acclaimed project to record Mozart’s complete works for keyboard and orchestra. This volume includes Mozart’s Concerto No. 7 for Three Pianos and Orchestra, performed here uniquely on three different types of keyboard instruments: by Robert Levin (tangent piano), Ya-Fei Chuang (fortepiano) and Laurence Cummings (harpsichord).
'The main event is Mozart’s music itself – and the performance is constantly alive, alert and superbly done. … If the sound is one delight, others include the deft playing, sprightly tempos, and dynamics that convey drama without ever being exaggerated. The 11th disc features the two-piano version of the Concerto No.7 for three pianos. Here we get the full version, with Levin on tangent piano, Chung on fortepiano and Laurence Cummings on harpsichord. A lively melting-pot, beautifully recorded.'
Rebecca Franks, BBC Music Magazine *****
Listen to piano Concerto No. 8 in C Major, K. 246 "Lützow": I. Allegro aperto here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Laurence Osborn / Zubin Kanga: CTRL / ABSORBER
Ctrl (2017) examines the cycles of physical and psychological violence transferred between men, and the resulting damage. It also deals with themes of power, entitlement, fear, loneliness, and suicide. Absorber (2019) is about outdated, ugly sounds, and the ways in which memories, both nostalgic and traumatic, enable them to acquire new associations and meanings. In spite of their crudeness, there is something haunting and beautiful about them. It was commissioned by Zubin Kanga and first performed in its entirety at Kings Place.
“More rewarding musically was the set from pianist Zubin Kanga, in which spacey, clangorous sounds obtained by electronically distorting a piano were often laid alongside familiar musical gestures, including (in Laurence Osborn’s Absorber) processions of guieless common chords, sullied gradually by foreign notes – a fascinating effect.” - Ivan Hewett, The Telegraph (Absorber), Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival (November 2021)
Listen to Absorber at Kings Place in 2019: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VmmgCvol4rk&t=1s
Day 10:
Julia Sporsén: Swedish Songs & Operatic Scenes
A selection of works by Swedish composers including some world premiere recordings: Hugo Alfvén, Elfrida Andrée, Ingeborg von Bronsart, Helena Munktell, Laura Netzel, Gösta Nystroem and Ture Rangström, performed by Swedish singers including Julia Sporsén with the Göteborg Opera Orchestra conducted by Patrik Ringborg.
“[The disc] culminates in two arias from Gosta Nystroem's earlier setting of Herr Arne's penningar, softly and sweetly conveyed by the super-sporano Julia Sporsén as Elsalill in a frozen Marstrand.” - Johanna Paulsson, Dagens Nyheter
Listen to Om intet jag såge’ from Herr Arnes Penningar here: https://open.spotify.com/track/6CdKWLpMracoeq09pgLW1O?si=2b9ae34614c5442d
Day 11:
Nicholas Mulroy / Elizabeth Kenny: De Pasión Mortal: Songs from Two Golden Ages
This programme offers the intriguing combination of material from 17th century Europe and 20th century Latin America. Music separated by time and space, but all of it concerned with the eternal themes of love, loss, devotion, and lute-soaked grief.
“In this, and four songs by Silvio Rodríguez, Mulroy is authoritative and alluring… The album’s most substantial track is Monteverdi’s ‘Tempro la cetra’ from his seventh book of madrigals. Mulroy portrays the drama of the text with aplomb, and among supporting string sonorities Kenny and Carr are most beguiling. Mulroy is equally persuasive in sacred and secular music by Henry Purcell. In the domestic sacred song ‘In the black dungeon of despair’, in which a man awaits God’s final judgement, the partnership between Mulroy and Kenny is most stylish.” - Ingrid Pearson, BBC Music Magazine*****
Listen to 'Cucurrucucú paloma’ by Tomás Mendez here: https://open.spotify.com/track/6lwGXJhkepm4SLbZb7YFDE?si=45511c671a92428c
Day 12:
Helen Charlston: How Are the Mighty Fallen: Choral Music By Giovanni Bononcini
Bononcini was Handel’s main rival in London, and with little to separate the two in terms of public status and reputation, they were dubbed the Tweedle-dum and Tweedle-dee of London’s music scene in the 1720s. Bononcini’s music was particularly highly prized by members of London’s original Academy of Ancient Music.
“All four pieces [of Bononcini] receive top-notch premiere recordings… Helen Charlston contributes cantabile plangency (‘Dignare Domine’)” – David Vickers, Gramophone
Listen to ‘Dignare Domine’ here: https://open.spotify.com/track/52sUylwPKDrmT7EGxoHcon?si=4026e8e89e604246
Day 13:
Jakob Lehmann: Gioachino Rossini: L´Italiana in Algeri
Gioachino Rossini's opera L'Italiana in Algeri is one of the composer's best-known operas and has lost none of its rousing freshness and energy since its premiere in 1813. At the end of 2022, the young conductor Jakob Lehmann and his Eroica Berlin orchestra presented at the Delphi Theatre (Berlin) Rossini's music according to the latest knowledge of historical performance practice.
"there is the enormous musical spontaneity achieved by conductor Jakob Lehmann. Also noteworthy is the historically informed orchestral playing, which is unusual for its dry sharpness and fine chasing but stands out for its rare richness of detail." – Pizzicato ****
Listen to Sinfonia here: https://open.spotify.com/track/0VjSZgaaSNJgw01AoiLxbB?si=9d451cbe43cd4da9
Day 14:
Nicholas McGegan: Bach: Mass in B Minor
San Francisco-based early music ensemble Cantata Collective continues its major series of J S Bach's choral works with the Mass in B Minor, a towering testament of sacred music and the composer's crowning achievement of his final years. With celebrated conductor Nicholas McGegan, four of today's most distinguished early music vocal soloists and a refined chamber choir, this live recording exudes a spontaneity that reveals the depth and passion of Bach's glorious affirmation of faith.
Review: "Let’s consider the ‘Gloria’, where we have the best of McGegan’s style at the start: a sense of grandeur infused with a brisk and playful blaze of trumpets and drums." – Edward Breen Gramophone
Listen to 'Et resurrexit' here: https://open.spotify.com/track...
Day 16:
Clare Hammond: Edmund Finnis: Youth
Youth presents piano works by contemporary composer Edmund Finnis, performed by Clare Hammond. The EP opens with Youth, a set of brief pieces reminiscing an image, sensation of place, significant encounter or a moment of vivid perception. Each musical image is conveyed as clearly and directly as possible, written for the piano in a focused, uncluttered, personal way. The EP closes with Lullaby for Emmeline, commissioned by Hammond and her husband on the occasion of their daughter’s birth. Evocative and enchanting, these works share a kinship with some of the most famous piano cycles inspired by childhood experiences, while their magical and ethereally beautiful nature are also characteristic of Fnnis’s iridescent musical approach.
Review: "The cycle gains much from Clare Hammond's exquisite performance...As Hammond has noted, a special glow and sonic lustre come across in Finnis's music, above and beyond the structures and systems that underpin it, as this mini-album demonstrates in abundance." Pwyll ap Sion, Gramophone
Listen to 'Bloom' here: https://open.spotify.com/track...
Day 17:
Sō Percussion: Rectangles and Circumstance
Sō and Caroline’s third album together on Nonesuch Records was released in June 2024, and was nominated for a Grammy in November 2024.
"This fascinating project draws on music and poetry that produces intriguing, inventive timbres. The combination of this deep thinking ensemble and Shaw's compositions paints the words in an inspiring way. An infections musical collaboration which leaves you wanting to listen again." - BBC Music Magazine ****
Listen to ‘To Music’ here: https://open.spotify.com/track/6W7Oy339clUsrDt1sN5NYP?si=3b12fcf584dd4edb
Day 18:
Dingle Yandell: J.S. Bach: Christmas Oratorio
A vibrant new recording of Bach’s Christmas Oratorio, performed live by the Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists at St. Martin in the Fields in December 2022. Featuring bass-baritone Dingle Yandell, this lively interpretation brings fresh energy to the timeless work.
Listen to 'No. 47, Erleucht auch meine finstre Sinnen' here: https://open.spotify.com/track/2UIQ1S0CnPBSiO7RgohHdJ?si=1af9e0f7f52340d3
Day 19:
Ruby Hughes: End of My Days
This collaborational programme between Ruby Hughes and Manchester Collective was borne out of the first Covid Lockdown. The title of this album, End of My Days, comes from Errollyn Wallen’s song; a resounding celebration of life that embraces death without regret or sadness but with great verve and acceptance. The other songs, each in its own way, evoke silence and separation, but also love and hope and even the reassurance that we will return whence we came and light shall lift us into eternity.
“time has done nothing to dim the glory of Hughes’s clean and intensely expressive singing, or the manifold pleasures of a wide-ranging collection that might deal in part with loss and death but resonates most of all with the joy of loving and living...Nothing appears out of place, everything is deeply felt and I sat happily throughout, basking in beauty and wonder.” - The Times
Listen to ‘Are You Worried About the Rising Cost of Funerals’ by Errollyn Wallen here: https://open.spotify.com/track/1xi6ogZrjYADqBARXhGzQS?si=4250aeb3c3674f9a
Day 20:
Xavier Sabata: inVISIBILI
Working from the basis of an exhaustive research by musicologist Giovanni Andrea Sechi, Sabata and conductor of Vespres d'Arnadí, Dani Espasa, rescue these forgotten gems and offer a recital full of emotions, fireworks, virtuosity and bravura. The programme has been performed at Wigmore Hall, the Palau de la Música Catalana in Barcelona, the Espacio Turina in Seville and the Auditorio Nacional in Madrid.
Album preview - https://music.apple.com/gb/album/invisibili/1733256834
Day 21:
Michael Berkeley, Clare Hammond, Mahan Esfahani: COLLABORATIONS
In June Michael Berkeley’s new recording Collaborations brought together works old and new and featured artists including Mahan Esfahani and Claire Hammond, as well as new contributions from Neil Tennant of the Pet Shop Boys and David Gilmour of Pink Floyd on his song Zero Hour for Ukraine. It also included some of his most beautiful recent choral music.
“A wonderful showcase of composer Michael Berkeley’s music – and one displaying its rich variety – from a series of superb soloists who all capture its communicative style brilliantly” Gramophone Editor's Choice September 2024
Listen to ‘Super flumina Babylonis’ here: https://open.spotify.com/track/7Dff0dol8998OabgpslWKs?si=ac0ee0eb07b84293
Day 22:
Pieter Wispelwey: The Complete Channel Classics Recordings
Comprising all 35 recordings that the legendary cellist Pieter Wispelwey made for Channel Classics between 1990 and 2009, this boxed set showcases the great masterpieces of music for solo cello, all the major cello concertos, and a magnificent collection of chamber music.
Listen to 'Johannes Brahms Cello Sonata No.1 in E Minor, Op.38: 1. Allegro non troppo' here: https://open.spotify.com/track/1YSqnUixfBWFV3o0Ua33QK?si=b4f4b9c6ede0498b
Day 23:
Paul McCreesh: Elgar: The Dream of Gerontius
Elgar's The Dream of Gerontius is the latest recording from the Gabrieli Consort & Players features Anna Stéphany, Nicky Spence, Andrew Foster-Williams, Gabrieli Roar, and Polish National Youth Choir. It is the winner of the 2024 Gramophone Choral Award.
'This recording by Paul McCreesh, the first on period instruments, is up there with the best of them. The balance between singers and players and between the sections of the orchestra is so well judged by McCreesh, and he engineers that phrases previously unnoticed (by me, anyway) come across as wonderful examples of the subtlety of Elgar’s orchestration.' - Richard Lawrence, Gramophone Magazine
Listen to 'Lord thou hast been out refuge' here: https://open.spotify.com/track...
Day 24:
Katie Bray: Waley-Cohen: Spell Book
Waley-Cohen's Spell Book, performed byHeloise Werner (soprano), Katie Bray (mezzo-soprano), Fleur Barron (mezzo-soprano) and Manchester Collective, is based on poems from WITCHby Rebecca Tamas, and delves into the rituals of spellcasting through a series of spell-songs. These compositions transform the concert hall into a space of ritual, where words and music intertwine to influence the universe itself. From the rebellious spirit of Lilith to the seismic shifts of spell for change, each piece is a vivid exploration of transformation, power, and the profound connection between the individual and the larger forces at play.
Listen to 'Spell for Lilith' here: https://open.spotify.com/track...
