The UA Blog - Press Centre

ULYSSES ARTS RELEASES FIVE NEW ALBUMS IN AUTUMN 2023, ALL INCLUDING WORLD PREMIÈRE RECORDINGS

11/8/2023

British label Ulysses Arts is releasing five new albums in autumn 2023, all including world première recordings. Founded as a digital consultancy for classical music in 2008, Ulysses Arts has developed into an innovative record label presenting albums dedicated to original programming and new works.

Ulysses Arts' director, James Ross, comments: 'This is the most ambitious series or releases in our history. We are proud to be presenting this outstanding range of new music, great performers and ensembles, including musicians from the UK, USA, Netherlands, Germany, Poland and Hungary. Collectively, these five albums include the work of nineteen living composers, showing classical music today as a thriving, evolving art form, full of energy and imagination.'

Click above covers and titles below for full details:

22 September: Paul Henley Piano Works
Duncan Honeybourne, piano

Piano Sonatas No. 1, 2 and 3; Five Epigrams; Suite; Adagietto

UA230060

29 September: Todd Mason Violin Concerto & Chamber Suite

Tosca Opdam, violin; Budapest Scoring Orchestra; Péter Illényi, conductor

UA230080

6 October: All Shall be Amen

Caritas Chamber Choir, directed by Benedict Preece

New choral music by Gabriel Jackson, Cecilia McDowall, Phillip Cooke, Sarah Cattley, Eric Choate, Benedict Preece, Neil Wright, Andrew Smith and David Conte.

UA230120

3 November: Neoteric Ensemble Volume 1
Toby Street, James Fountain, Sarah Field, Rob Buckland, Richard Watkin, Adrian Miotti

New music for brass and saxophone sextet by Rob Buckland, Misha Mullov-Abado, Andy Panayi, Charlotte Harding, Toby Street, Dan Jenkins and Mark Nightingale.

UA220001

10 November: Soliloquies

Songs by Messiaen, Chausson, Frank Bridge, Hanns Eisler and Paul Willot-Förster

Maria Hegele, mezzo-soprano and Anna Szałucka, with Connie Pharoah, viola and Emily Turkanik, violin.

UA230090

Eletronic press kits, listening links and CDs for all albums are available for reviewers from Ulysses Arts.

CARITAS CHAMBER CHOIR ALBUM 'ALL SHALL BE AMEN' RELEASED BY ULYSSES ARTS ON 6 OCTOBER 2023

22/7/2023

Click above to download on iTunes with digital booklet or stream on Apple Music

Caritas Chamber Choir, directed by Benedict Preece, releases its next album, All Shall be Amen, on 6 October 2023, in partnership with Platoon.

All Shall be Amen is Caritas' sixth album: it presents music by composers Cecilia McDowall, Eric Choate, Benedict Preece, Gabriel Jackson, Sarah Cattley, Phillip Cooke and Neil Wright, that Caritas has regularly performed and recorded, alongside new exciting collaborations with David Conte and Andrew Smith. The album’s sacred theme is broad, demonstrating an omnium-gatherum of new works, and contemporaneously, championing many fantastic living composers. The majority of its works are world première recordings.

Caritas is a British chamber choir, passionate about raising money for charities through singing, and performing to the highest level both in the UK and throughout Europe. The choir, founded by Benedict Preece, performs music from all periods in around twenty concerts per year around the UK and in France, as well as services in Canterbury Cathedral.

'Caritas Chamber Choir excels, always offering a beautiful choral sound with a wide dynamic palette, and with scrupulous attention to phrasing and articulation. ... This album is a triumph.' Jerónimo Marín, Ritmo, October 2023, p. 64

'Incandescent luminosity of the British chamber choir's singing and the stirring impact of its renditions. ... Throughout the release, Preece's masterful shaping of the choir's sound is well-evidenced by the delicate interweaving of voices and the fluidity with which changes in vocal dynamics are effected. Given the evidence at hand, contemporary choral composition and singing would seem to be thriving, given the high calibre of the writing and performances featured on the release.' Ron Schepper, Textura, November 2023

'All shall be Amen excels in no fewer than première recordings.'
Mattie Poels, MusicFrames (Netherlands), 7 February 2024

All Shall be Amen: Track List

1. A Prayer of St Bernard of Clairvaux: Gabriel Jackson ........................... 2:29
2. O vos omnes: Neil Wright ........................................................................ 3:17
3. Ubi Caritas: Phillip Cooke ........................................................................ 4:42
4. Vinea mea electa: Andrew Smith ........................................................... 4:22
5. Prayer of Richard Rolle :Sarah Cattley .................................................. 3:21
6. My Eyes for Beauty pine: Sarah Cattley ................................................. 2:41
7. O Lord, support us: Sarah Cattley ......................................................... 3:23
8. Keep watch, dear Lord: Eric Choate ...................................................... 3:34
9. Adoro te devote: Gabriel Jackson .......................................................... 3:31
10. Crux fidelis: Neil Wright ......................................................................... 4:52
11. Nunc dimittis: Phillip Cooke .................................................................. 4:19
12. Rise heart; thy Lord is risen: Cecilia McDowall ................................... 4:09
13. Ave Maria: Neil Wright ............................................................................ 4:21
14. Pange lingua: Benedict Preece .............................................................. 4:24
15. O salutaris hostia; Gabriel Jackson ........................................................ 3:18
16. O sacrum convivium: Benedict Preece ................................................. 3:58
17. Locus iste: Phillip Cooke ......................................................................... 4:31
18. By Night while others soundly slept: David Conte .............................. 3:07
19. Night Prayer: David Conte ...................................................................... 4:36
20. All shall be Amen: Gabriel Jackson ........................................................ 6:02

Total time: 1:18:58

Pre-Released Singles

Benedict Preece, Pange lingua, 11 August 2023
Phillip Cooke, Ubi Caritas: 25 August 2023
Sarah Cattley, O Lord, Support Us: 8 September 2023
Cecilia McDowall, Rise Heart, thy Lord is Risen: 22 September 2023

Released on 11 August 2023

Benedict Preece

Benedict Preece sets the classic liturgical text Pange lingua 'accessibly and sympathetically, so many church choirs could sing my music. Pange lingua is a partner for my setting of Tantum Ergo, for performance during communion or Holy Week, or in concerts. All voice parts have lyrical lines, whether or not they are singing the melody. The final “Amen” quotes my Tantum Ergo, to connect both works.'

NIMBUS RELEASES ADRIAN WILLIAMS SYMPHONY NO. 1 AND PORTRAITS OF NED KELLY CHAMBER CONCERTO WITH THE ENGLISH SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA CONDUCTED BY KENNETH WOODS ON 7 OCTOBER 2022

8/7/2022

Release Date 7 October 2022
NI6432
Adrian Williams, Symphony No. 1
Chamber Concerto: Portraits of Ned Kelly

English Symphony Orchestra; Kenneth Woods, conductor

Symphony No. 1 - The first movement is perhaps the most straightforward, being basically founded on two themes, the first of which appears on violins and violas at the outset and which is used whole or in part throughout the entire symphony. It appears triumphant near the very end of the finale together with that movement’s own unique themes. The shorter scherzo is fairly rumbustious and virtuosic, harmonically dominated by major 2nds and 3rds and combinations of these. At about this time I saw the harrowing images of the wild fires in Australia, so much tragic loss of life, loss of habitat, the koalas rescued, many of which were so badly burned they were unable to survive. These images so affected me that the emotional impact found its way into the third (slow) movement, which I see as an extended lament or memorial. I felt the impulse to include two long, still sections featuring basses; the deathly, lifelessness of the forests after the fires. The Finale needed an injection of energy from its opening bars. I knew I wanted the movement to reach towards a tumultuous conclusion and this would be a slow process of development from a wistful solo violin theme, the forward energy being held back for some 6 minutes, thereafter inching its way to a point of no return. Adrian Williams, composer

Portraits of Ned Kelly Chamber Concerto - This remarkable work grew from Adrian Williams’ friendship with, Sidney Nolan, the great Australian painter. They were neighbours in the Welsh Borders region for most of the last forty years. Williams was given the invitation to use the piano at Nolan’s house, The Rodd, now the home of the Sidney Nolan Trust.

The Chamber Concerto is a musical response to Nolan’s most famous series of paintings, which depict scenes from the wild life of Australian bush-ranger, Ned Kelly, an outlaw, gang leader and convicted police-murderer who rampaged across Australia in the years prior to his arrest and execution in 1880. While the work is not strictly programmatic, the musical action does correspond in large part with the story of Kelly’s adventures, including his early criminal endeavours, his fierce encounters with the police, his capture, trial and execution. Kelly was the only member of his gang to survive their final encounter with law enforcement due to his use of a homemade set of body armour, which Nolan depicts to great effect in his images of Kelly. Williams’ music almost always has a virtuosic edge to it, but the demands placed on the musicians in this work are truly extraordinary, yet it is incredibly rewarding to play. In this sense, Williams’ designation of the work as a concerto is both telling and apt is it demands that everyone in the ensemble contributes their utmost in rhythmic precision, agility, accuracy in extremes of register and lyrical storytelling. A useful comparison might be made with Richard Strauss’s Till Eulenspiegel. Williams’ work is darker, stranger and funnier than Strauss’s with a pronounced surreal quality, but like its predecessor, it also becomes deeply poignant in its final pages. Kenneth Woods, conductor

Rob Barnett, MusicWeb International

'The playing is very impressive and delivers a compelling performance.'
George Pearce, Classical Music Daily

'The British symphony is alive and well.'
Records International

'Superb music, scintillatingly performed and recorded.'
Guy Rickards, 'My best classical recordings of 2022', The Christian Review

'Gripping and receive sterling realizations from Woods and the ESO.' Textura

'I would rate this new symphony a major success. Williams has a style that works beautifully with the large scale and the abstraction of symphonic writing.' Gavin Dixon, Fanfare 46/4

'Impressive pieces in terms of their ambition but also realization. ... Kenneth Woods directs with his customary attention to detail as goes a long way toward clarifying music that is ‘complex and luminous’ in spirit as by design.' Richard Whitehouse, Arcana

'Exciting and new in their language, thus stimulating and worth being heard.'

Pizzicato

Sidney Nolan, The Ned Kelly Collection

BBC Culture: Sidney Nolan and the Story of Australian Art

Sidney Nolan Trust

Adrian Williams (c. Dominic Horne)

Kenneth Woods (c. Benjamin Ealovega)

English Symphony Orchestra (c. Evan Dawson)

Sidney Nolan, The Burning Tree (c. The Estate of Sidney Nolan)

NIMBUS RELEASES BRAHMS PIANO VARIATIONS DOUBLE ALBUM BY VLADIMIR FELTSMAN, 7 JULY 2023 (NI.6435)

31/5/2022

Vladimir Feltsman

Vladimir Feltsman, born in 1952, is a Russian-American pianist of Lithuanian Jewish descent, noted for his devotion to the music of J.S. Bach. His father, composer Oscar Feltsman, was known in the former Soviet Union for popular songs and musical comedies. Feltsman first performed with the Moscow Philharmonic aged eleven and studied at Moscow’s Tchaikovsky and the Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) Conservatories. In 1971, he won the Grand Prix at the Marguerite Long International Piano Competition in Paris, followed by tours in the Soviet Union, Europe and Japan.

In 1979, out of growing discontent with the Soviet Union's oppressive dictatorship and rigid governmental control of the arts, Feltsman applied for an exit visa. He was banned from performing in public immediately. It was only after eight years of struggle and artistic exile that he was granted permission to leave. Arriving in the United States in August 1987, Feltsman was greeted warmly at the White House: one month later, he performed his first concert in North America for President Ronald Reagan. In November 1987, Feltsman's Carnegie Hall début established him as a major pianist in America. During his early years in the West, he was promoted as a Russian Romantic firebrand, yet his début recital consisted of works by Schubert, Schumann and Messiaen. By the mid-1990s, he devoted himself to Bach, offering expressively shaped and thoughtfully ornamented performances on modern piano. Then he returned to the standard repertory, including Haydn, Beethoven, Mussorgsky, in the big-toned, blockbuster-style that many had anticipated when he first arrived in the USA. He remains a master of reinventing himself.

'Feltsman’s playing is frequently magisterial, with refulgent tone and a superbly assured way of layering the textures so that perspective is cast onto the music’s workings, which shine out loud and clear. ' Jessica Duchen, BBC Music Magazine, 11 July 2023

'Quite simply an amazing pianist!' The New York Times

'One of the supreme Bach keyboard exponents of our time!' Chicago Tribune

EPK available from Ulysses Arts.

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Neo, by Charlotte Harding, with Neoteric Ensemble - single release on 24 June 2022

25/5/2022

Ulysses Arts releases Neo, by Charlotte Harding, on 24 June 2022, performed by Neoteric Ensemble.

Download Neo on iTunes or stream on Apple Music: click above

Inspired by Neoteric Ensemble's fresh approach to classical and jazz fusion, Neo takes a shouty melodic line and weaves it through punchy rhythmic statements and raspy textures. Improvised brass and saxophone solos contrast with rich tutti passages, exploring the expressive energy, dynamism and creativity of this exciting new ensemble comprising some of the UK's leading brass and saxophone players.

This is Ulysses Arts' second single release from Neoteric Ensemble, following Rob Buckland's Mojito, both featuring in their upcoming album releasing in November 2023.

Neoteric Ensemble

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Lyrita releases The Songs of William Busch - Roderick Williams, Diana Moore, Robin Tritschler, John Reid - 5 August 2022

20/5/2022

William Busch

On 5 August 2022 Lyrita releases The Songs of William Busch, featuring Roderick Williams, baritone, Diana Moore, mezzo-soprano, Robin Tritschler, tenor, and John Reid, piano. The album comprises previously unperformed and unrecorded songs by British composer William Busch, alongside works by Gerald Finzi, Elizabeth Poston and Michael Head.

Lyrita's recording is a tribute from daughter to father, made possible through painstaking research and reconstruction by Julia Busch and Diana Moore. Busch, born in 1901, studied music in London, Berlin and the United States. His composition teachers included John Ireland and Bernard van Dieren. His pacifism during World War II resulted in decreased reception for his works. William died tragically on 30th January 1945 in Woolacombe, North Devon, England while he walked back across the headland from Ilfracombe Hospital after visiting his newly born daughter, Julia.

EPK and Soundcloud playlist available for press use.

'Small Wonder: The Songs of William Busch'
Maureen Buja, INTERLUDE, Hong Kong

'The gentle but distinctive voice of composer William Busch comes over strongly in this lovely recital. ... The performances are uniformly excellent.' (Robert Hugill)
Planet Hugill, 24 August 2022

John Quinn, MusicWeb International, Oct 2022

Lyrita releases Daniel Jones Rediscovered Piano Works album on 1 July 2022

20/5/2022

Throughout his life, Welsh composer Daniel Jones (1912-93) claimed never to have written any solo piano music. Following extensive research at the National Archive, pianist Martin Jones and Nimbus / Lyrita's Music Director Adrian Farmer discovered hundreds of piano compositions spanning Daniel Jones’ entire life.

During the Second World War, Daniel Jones served as a captain in the Intelligence Corps (1940–46): his linguistic skills were required at Bletchley Park as a cryptographer and a decoder of Russian, Romanian and Japanese texts. After the War, Jones won increasing recognition as an innovative composer and enjoyed long friendships with artists including Vernon Watkins, Ceri Richards, Grace Williams and most closely, his lifelong school-friend Dylan Thomas. As well as composing song-settings for Thomas's Under Milk Wood and dedicating his Fourth Symphony to Thomas's memory in 1954, Jones edited collections of Thomas's poetry and prose, and in 1977 published the memoir, My Friend Dylan Thomas. Between 1945 and 1985 he composed his cycle of twelve symphonies, each centred on a different semi-tone of the chromatic scale.

Click image to enlarge

The four-album SRCD.2396 is accompanied by SRCD.410, a one-album compilation available as a mid-price CD, which introduces the scale and breadth this previously unknown music.

Alongside the album release, Nimbus Music Publishing is issuing three Piano Music of Daniel Jones volumes, all from signed, previously unpublished manuscripts.

Stuart Millson, 'Overlooked Orpheans', The Brazen Head, 23 Dec 2022

Martin Jones

Electronic press kit and private Soundcloud listening link avaialble for press use.

Click below to download

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NIMBUS RECORDS AND ULYSSES ARTS ANNOUCE PRESS AND COMMUNICATIONS PARTNERSHIP FROM MARCH 2022

4/3/2022

The Nimbus Records Group and Ulysses Arts are pleased to announce a press and publicity partnership, starting in March 2022. James Ross, Ulysses Arts' director, comments:

'I have been listening to recordings made by Nimbus, Lyrita and Prima Voce for many years with pleasure and admiration. It is a pleasure for Ulysses Arts to be working alongside Nimbus and its partner labels to maximise the visibility and appreciation of the imaginative recordings and meticulous work presented in its albums.'

Ulysses Arts will provide electronic press kits for Nimbus and Lyrita recordings, alongside press releases on our website.

Ulysses Arts lauches Ich spiele noch by Johannes Schlecht on 4 March 2022

16/2/2022

Ulysses Arts releases German composerJohannes Schlecht's album Ich spiele noch on Friday 4 March 2022, with Landeskapelle Eisenach (now Thüringen Philharmonie Gotha-Eisenach) conducted by Wolfgang Wappler and Tetsuro Ban , soprano Susann Möbius-Huss and 'cellist Grita Bühler.

Click above to download on iTunes or stream on Apple Music

Johannes Schlecht comments:

'At some point, many years ago, I had my first contact with poet Rose Ausländer during a night drive. On the radio. I heard her talk about herself andher exciting, fulfilling life, I heard her read from her poems. Her voice sounded cheerful and lovable, friendly and comforting, modest and humble, amazed and hopeful, curious and lively. This voice came from a woman who had been bed-ridden for years, sick, in a Jewish old people’s home in Düsseldorf. I was impressed and touched by the clarity and simplicity of her language and above all, the brevity in which she said the important, essential and necessary. For a long time I had the idea of composing poems by Rose Ausländer, of tracking down the melody of her language and poetry.

For me that means composing by listening to the melody of the language and bringing it to life musically. In this sense, as a composer, I see myself as a creator and mediator. I put my personal, subjective view of poetry up for discussion: I try to provide a comment that brings the word, at best read or spoken, sung to another level of experience and feeling. Understanding the word, initially an ostensibly intellectual means of communication, becomes unimportant. It took me years to tackle Rose Ausländer’s poems. In between, to name just two important works, were the composition of ten songs based on poems by Paul Celan. For this cycle I received the last Hanns-Eisler Composition Prize from GDR Radio in 1989. Paul Celan, just like Rose Ausländer, comes from that melting-pot and centre of Eastern Jewish intellectual life - Cernowitz. I have developed a great affinity for this way of thinking and feeling. And in between there was also the composition of the small volume “DIR”, which was composed and drawn by Heinrich Vogeler, fourteen very soft, tender, sad-melancholy love poems for voice, cello and viola.'

Album Details

Ich spiele noch: Sieben Stücke für Singstimme, Flüte, Oboe, Fagott, Violoncello und Streichorchester nach Texten von Rose Ausländer
Susann Möbius–Huss – Sopran; Landeskapelle Eisenach, Leitung: Wolfgang Wappler

Streichquartett Nr. 1
i. nicht zu schnell
ii. sehr langsam
iii. unglücklicher Walzer mit glücklichem Ausgang
iv. schnell, ausgelassen

Divertimento Streichquartett der Landeskapelle Eisenach:
Simona Balan, Violine; Silvia Peter, Violine; Gheorghe Balan, Viola; Roxana Mereutza, Violoncello

Kommen und Gehen – Orchestermusik für Sophia
i. Sehr ruhig
ii. Ruhige Viertel
iii. Sehr ruhig

Landeskapelle Eisenach, Leitung: Tetsuro Ban

Kommentare zu einem Thema von Max Reger – für Violoncello allein
i. sehr frei, so langsam wie m glich
ii. gehend
iii. sehr ruhig, sempre col legno schnell, hüpfend
iv. sehr langsam
v. gehend
vi. Thema, Largo

Grita Bühler, Violoncello

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Links to download and stream on HDtracks and other service providers will be published here.

CELEBRATING BOTTESINI'S BI-CENTENARY - VALENTINA CIARDELLI PLAYS THE GRANDE ALLEGRO DI CONCERTO WITH ALVARO SICULIANA

1/12/2021

Double bass soloist Valentina Ciardelli's latest recording - of Bottesini's Grande Allegro di Concerto alla Mendelssohn, accompanied by pianist Alvaro Siculiana, releases on 17 December 2021. This EP celebrates the bi-centenary of the birth of Luigi Bottesini, the 'Paganini of the double bass' and one of its greatest performers of all time.

The Grande Allegro di Concerto (inspired by the first movement of Mendelssohn's E Minor Violin Concerto) is a pinacle of Romantic double bass music - blinding virtuosity blending riveting drama and plaintive melodies. This new recording by Valentina Ciardelli and Alvaro Siculiana is made after the original manuscripts and latest Urtext edition edited by Stephen Street.

Click above to download from iTunes or stream on Apple Music.

ULYSSES ARTS AND ABLAZE RECORDS LAUNCH NEW DISTRIBUTION PARTNERSHIP FROM SEPTEMBER 2021

24/9/2021

Released on 8 October 2021

Ulysses Arts is delighted to be working with leading US-based contemporary classical music label Ablaze Records to manage digital distribution of its extensive catalogue of orchestral, choral and chamber music recordings. The partnership starts with a series of re-releases of Ablaze recordings on 24 September and 1 October 2021, then Othmar Schoeck's song cycle Das stille Leuchten, on 8 October, with mezzo-soprano Clara O'Brien and pianist James Douglass.

James Ross, Ulysses Arts' director, comments: 'Ablaze Records is one of the world's most innovative classical label, whose catalogue is a treasury of contemporary composers' works. Ablaze's mission aligns strongly with our wish to present classical music as a living, evolving art-form and to support today's composers to create a new generation of great works for us to perform and hear. We are looking forward hugely to helping Ablaze to widen its digital reach to listeners on a huge range of digital platforms, and to help the composers it records to maximise their visibility worldwide.'

Mist Waves by Douglas Knehans
Pre-release from Cloud Ossuary album: 3 December 2021

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/album/1gudwIIpTYs1JPcGjVu0ET

Deezer: www.deezer.com/en/album/273169602

YouTube: youtu.be/JHqwuvaMy5s

New Release: 7 January 2022: Douglas Knehans, Cloud Ossuary

Click above to discover more

Download Cloud Ossuary:

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24 September 2021 Releases

Released in October 2021

15 October

15 October

22 October

29 October

Released in November and December 2021

26 November

26 November

10 December

17 December

3 December

10 December

Released on 4 February 2022

10 December

19 November

19 November

10 December

19 November

19 November

17 December

Millennial Masters

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CLARINETTIST POPPY BEDDOE RELEASES BACH CHACONNE ON 1 OCTOBER 2021

20/9/2021

Ulysses Arts releases clarinettist Poppy Beddoe's solo version of J.S. Bach's great Chaconne in D Minor on 1 October 2021 on Apple Music/iTunes, Spotify, Deezer, Qobuz, HDtracks and all major digital service providers. This is a pre-release for Poppy's forthcoming solo album Solliloquy 0n 3 December 2021.

Poppy comments about her arrangement of Bach's music:

'This original clarinet transcription of Bach's Chaconne was born during the UK's first 2020 lockdown. Facing several months alone with no prospect of playing music with others, Poppy devised a collection of solo clarinet music which could be performed as a recital once live performance re-started. Inspiration came initially from playing daily to her parents over Zoom, especially when her father was ill. The Chaconne is the ultimate music of solitude and reflection, which traslates perfectly to the clarinet.'

Download Chaconne on iTunes

Downoad or stream Chaconne in high definition sound from Qobuz

Solliloquy will intersperse music from J.S. Bach's Partita in D Minor, originally for solo violin, with works by Berio, Hildegard von Bingen, Messiaen, Malcolm Arnold and Gershwin.

NIKITA LUKINOV DEBUT RECORDING RELEASE - DEBUSSY LA CATHÉDRALE ENGLOUTIE ON FRIDAY 24 SEPTEMBER 2021

20/9/2021

Russian-born pianist Nikita Lukinov releases Debussy's La Cathédrale engloutie (Préludes Book One), his debut recording, with Ulysses Arts on 24 September 2021. Nikita comments about his recording:

'I have chosen for my debut recording Debussy's impressionistic canvas of a monumental underwater cathedral, revealing a magical story about how it rises above the water and sinks back into a mysterious underwater world with dignity. The amazing Fazioli piano helped me to evoke the stone coldness of the music's imagination and sound palette.'

Download on iTunes or stream on Apple Music

Download in high definition sound from Qobuz

RICHARD CRAIG - TELEMANN FANTASIAS FOR SOLO FLUTE - FIRST RELEASES ON 7 MAY AND 4 JUNE 2021

14/4/2021

Released on 7 May 2021: click above to download on iTunes

Released on 4 June 2021: click above to download on iTunes

Richard Craig launches the first two single of his complete Telemann Fantasias for Solo Flute on Ulysses Arts, with No. 11 in G Major on 7 May and No. 9 in E Major on 4 June 2021.

Telemann's inspiration for Fantasia No. 11 came from a 1739 visit to Pszczyna in Poland where he heard fiddlers and bagpipers: 'One would hardly believe the inventiveness with which they improvise when the dancers pause for breath'. Richard Craig writes: 'I imagined a similar scene and relished the challenge of recreating the vivacity of folk musicians and dancers in the twists and turns of my ornamentation.'

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Fantasia No. 9 featured on Spotify Classical New Releases playlist

Richard writes about his work and career:

'In my various guises as a new music performer, collaborator, improviser/composer I have played alongside musicians such as Rohan de Saram, Roberto Fabbriciani, Barry Guy, Angharad Davies, Rhodri Davies and new music groups ELISION, Musikfabrik, Klangforum Wien, and the RTÉ Orchestra. Closer to home, I have been a guest musician with most of the UK’s new music groups: Welsh ensemble Uproar, and London-based Riot Ensemble, Ensemble Octandre, Explore ensemble, and in Scotland the Hebrides Ensemble and Red Note. I was a founding member of the Spanish group SMASH and Manchester-based Distractfold Ensemble.

Exploring solo performance has been and continues to be an important journey for me. It has led me to develop a distinctive approach to the flute; to re-invigorate older music, as well as exploring improvised and notated contemporary works.

My own compositions are often a series of smaller works under a collective title: the first being Amp/Al for flute/s and feedback (2012-15) and the most recent being Hortulus Animae (2015 – 2019) for flute/s and fixed media. Composing and improvisation are linked to my interests in the visual arts and I also use video and photography in my work.

Alongside my work as a performer, I am also a teacher. I give masterclasses and lead workshops and seminars in chamber music, ensemble performance and flute playing. I was a Visiting Fellow in Performance at theUniversity of Aberdeen 2010–12. In 2015 I was appointed as a lecturer and Head of Performance at Bangor University, Wales, a post I held until 2019; during this time I was also an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Huddersfield from 2014 to 2019. Outside of academia, I have been invited to teach on courses such as theEstalagem da Ponta do sol residency in Madeira, and also the Distat Terra Academy in Argentina. I received my PhD from Middlesex University in 2020. As a writer I have contributed to publications for Örat, and the Orpheus Institute.

My solo discs INWARD (2011) and VALE (2017) were released on the Métier label: they document my work with composers Esaias Järnegard, Richard Barrett, John Croft, Malin Bång, Brice Pauset, Evan Johnson and Fabrice Fitch. Other recordings of note include the composer John Croft’s monograph disc Seirenes in 2019 (First Hand Records), and two discs with Another Timbre, performing the works of Jürg Frey and Magnus Granberg. I have recorded several albums and live broadcasts for the BBC, WDR Cologne, YLE Finland, Radio France, Radio Nacional de España, Swedish Radio, ARTE, Métier, Another Timbre, FHR, Icelandic RUV, as well as curated releases of repertoire, and my own compositions. In 2021, I will be releasing a re-interpretation of the Telemann Fantasias on the Ulysses Arts label, and composer Oliver Seale’s portrait disc with Scottish label, Delphian.

I studied flute at the RSAMD (now the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland) with Sheena Gordon and later with Richard Blake. After graduating with honours, I continued my studies at the Conservatoire de Strasbourg, France, with Mario Caroli with support from a Dewar Award and the Scottish International Educational Trust. As well as working with the full range of flutes from contra to piccolo, I play on two Rudall Carte wooden flutes from the early and mid-20th century, restored for me by Arthur Haswell. One of these instruments was originally commissioned by renowned Italian teacher and soloist Alberto Veggetti (1874 – 1948).

I currently live in Edinburgh where I run my own flute studio.'

'To go directly to the matter in hand: the playing on this disc is sensational.'
Johan Svensson, Nutida Musik

'Pushing the instrument to its technical and expressive limits ... a tour de force.'
Tim Ashley, The Guardian

LOUTH CONTEMPORARY MUSIC LAUNCHES EMBERS - WORLD PREMIÈRES FOR STRINGS BY VALENTIN SILVESTROV AND RAYMOND DEANE - ON 5 MARCH 2021

28/1/2021

Click above to download Embers on iTunes

Embers

While the Pandemic persists in making regular concerts impossible, the Louth Contemporary Music Society continues its work in the studio. Last autumn’s CD release Meadow, featuring music by Linda Catlin Smith, won praise from leading critics on both sides of the Atlantic, including Alex Ross in The New Yorker. Now comes a follow-up, Embers - three world première recordings again devoted to music for strings – instruments that, in their intimacy, seem to touch our moment.

In Samuel Beckett's radio play Embers, the main character stands at the sea shore, sifting through fragments of memory and story that are still living embers, hot to the touch. So it is in this recording, in which music by distinguished Irish composer Raymond Deane supports robustly an important quartet by one of the great masters of our age, Valentin Silvestrov.

Raymond Deane

The opener, Deane’s Marthiya, is named after a form of Middle Eastern lament. It was composed in the wake of the 2003 Iraq invasion. The music’s 'atmosphere of mourning', Deane writes, is 'not unrelated to the devastation wreaked on Iraq since 2003, and to the wider carnage inflicted upon the Arab and Islamic world'.

Deane’s other contribution is the title track, written thirty years earlier but with the same recognisable voice. Though perhaps more questioning than elegiac, Embers is music again on the edge of tears. Ideas, bits of tune, come and go, and recur, very much as things come and go, and come back once more, like in Beckett's play. To quote the composer: 'The piece obsessively turns over musical fragments which seem to have some remote but uncertain origin.'

Valentin Silvestrov

Silvestrov’s music gives voice to the sense we may all feel of being bereft, left behind by what was once a social culture of sympathy and togetherness. Listening to his Third String Quartet, composed in 2011, we seem to be watching from the dock as a great ocean liner slowly slides away, taking with it our hopes and our dreams. Something of this feeling of being on the sidelines of history may come from the composer’s inheritance as a Ukrainian. Ireland, he notes, is not so far away: 'I believe there is some Irish accent, and some simple melodies, that permeate the whole work and may sound as symbols of this wonderful country, in whose destiny and historical legacy I perceive a close spiritual affinity to Ukraine, my homeland.'

All three works are captured in intense, poignant performances by leading ensembles: Crash (Marthiya) and the Carducci Quartet (Embers; Silvestrov, String Quartet No.3).

Embers releases on 5 March 2021 on CD, iTunes/Apple Music, Spotify, Deezer, Qobuz and all main digital service providers. It is the world première recording of Silvestrov, String Quartet No.3, Deane's Marthiya and of the string quartet (original) version of Deane's Embers, which has been released previously in its subsequent string orchestra version by the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra in 2016.

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High definition download from Presto Music

Louth Contemporary Music Society is funded by the Arts Council of Ireland and financially supported by Create Louth. Cover image: 'Grotto' by David Quinn, used with kind permission of the artist.

LOUTH CONTEMPORARY MUSIC PROFILE

Richard Fairman: 'Louth - Ireland's Hidden Gem of a Festival'
The Financial Times

EMBERS REVIEWS

'Rallying After The Silence', Brendan Finan, The Journal of Music

'Engaging and affecting, it’s a grower ... immaculately produced and designed ... When lockdown eases, I’m Louthward bound.' Graham Rickson, The Arts Desk

'A program of great coherence. ... Superb release from a label we here on our side of the big lake wish to know a lot more soon.' Frédéric Cardin, Pan M 360

'Haunting, unsettling evocations of the past', Michael Devlin, The Irish Times

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