In the second volume of material from the archives of Elgar recordings, we look at Elgar‘s two string concertos. Elgar’s violin concerto was written for Fritz Kreisler and, for a time, was part of the repertoire for the great virtuoso

Once the modern early music field was established, one of its favourite composers was John Dowland. Rather than characterless songs setting undistinguished poetry, here was a composer who was known for his melancholy, for his dark sounds, and for an

The variation form was a great playground for a composer. S/he could show imagination, skill, technical ability, and every clever idea and pose it all as making (sometimes) better music than the original composer. In her debut album, pianist Yutian

Three new works, written between 2023 and 2024, by British-French-Israeli composer Nimrod Borenstein (b. 1969), are all on the same premise but with vastly different outcomes. SOMM Recordings has just issued a recording with Borenstein’s Mandolin Concerto; five Shakespeare Songs

The Russian art song has a distinguished history. The genre’s origins are attributed to Mikhail Glinka, who made it part of his campaign to create a Russian national style distinct from European musical culture. Anton Arensky (1861–1906) studied at the

In a new SOMM Recordings release (SOMM Ariadne 5046), two century-old recordings of Edward Elgar have been brought out, providing listeners with an extremely valuable comparative listening session. The Enigma Variations, recorded by the Royal Albert Hall Orchestra in 3

We don’t think of Edward Elgar (1857–1934) as a song composer because his great symphonic and choral works capture our attention. Yet these ‘smaller things’, for which Elgar has been criticised for working on when he could be giving us

English choral music is one of the crowning glories of the English vocal tradition. From his earliest days, Edward Elgar (1857–1934) was associated with church music, albeit Roman Catholic, rather than Anglican church music. His father, William, was organist at