Peter Jenkins

SOMM Recordings is delighted to announce the release of Eclogue. British Chamber Music, a collection of British chamber music from the 19th to the 21st centuries including nine first recordings featuring the label debut of the Chamber Ensemble of London in their 25th anniversary year with director Peter Fisher.

The new recording is entirely dedicated to British music and offers a great selection of works by famous but also lesser-known composers: recorded are works by Edward Elgar (1857-1934), Benjamin Britten (1913-1976), Peter Warlock (1894-1930) and Karl Jenkins (b. 1944). The album opens with the earliest masterpiece, the famous Serenade in E minor for string orchestra by Edward Elgar, one of the greatest British composers and leading European composers of his generation. Among the hallmarks of Elgar's compositions are ingratiating character pieces that often share elements with English folk music.

This album features perhaps some of the best (certainly best-known) works by the top two violin composers working in Modena, Italy, at the end of the 17th century. Vitali and Colombi were both quite prolific and produced pieces of wide variety of form, not whittled down to the standard ‘dance suite’ of the middle and late baroque. While the Vitali works have been recorded previously in a version for ensemble, this is the first recording of the pieces in their solo format – and the same applies to the Colombi and anonymous pieces. The album is a fine and fitting sequel to Skærved’s previous solo recording “Florish in the Key” (Athene ATH 23211) which presented contemporaneous (late 17th century) solo violin music from London. “Genuinely intriguing” – Early Music Review; “Excellent… instantly attractive… uniformly high quality” – Infodad)

John Jenkins: yet another seventeenth century English composer who deserves to be more widely known. This delightful CD from The Consort of Musicke directed by Trevor Jones is no dutiful study of a hidden but rather uninspiring corner of English early Baroque consort music; rather, a mosaic – rich in color and shape, carefully crafted and full of surprises. Listen, for instance, to the unpretentious, jaunty and appropriately figurative progress through the Saraband (52, tr.6) and the restrained melancholy of the Fancy-Air (4, tr.7). Jenkins' counterpoint is well-wrought, his instrumental palette fresh and crisp and his melodies catchy without being fey or superficial in any way. He is in excellent hands with the Consort of Musicke… eight string players of the caliber of Monica Huggett and Alison Crum violins; Alan Wilson organ and Anthony Rooley theorbo. If fresh, beautiful, expertly-played English consort music appeals to you, don't hesitate to get this gem of a CD – actually a reissue of a Decca disc from 1983: it's unreservedly recommended.

Released three years after she left Decca for Warner Bros., One Fine Day is the third time that the classical label has raided the back catalog of Welsh soprano Katherine Jenkins for a new "best-of" collection. The classically trained singer might have recently encouraged audiences to boycott the record due to the lack of any new material, but for any casual fans wanting a brief overview of the first chapter of her career, this is as good a place to start as any.

Peter Holman is a conductor known particularly for his interpretations of post-Renaissance English music, but he has also received acclaim for his performances of the works of European masters of the Baroque period, including Handel, Telemann, Vivaldi, and Monteverdi. He has recorded extensively for the English label Hyperion and has established parallel careers as a harpsichordist, organist, teacher (Royal Academy of Music and Colchester Institute), and music journalist.