Simon Mary

Three of Szymanowski’s most important works show Rattle’s ability to energise music in which he believes. Sensuality and cogency blend in refined sound.

Simon & Garfunkel's first masterpiece, Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme was also the first album on which the duo, in tandem with engineer Roy Halee, exerted total control from beginning to end, right down to the mixing, and it is an achievement akin to the Beatles' Revolver or the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds album, and just as personal and pointed as either of those records at their respective bests…

Between 1980 and 1998 Simon Rattle conducted no less than 934 concerts with the CBSO. Together they performed works by many 20th-century composers, as well as established favourites, and gave a total of 16 world premieres. Rattle also made 69 recordings for EMI with the orchestra. This box brings together that recorded legacy, which includes pieces by composers pivotal to his work, such as Mahler, Sibelius and Szymanowski, as well as some of the new compositions he championed — Nicholas Maw’s Odyssy, Mark Anthony Turnage’s Momentum, Three Screaming Popes and Drowned Out, and Thomas Adès’ Asyla.

Known for her vivid portrayals and full, distinctive voice, Elizabeth Llewellyn has established herself internationally as a dramatic and vocal artist of distinction. She has chosen to offer listeners something new by devoting her debut disc to the music of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, much of it never recorded before. Elizabeth Llewellyn is joined by pianist Simon Lepper, with whom she has collaborated closely in the development of this unique project. To poetry by Christina Rossetti, Coleridge-Taylor’s Six Sorrow Songs and A Lament are almost all world-premiere recordings. The Southern Love Songs evoke styles including Latin music and flamenco, and the African Romances, never recorded until now, are to words by African-American writer Paul Laurence Dunbar.

Magdalena Kozena presents a recital of Czech songs, together with the Czech Philharmonic under the baton of Sir Simon Rattle. The first impression of Czech songs may be atmospheric nature scenes, or stories about pretty peasant girls and village pranks, but the selection on this album demonstrates that the imagination of Czech song composers stretched far wider. For example, Bohuslav Martinu's Nipponari were inspired by Japanese culture, whereas his folksy Songs on One Page obtain a deeper meaning knowing that he wrote them in the US, having fled the Nazi threat. His colleagues and contemporaries Hans Krasa and Gideon Klein did not manage to get away, and both died in concentration camps.