Stephen Biggins

Friends of long standing as well as regular partners in chamber music, Michael Collins and Stephen Hough bring their combined musical insights and expertise to bear on Johannes Brahms’s sonatas for clarinet and piano. Together with the composer’s trio for clarinet, cello and piano and clarinet quintet, the sonatas are among the most treasured works in the repertoire of the instrument – but it is partly down to good luck that we have them at all. When Brahms in 1891 heard the clarinettist Richard Mühlfeld, principal clarinet of the Meiningen Court Orchestra, he had already announced his retirement. He was enraptured by Mühlfeld’s playing and its vocal qualities, however, and made a ‘comeback’: during the following couple of years he composed all four of his clarinet works.

Reference Recordings proudly presents this unique album containing 11 works of early Baroque composers. They are performed by Pacific MusicWorks, founded by GRAMMY® Award winner Stephen Stubbs, Artistic Director. Artists on this album are featured soloist Tekla Cunningham, baroque violin; William Skeen, bass violin; Stephen Stubbs, baroque guitar and chitarrone; Maxine Eilander, baroque harp; and Henry Lebedinsky, organ and harpsichord. "Stylus Phantasticus" was produced by GRAMMY® award winner David Sabee, and recorded by GRAMMY® award winning engineers Dmitry Lipay, Aleksandr Lipay and Kory Kruckenberg.

A programme spanning the variety and sheer emotional range of Stanford’s Anglican choral music (with a notable contribution from Owain Park in the Fantasia and Toccata for organ). You are unlikely to hear quite so stirring a rendition of ‘St Patrick’s Breastplate’ for some time to come…

There is no place to hide in a DUO, so there is a unique honesty in the connection with each musician and the audience. When setting out to do this recording Anderson (piano) and Foureman (bass) wanted the audience to feel this music as genuinely as possible, no overdubs, no fixes – this is the REAL DEAL!

Snorre Kirk - the composer, bandleader and drummer - has long made his mark on listeners in Scandinavia and further south. An exquisitely flexible musician with a keen eye for tradition, he has worked with some of the finest names on the international jazz scene. In recent years he has flourished not only as a bandleader but also as a full-fledged composer, finding it imperative to become familiar with the musical DNA of fellow musicians in order to cater his writing specifically to the soloists needs, thereby creating a unique sound. On Tangerine Rhapsody the drummer is joined by American tenor saxophonist Stephen Riley and Snorre's regular team, featuring pianist Magnus Hjort and bassist Anders Fjeldsted. Riley, who has worked with the likes of Norah Jones and Wynton Marsalis, is known for his sublime tenor sound and unmatched musical prowess and has been hailed by critics and fans the world over. Here he also gets to play alongside Kirk's regular tenor master Jan Harbeck on two tracks, one of the highlights on a magnificent album.

Exciting accounts of eight anthems spanning nearly two hundred years, with a welcome emphasis firmly on recent works.

Jean-Baptiste Lully, born Giovanni Battista Lulli in Florence in 1632, moved to France early in his career. By the time he turned 30, he had been named music master to the royal family and elevated to the nobility. Italian opera, particularly the works of Cavalli, had become hugely popular in France, and Lully took up the task of creating a tradition of native French opera. In 1775, in collaboration with librettist Philippe Quinault, Lully produced Thésée, a "tragédie en musique," which marked a turning point in the synthesis of music, dramaturgy, and dance, and became the model for French opera for nearly a century, until the reforms of Gluck.