Crawford Phillips

"Schubert Reimagined," is a unique new album revitalising the music of Franz Schubert, featuring renowned cellist Josephine Knight, alongside the highly sought-after vocal group The Gesualdo Six, pianist Simon Crawford-Phillips and Timothy Jones on horn. The carefully curated repertoire includes the slow movement from Schubert's poignant String Quintet D.956, arranged for cello and The Gesualdo Six; the expressive Sonata for cello and piano in A minor 'Arpeggione' D. 821; and captivating Schubert songs delivered through innovative arrangements by Timothy Jones. The album showcases the unique blend of cello and horn, instruments with close proximity to the textures of the human voice, providing a natural musical partnership. With a special rendition of the iconic C major string quintet's slow movement featuring The Gesualdo Six, along with other masterpieces, Josephine Knight weaves a narrative that transcends traditional boundaries, creating a seamless amalgamation of singers and instrumentalists.

"Schubert Reimagined," is a unique new album revitalising the music of Franz Schubert, featuring renowned cellist Josephine Knight, alongside the highly sought-after vocal group The Gesualdo Six, pianist Simon Crawford-Phillips and Timothy Jones on horn. The carefully curated repertoire includes the slow movement from Schubert's poignant String Quintet D.956, arranged for cello and The Gesualdo Six; the expressive Sonata for cello and piano in A minor 'Arpeggione' D. 821; and captivating Schubert songs delivered through innovative arrangements by Timothy Jones. The album showcases the unique blend of cello and horn, instruments with close proximity to the textures of the human voice, providing a natural musical partnership. With a special rendition of the iconic C major string quintet's slow movement featuring The Gesualdo Six, along with other masterpieces, Josephine Knight weaves a narrative that transcends traditional boundaries, creating a seamless amalgamation of singers and instrumentalists.

It was the age of the Lumière Brothers, Alexander Graham Bell, Karl Benz, the Wright Brothers and Louis Blériot, Marie Curie and Louis Pasteur – an age not unlike our own, marked by rapid scientific and technological development as well as intense literary, artistic and musical activity. The Belle Époque, the period between the end of the Franco-Prussian War in 1871 and the outbreak of World War One in 1914, was a time of apparent peace and prosperity but with a darker reality of social and economic deprivation lying not far beneath its gilded surface. This era of creativity and contradiction has long fascinated Daniel Hope: “I often wish I had a time machine to go back to the salons of Paris, indeed to that entire age,” he says.

Lawrence Power is Britain’s greatest living viola player, the true successor to Lionel Tertis and William Primrose. Part of his mission is to perform and record music premiered by those masters of the previous century, including works by York Bowen, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Benjamin Dale, William Walton and, here, Arthur Benjamin.

Gabriel Fauré’s musical language bridges a gap between the romanticism of the 19th century and the new worlds of music which appeared in the 20th, employing subtle harmonic changes and a gift for melody to combine innovation with an entirely personal idiom. His First Piano Quartet is filled with characteristic French colour and lyricism, and the Piano Trio in D minor is a late work whose musical language is familiar from his songs. Both the Pavane and the popular Sicilienne express nostalgia for earlier times, and the short Pièce has great simplicity and charm.