Hyperion

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.

Graham Johnson’s complete Schubert and Schumann songs series for Hyperion are landmarks in the history of recorded music. Now this indefatigable performer and scholar turns to the songs and vocal works of Brahms. Each disc of this Hyperion edition takes a journey through Brahms’s career. The songs are not quite presented in chronological order but they do appear here in the order that the songs were presented to the world. Each recital represents a different journey through the repertoire (and thus through Brahms’s life). In a number of these Hyperion recitals an opus number will be presented in its entirety (in the case of this disc, Op 48). The folksongs of 1894 will be shared between all the singers in the series.

Herbert Howells was acutely sensitive to the transience of life, having witnessed the loss of friends and contemporaries in the First World War and encountered deep personal tragedy when his son Michael died of polio at the age of just nine. And so a mood of elegiac yearning inhabits much of his choral music: the austere, lovely a cappella Requiem, and the elegant Take him, earth, for cherishing, commissioned to commemorate the death of President John F Kennedy, here lovingly performed by the young voices of Trinity College Choir, Cambridge, in Hyperion’s Record of the Month for April 2012.

Angela Hewitt - Bach: Fantasia & Fugue In A Minor, Aria Variata etc.
EAC+LOG+CUE | FLAC: 216 MB | Full Artwork | 5% Recovery Info
Label/Cat#: Hyperion Records # SACDA67499 | Country/Year: UK 2004
Genre: Classical | Style: Baroque

…And Hyperion's sound captures Hewitt's performances in sound as clear and warm as the rest of their wonderful recordings. A magnificent conclusion to a monumental cycle, Hewitt's final Bach disc will appeal to anyone who loves life and Bach.

This fourteenth volume of Christopher Herrick’s monumental Organ Fireworks series comes from the organ of Melbourne Town Hall. As ever, Herrick presents a cornucopia of virtuoso delights, opening with a bang with Lemare’s outrageous transcription of the Grand March from Aida, given a new sheen by Herrick himself. Other works include pieces by living composers Iain Farrington and Paul Spicer, and examples of the best of the English and French traditions of 19th and 20th century organ writing.

Hyperion’s Record of the Month for October marks the debut on the label by the Takács Quartet. After seventeen years recording for Decca, including multi-awarding-winning cycles of quartets by Beethoven and Bartók, this thrilling ensemble is now embarking on a new relationship with Hyperion; future projects will include works by Brahms, Janácek and Schumann. Schubert’s famous String Quartet, D810, subtitled ‘Death and the Maiden’, is one of the pillars of the repertoire. This new performance is electrifying, and was recorded following a global concert series, enthusiastically welcomed in the press: ‘The Takács’ reading of the second movement was characterized by unremitting pain and mystery.

If we know Koechlin at all it is because he orchestrated Fauré’s Pelléas et Mélisande Suite and Debussy’s ballet Khamma. In that very superficial sense his standing is akin to that of Caplet. Rather like Chandos, Hyperion can be relied on for exalted artistic and production standards. It’s completely consistent with these exemplary principles that they have chosen Robert Orledge to document this disc and that full sung texts and sensibly lad-out side-by-side translations into English are set out in the booklet.

Bohuslav Martinů - Complete music for violin & orchestra, Vol. 4
Classical | 1 CD | 243mb | EAC image (APE) + CUE + LOG | Full HQ scans | Rapidshare

This recording is the last volume of a four-disc survey of Martinu’s complete output for solo violin and orchestra, including compositions with other solo instruments. They are performed here by the orchestra in which Martinu played the violin, the distinguished Czech violinist Bohuslav Matoušek who is one of the foremost living exponents of this music, and conductor Christopher Hogwood.