Julian Hans

Martin Outram (Viola) and Julian Rolton (piano) play all of the works of Ralph Vaughan Williams for viola and piano. Mark Padmore (tenor) joins them to record Four Hymns for Tenor, Viola and Piano.

The tenor Julian Prégardien joins Alpha for several recording projects that will showcase every facet of his talent, notably lieder and oratorio. His first album on the label is devoted to one of the greatest masterpieces in the history of music, Winterreise, but in a version with orchestra composed by Hans Zender in 1993. He scored the work for orchestral forces very different from the ensembles used in the nineteenth century (including, for example, a soprano saxophone, an accordion, a harmonica, a wind machine, a guitar and a very large percussion section).

Notwithstanding the enormous variety of arrangements of Bach's music that have appeared for every conceivable combination of instruments, remakings of Vivaldi have been comparatively rare. Cellist and composer Julian Lloyd Webber here attempts to fill the void, apparently with the primary goal of enlarging the repertory playable for him and his cellist wife, Jiaxin Lloyd Webber. Only one work, the Concerto for two cellos in G minor, RV 531, is as Vivaldi composed it; the others were mostly for pairs of instruments, either similar or dissimilar, originally. The RV 409 concerto was originally for one cello but had an obbligato bassoon continuo that was easy enough to turn into a second cello part.