Royal Grand Piano

Charlie Lovell-Jones debuted at a sold-out Royal Festival Hall aged 15.

Conductor Peter Phillips is one of the leading lights in the world of British choral music, best known as the director of the prolific and durable group The Tallis Scholars. He is also a noted scholar, radio and television presenter who has done much to popularize Renaissance music, a music label founder and executive, and an educator. Phillips was born on October 15, 1953, in Southampton, England. He studied at St. John's College, Oxford University, as an organ scholar. By the time he graduated in 1975, he had gained a grounding not only in choral and organ music but in music history, studying with two of the leading British musicologists of the day, Denis Arnold and David Wulstan. In 1973, Phillips assembled a group of singers from Oxford and Cambridge to perform Renaissance music and named them The Tallis Scholars in honor of English Renaissance composer Thomas Tallis. The term "Scholars" was not merely fanciful, for the singers were all choral scholars from the various colleges of the two universities. Phillips held teaching posts at Oxford, the Royal College of Music, and Trinity College of Music, but the activities of The Tallis Scholars expanded after they established themselves formally in 1978.

As part of the Royal Academy of Music Bicentenary Series, violinist Charlie Lovell-Jones makes his recording debut with a multifaceted programme.Aiming to pierce what he describes as ‘some historical silences’, Lovell-Jones aims to amplify the voices of gay, black and female composers; works by celebrated masters like Britten and Tchaikovsky sit alongside the premiere recording of Deborah Pritchard’s Towards Freedom. Despite reflecting life’s social struggles, the ultimate message is one of triumph. Lovell-Jones states: ‘With this music, I hope to share something of the euphoria I felt on finding out one of my heroes was gay.’Charlie Lovell-Jones is one of the exceptional artists, including Liam Bonthrone, Junyan Chen, Aidan Mikdad and Edvard Pogossian, who are the recipients of the Academy’s Bicentenary Scholarships scheme for 2021/22.

Following the success across Europe of his eight ‘Grand Suites’ for harpsichord in 1720, albeit in a doctored and pirated edition, Handel resolved to make good on his promise of a sequel, ‘reckoning it my duty with my small talent to serve a Nation from which I have received so generous a protection.’

Noriko Ogawa is a major pianist who bases her career half in her native Japan and half in Europe. Her repertory is primarily of the Romantic era and later, with an emphasis on recent classics. After establishing a solid career in Japan, she came to international acclaim with a third place finish in the Leeds International Piano Competition of 1987. This led to her attracting a large following in the United Kingdom, resulting in her decision to spend half of her professional life in Europe. She has appeared with all the major orchestras of the British Isles, including the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, BBC Philharmonic, Philharmonia, Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, Ulster Orchestra, National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland, the Hallé Orchestra, the Royal Philharmonic, and the Orchestra of St. John's Smith Square.

Some contemporaries in Vienna judged the Bohemian Leopold Koželuch an even finer composer than Mozart. He was especially esteemed for his mastery of the keyboard sonata, couched in the “high-Classic” style, which are amongst the most important of their time. In this volume, the early Sonata No.37, full of beautiful simplicity, is contrasted with the Sturm und Drang vehemence of Sonata No.36. Expansive slow movements in Sonatas Nos. 34 and 35 reveal endless cantabile beauties.

A high-art concept album about an overwhelming passion between two writers is a bold foundational choice on which to craft one’s debut, but Winnipeg-based duo Heavy Bell is composed of a seasoned indie rock veteran (Royal Canoe’s Matt Peters) and an actor/singer-songwriter (Tom Keenan), both of whom dream a little bigger than some of us.