Peter Maxwell Davies

While children’s voices have been heard in church music for centuries, music specifically composed for young choristers is a relatively recent, and most welcome, development.

As the attractive and diverse music by the fourteen composers represented on this delightful recording shows, children’s choirs now have a wealth of outstanding repertoire to delight, challenge and initiate them into the world of music.

The Grammy award-winning New London Children’s Choir, founded by Ron Corp in 1991, has been described by the Financial Times as “excellent” and by The Independent as “terrific.”

They have performed in the UK, Europe and North America to critical acclaim and boast an impressive discography, including two recordings of music by Britten for Naxos (8553183 and 8557203).

Peter Maxwell Davies is universally acknowledged as one of the foremost composers of our time, and is currently Master of the Queen’s Music. His musical idiom has been described by The New York Times as a combination of ‘medieval mysticism, modernist rigour and happy accessibility’.

This fifth and final instalment of Maxwell Davies’s 10-quartet cycle commissioned by Naxos opens with Quartet No. 9, dedicated to Dame Kathleen Ollerenshaw, mathematician extraordinary, and sometime Lord Mayor of Manchester, both of which attributes have influenced the content of the work.

The composer has written of Quartet No. 10, ‘in no way must this be a last quartet. I needed to leave the door open: I had enjoyed writing the Naxos Quartets so much, and perhaps even learned a thing or two, that more could, in theory, eventually flourish’.

Lin Jiang is one of Australia’s most sought after horn soloists, considered to be the most exciting young instrumentalist of his generation - “Lin Jiang is “One of the most impressive horn players I have ever heard” says Barry Tuckwell

Lin Jiang has toured Japan as a soloist and performed numerous times with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra, and Orchestra Victoria

Diverse and very attractive programme of virtuoso music for horn, from Schumann’s Adagio and Allegro – regarded as being unplayable for 100 years – to contemporary pieces

Includes music of a more personal nature by horn player/conductor/composers Esa-Pekka Salonen and Gunther Schuller

Features Poulenc’s seldom performed Elégie for the doyen of horn virtuosi, Dennis Brain

Also featured are transcriptions which are some of Lin Jiang’s personal showpieces such as the Bach, Ketting and Huang works. Huang’s Encore, My Good Sir, was especially written for him

Associate artist Benjamin Martin, a graduate of the Julliard School, is a fine solo pianist and composer in his own right, has received numerous international awards and is a champion of much 20th Century music, in particular Berio and Ligeti

Recorded direct to disc using DSD (direct stream digital) technology to ensure absolute maximum CD audio performance

The prize winning Eden Stell Guitar Duo take a new direction with the release of their CD ‘MUSIC FOR AN ISLAND’ BGS117. The Duo’s passion for performance innovation has resulted in a finely crafted and synchronised multimedia concert of music and images inspired by landscapes and locations from around the UK.

The diverse programme covers the length and breadth of the British Isles from the Orkney Isles to the seaside promenade of Eastbourne, taking in the Holy Island of Lindisfarne, leafy Sherwood Forest, and the Beatles’ Liverpool along the way.