Divine Art Records

Product Cat: Recording

  • Travelling Light: Music of Jim Parker

    Travelling Light: Music of Jim Parker

    Perhaps the name of Jim Parker is not well known – but his music is loved worldwide. Composer of numerous film and theatre scores, he is best known for his television music which includes Foyle’s War, House of Cards, Midsomer Murders and House of Elliott among many more. He has won the British Academy Award for Best TV Music on no less than four occasions.

    This brilliant album collects a number of Parker’s recent compositions which are not directly for TV but still have a marvelous pictorial quality and display his remarkable talent for memorable melodies and coloration, whether it be the recorder acting like a Peruvian pipe, or violins emulating the Hurdy-Gurdy.

    Light music albums of this quality are very rare these days and this is a joyful gem.

  • Mind Music

    Mind Music

    An Album for Charitable Support.

    Parkinson's UK
    Proceeds from the sale of this CD are in aid of Parkinson’s UK

    Degenerative brain diseases (Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s in particular) cause immense distress to sufferers and their families. This album is released to raise funds for research into cures, through Parkinsons UK. Both the soloists lost parents to these diseases hence their wish to support the research. They have chosen works by composers all of whom were similarly afflicted – either in themselves or their close families. Mendelssohn died at a very young age due to degenerative disease, Strauss wrote his work during a period of severe influenza and depression, and Kevin Malone and John Adams struggled to cope when their fathers both succumbed to Alzheimers.

    The works here are serious, often poignant, but also humorous and full of hope. A delightful performance by the two clarinet soloists is bolstered by the excellent Northern Chamber Orchestra.

  • Diana Boyle – Bach Keyboard Partitas

    Diana Boyle – Bach Keyboard Partitas

    The fourth of our new digital-only ‘Intangible Classics’ series and of the Diana Boyle edition is a double album devoted to the six Partitas for Keyboard by Johann Sebastian Bach. As with all of the Diana Boyle recordings, this performance resulted from years of study and absorbtion of the music, giving us an interpretation second to none.

  • Andreas Willscher: Organ Symphony No. 5

    Andreas Willscher: Organ Symphony No. 5

    German composer Andreas Willscher has won many awards for his compositions, which range widely from symphonic forms and oratorio to cabaret jazz and rock. His organ works are especially fine and varied – involving often a mélange of post-tonal modernism, minimalism, and jazz and rock elements. Willscher is also an active writer of literary and scientific articles and as a collector and preserver of ‘lost’ and forgotten music of the past.

    Organ Symphony No. 5 is on a grand scale but is mostly quiet peaceful and meditative with only two fast and louder sections; the symphony is subtitled “Of Francis’ Preaching about Holy Poverty” and is a reflection on the life and teaching of St. Francis of Asissi.

    Carson Cooman is organist of the Memorial Church at Harvard University and also a most prolific composer, writer and teacher. His works have appeared in many recordings and have been played in every inhabited continent. This is his first recording for Divine Art as performer, but the label has already released thirteen CDs of Cooman compositions with more planned.

    Organ of Laurenskerk, Rotterdam (recorded via Hauptwerk)

    More Willscher here and here

  • Beethoven: Diabelli Variations

    Beethoven: Diabelli Variations

    Beethoven’s Opus 120, the 33 Variations on a Waltz by Anton Diabelli, is an extraordinary and great work: in many ways ahead of its time, it is exceptionally complex but always accessible. The imagination Beethoven applies to Diabelli’s theme – itself ‘rich in solid musical facts’ (Tovey) – leads to a wealth of original structures and ideas. Incomprehensible as late Beethoven was to many, Diabelli himself recognized its genius and advertised the work as a ‘great and important masterpiece’.

    Diana Boyle is a fine pianist who records little but prepares each recording with years of thought, consideration and meditation on the music. Her interpretations are individual and thought-provoking, often delicate, not always conforming to the norm which pianists of lesser talent will follow, but looking to breathe new life and spirit into classic masterpieces.

    Like all of Boyle’s work this is a very carefully prepared and well crafted performance, an excellent addition to the library of recordings of this work.

  • Diana Boyle – Brahms Piano Works

    Diana Boyle – Brahms Piano Works

    This album focuses on Intermezzi and Capriccios from Brahms’s very late period – Op. 76 and Op. 116-119. All of these pieces are true ‘Songs without Words’ though not titled as such, and are reserved, rather intimate works, never ‘flashy’ or virtuosic for the sake of virtuosity. They carry a strong sense of mood or inner feeling that mere titles could not convey.

    Diana Boyle is a fine pianist who records little but prepares each recording with years of thought, consideration and meditation on the music. Her interpretations are individual and thought-provoking, often delicate, not always conforming to the norm which pianists of lesser talent will follow, but looking to breathe new life and spirit into classic masterpieces.

    Like all of Boyle’s work this is a very carefully prepared and well crafted performance, an excellent addition to the library of recordings of this work.

    The second of our new digital-only ‘Intangible Classics’ series and of the Diana Boyle edition; these works by Brahms remain much less familiar to many than his Songs without Words and Hungarian Dances, but are pinnacles of the Romantic piano repertoire. Though recorded in 1994, this recording is as fresh as today and was previously on Integra Records (CD).

  • Hymnus: Music for Organ by Carson Cooman

    Hymnus: Music for Organ by Carson Cooman

    Carson Cooman is many things musical – organist and Composer in Residence at the Memorial Church, Harvard University; writer, critic and consultant, concert organist, and above all a highly prolific composer of music in a wide variety of genres, from orchestral to song.

    His organ compositions come in many styles, from those inspired by the Renaissance, to liturgical models, to more gritty and substantial pieces such as his organ symphonies and preludes and fugues. The music on this album is very suitable for both concert and church performance and is at the ‘traditional, tonal’ end of the Cooman spectrum: works of intense beauty and wide appeal.

    Erik Simmons is a fine organist, making his fourth Cooman organ album for Divine Art. He is playing the organ of the Church of St. Peter & Paul in Weissenau, Germany (built 1787) in a live performance recorded through the Hauptwerk system.

  • Natalia Andreeva plays Preludes & Fugues

    Natalia Andreeva plays Preludes & Fugues

    After the highly praised recording of music by Ustvolskaya (DDA 25130), Natalia Andreeva presents a brief survey of the Prelude and Fugue – one of the most prevalent of keyboard forms over the centuries. From Bach to Shostakovich, this concert-format album is a useful introduction to the genre, and also a fine interpretation for the experts to enjoy. Two of Rachmaninoff’s Etude-tableaux are included as ‘bonus encores’.

    Companion album: ‘Piano Sonatas’ from Beethoven, Scriabin and Prokofiev (DDA 25140). Plus: Ustvolskaya’s Violin and Piano music on DDA 25182

    Natalia Andreeva is a Russian pianist who is currently Lecturer in Piano at the University of Sydney, Australia. Her 2015 recording of the music of Galina Ustvolskaya was very well received, and like that album, this new recording of better-known classical and Romantic works is the result of many years of study, developing her own mental picture of these masterpieces and of what the composers were trying to communicate.

    There are various links between the works – in fact Liszt, Franck and Shostakovich were all influenced by Bach generally, as well as composing in the Prelude and Fugue form that he made a staple of the keyboard repertoire.

  • David Matthews: Romanza

    David Matthews: Romanza

    World Première Recording

    This work was commissioned by Madeleine Mitchell, who also gave the first performance with Nigel Clayton in 2012, following her premiere earlier that year of a version for violin and orchestra. It is a beautiful piece full of emotional warmth and lyricism. This digital single is also from Madeleine’s album of lyrical contemporary music for violin “Violin Muse”.

    Foremost British violinist Madeleine Mitchell commissioned this piece from David Matthews. She gave its first performance in the version for violin and orchestra in October 2012, and in this violin and piano version the following month. It is a remarkable work, thoroughly of today but filled with lyricism and warmth.

    Madeleine Mitchell has performed in over 50 countries and is one of the UK’s most distinguished violinists; she is a ‘pioneer of new music’ (The Times) and specializes in new music of the more lyrical kind rather than the avant-garde. She recently premiered Guto Puw’s Violin Concerto with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales – another work included in the Violin Muse album.

  • Diana Boyle – Bach Goldberg Varations

    Diana Boyle – Bach Goldberg Varations

    The first of our new digital-only ‘Intangible Classics’ series and of the Diana Boyle edition; a superb rendition of this timeless masterpiece. Though recorded in 2003, this recording has never been available until now and demonstrates Diana Boyle’s deep and thoughtful approach to the works of Bach.

    Like Die Kunst der Fuge, Bach’s Goldberg Variations, BWV 899, have come to be seen as one of the pinnacles of keyboard writing, not only of the baroque era but of all time. The Aria with diverse variations for a harpsichord with two manuals as it is formally named is the capstone of the Clavierübung publication project which was finalised in 1741. Amazingly, like much of Bach’s work, it remained an esoteric and little-known work until introduced into the repertoire by Rudolf Serkin in the 1920s.

    Diana Boyle is a fine pianist who records little but prepares each recording with years of thought, consideration and meditation on the music. She moved to the Goldberg Variations after recording Book II of the Well-Tempered Clavier as a stepping stone to the inscrutable Art of Fugue. She avoided listening to any other versions, because as she says, “I need to find my own voice when studying these masterpieces and then try to express those thoughts at the keyboard.” Like all of Boyle’s work this is a very carefully prepared and well crafted performance, an excellent addition to the library of recordings of this work.

  • Wind Blown – Sonatas for Wind Instruments

    Wind Blown – Sonatas for Wind Instruments

    Peter Hope is one of those remarkably talented composers whose music is far netter known than his name. An arranger and composer of light music for decades, working with the BBC Concert Orchestra and writing themes for public events, his music has been heard worldwide – and by millions of British watchers of BBC TV News which used Peter’s theme for over a decade.

    A selected set of wind soloists present the first CD devoted to Peter Hope’s compositions which are fresh, vigorous and enchanting – and as the composer says, ‘unashamedly tonal’.

  • Artyomov: On the Threshold of a Bright World

    Artyomov: On the Threshold of a Bright World

    The foremost composer living in Russia today, Artyomov is producing works in the grand symphonic and post-Romantic traditions, unquestionably masterpieces of the modern age. The ‘Threshold’ symphony, part of his tetralogy ‘Symphony of the Way’ is typically underpinned by his deep spirituality but is universal and cosmic in scope. ‘Ave Atque Vale’ is another major work – for percussion and orchestra, while ‘Ave, Crux Alba’ is a far more traditional (and very beautiful) choral piece.

    A companion CD contains the symphony ‘Gentle Emanation’ and ‘Tristia II’ for piano and orchestra (DDA 25144). The Artyomov series continues with a further nine albums.