Prima Facie Records

Kenneth Hamilton Plays Liszt Volume 3: Demonic and Divine (PFCD251/252) £15.00/£20.00

Kenneth Hamilton piano
An Official Specialist Classical Chart Top 10 Recording

Volume 3 of Kenneth Hamilton's Liszt series shares with its predecessors his extraordinary passion for Liszt’s music. He has intensively studied Liszt’s often ignored interpretative advice, and immersed himself in the reminiscences and recordings of his pupils. In fact, he has himself tried to think like a latter-day Liszt student. His efforts have been encouraged by an exciting recent rediscovery in the Czech Republic: the score and manuscript collection of August Stradal, one of Liszt’s last students. This allows Hamilton to offer here the first recording of a new, very different version of the famous Fantasy on Meyerbeer’s Robert le Diable, conceived shortly before Liszt’s death in 1886.

Other novelties include revisions and insights passed down by Stradal, Berthold Kellermann, Artur Friedheim, August Göllerich and Bernhard Stavenhagen for the popular St Francis Legends, for the eloquently ecclesiastical Invocation, and for the demonically coruscating Scherzo and March. Hamilton has similarly studied intensively Ferruccio Busoni’s tremendous transcription of the Fantasy and Fugue on Meyerbeer’s “Ad nos, ad salutarem undam”, and brought several passages into closer communion with Liszt’s original score for organ/pedal piano. He has likewise adopted from Liszt’s later orchestral version some sensuous elaborations for the first Mephisto Waltz.

Although also featuring rarities such as the fragrant Sancta Dorothea, and the outrageously Wagnerian Fantasy on Goldschmidt’s Seven Deadly Sins, this thought-provoking Liszt recording truly refreshes regularly played repertoire – supplemented, as usual, by Hamilton’s entertainingly informative liner notes.

For more details of this recording, please see the CD web page.

Requiem and Other Music for Choir and Organ (PFCD255)

Compositions by Richard Pancheff
Choir of Selwyn College, Cambridge | Sarah MacDonald conductor | Shanna Hart organ

This CD showcases the largest single choral work by distinguished British composer Richard Pantcheff, alongside his most recent setting of the Evening Canticles, and a suite of recently-composed organ works. They are performed here by the Choir of Selwyn College, Cambridge, under the direction of Sarah MacDonald, and by Shanna Hart on organ.

The Requiem was commissioned in 2005 for the Choir of St. Michael’s Cathedral, Bridgetown, Barbados, to celebrate the longstanding Anglican choral tradition there, as well as the distinct beauties of Caribbean poetry.

The disc also includes the composer’s most recent setting of the Anglican Evening Canticles, commissioned for the English Choir, Berlin; a set of three Advent Chorales; and the Quattro Ricercari for Organ, written in Oxford in 2023. The Quattro Ricercari transfer to the organ the sparse style more commonly heard in this composer’s chamber music (also available on Prima Facie Records – PFCD225 and PFCD237).

For more details of this recording, please see the CD web page.

Anthony Burgess Piano Works, Volume 2 (PFCD280)

Performed by Richard Casey and Ian Buckle

Anthony Burgess (1917-1993) was a novelist, poet, playwright, lecturer, translator and literary journalist. Best known for his literary novels, including The Pianoplayers, Earthly Powers and A Clockwork Orange, he was also a prolific composer and arranger, writing a Symphony in C, a Piano Concerto, a Violin Concerto for Yehudi Menuhin, and more than 250 other musical works. Burgess writes about his formation as a composer in This Man and Music, his musical autobiography.

Piano Works Volume 2 brings together several pieces which have been very recently discovered in the Burgess archives in Texas and Manchester. Taken together, they illustrate the unexpected range and variety of his writing for piano. Some of the pieces are undated, but the most substantial work, Suite for Four Hands, can be dated to 1975, the year in which Burgess befriended the translator Susan Roberts, to whom the suite is dedicated. Previous Burgess recordings on CD have included 24 Preludes and Fugues, a selection of his orchestral music including the Shakespeare ballet Mr W.S., and The Piano Music of Anthony Burgess, a first selection of shorter piano works.

For more details of this recording, please see the CD web page.

Out Now

Music for woodwinds and piano; Piano Trio 'Tre Giorni' (PFCD256) £12.50/£17.50

Compositions by David Dubery

This third album of Chamber works by Dubery draws upon traditional forms while infusing them with vivid imagery and emotional depth. At its centre is the Sonata for Oboe and piano composed in 1981, a pivotal work shifting his focus away from theatre towards chamber works of a more intimate nature. Since its publication by Emerson Edition in 2015, it has had many performances, particularly in Germany and the USA.

This project began in mid 2024 with the idea to complement the Oboe Sonata with other woodwind compositions: revised earlier pieces alongside recent ones written during the Covid Pandemic. This was a time that provided him ample opportunity for reflection and to rediscover uncompleted pieces or those he had intended to revise.

Recorded in the presence of the composer, this is a programme of two halves. The first comprises works for Clarinet, Flute and Oboe featuring Principal Players from the Hallé Orchestra with pianist Paul Janes.

The second half features his Piano Trio Tre Giorni, handsomely performed and recorded by Hallé and BBC Philharmonic Principal Players.

For more details of this recording, please see the CD web page.

Musical Chapters from The Lord of the Rings (PFCD260-274) £95/£114

Composed by Paul Corfield Godfrey
Performed by Volante Opera Productions
15-CD set with 64-page booklet
Demo recording using sampled orchestral instruments

The agreement by the estate of the late J. R. R. Tolkien last year to sanction the recording of Paul Corfield Godfrey’s “musical chapters from The Lord of the Rings” was hailed by listeners throughout the world as a milestone in the field of Tolkien adaptations. This 15-CD set presents the complete work, which has evolved gradually since the 1960s to now extend to thirty “chapters” designed for performance over six evenings – more than fifteen hours of music.

Although the text is inevitably abridged, it adheres without any but the most minor alterations to the author’s original words, and the original plot development remains unchanged. Some passages, such as the coronation and wedding of Aragorn, are given expanded musical treatment. The issue includes not only the complete musical score, but also a substantial booklet containing full details of the recording (including the text as set) and a supplementary appendix disc giving more extended versions of some of the more substantial narrative poems.

The professional singers, some thirty-five in number, come mainly from Welsh National Opera.

For more details of this recording, please see the CD web page.

Variations and Episodes for Solo Piano by Paul Corfield Godfrey (PFCD250) £12.50/£17.50

Duncan Honeybourne, piano

1: Op. 42, Piano Rondo: "Akallabêth" (Appendix to the Epic Scenes from The Silmarillion after the Mythology of JRR Tolkien) [15:31]

2: Op. 19, Variations on a Bardic Melody [16:00]

3. Op. 49c, Wedding March from "The Fall of Gondolin"(Appendix to the Epic Scenes from The Silmarillion after the Mythology of JRR Tolkien) [06:22]

4-11: Op. 43, Eight Studies

I. Romance [03:05]
II. Waltz [00:55]
III. Fantasia on Waly Waly [01:40]
IV. Habanera [01:07]
V. Saint Michael [02:15]
VI. Reverie [02:07]
VII. The Iceberg [02:52]
VIII. Fantasia in Two Parts [01:28]

12: Op. 81, Piano Episode: "The Passing of Arwen" (Appendix to the Musical Chapters from The Lord of the Rings after the Mythology of JRR Tolkien) [22:35]

This disc collects the complete piano music composed by Paul Corfield Godfrey over the past fifty years. Three of the pieces derive from the composer’s cycles of works based on the mythology of J. R. R. Tolkien, and form appendices to his epic scenes from The Silmarillion and his musical chapters from The Lord of the Rings (to be released in a complete recording by Prima Facie later in 2025). The disc also includes a set of Variations on a Bardic Melody which depicts diverse aspects of the Welsh valleys, and eight miniature Studies written at various times examining different aspects of technical and compositional techniques. All the works have been recorded especially for this release by Duncan Honeybourne, who is also giving here the first performance of the newly composed Piano Episode: “The Passing of Arwen”.

For more details of this recording, please see the CD web page

Concerto for trumpet and strings (PFCD249) £12.50/£17.50

Compositions by Ian Pillow
Featuring Joseph Skypala, Anna Gregg, Rosalie Curlett, Belfast Sinfonia, Icon Strings

Concerto for trumpet and strings
(3 Shades of blue)

1: Dark Blue 08’ 27
2: Light Blue 05’ 40
3: Sky Blue 06’ 46

3 Songs of Mary

4: Autumn (The Fall of the Year) 04’ 51
5: Love Song (My Mary) 04’ 51
6: Nocturne (To Mary) 05’ 36

7: Portraits for cello, strings & 3 horns 16’ 23

This is a powerful and evocative new collection of works by Ian Pillow – a composer whose music speaks with quiet authority, lyrical depth, and a uniquely British sensibility. As a composer, Ian’s output includes vocal, choral, instrumental, and orchestral works. When asked about the origins of this new collection, Ian remarked: “I still find this all a bit surreal – I’ve never really seen myself as a ‘real’ composer. So much of what I’ve written has been for a particular occasion or ensemble, and that’s naturally meant writing in a fairly conservative style, one that fits the moment and the audience. Having spent most of my life immersed in orchestras that played predominantly romantic repertoire – from Beethoven and Brahms to Mahler and Shostakovich – I suppose those influences are deeply woven into my musical language, whether I’m conscious of it or not.”

For more details of this recording, please see the CD web page

Set of Five (PFCD247) Double CD £15.00/£20.00

Daryl Runswick composer/piano, Keith Tippett piano, TCM Composers' Ensemble

CD 1

CD 2

This remarkable double album, featuring Keith Tippett, one of Britain’s – and indeed the world’s – greatest piano virtuosos, offers two astonishingly different performances of the same piece: Set of 5, Daryl Runswick’s aleatoric improvisation masterpiece. Ask yourself, can this be the same music? – and yet despite the differences – in lineup, in style, in approach – what we hear is recognisably the same work interpreted in fascinatingly contrasting ways.

For more details of this recording, please see the CD web page

Three Sonatas (PFCD242) £12.50/£17.50

Compositions by Sam Rudd-Jones, performed by Darragh Morgan, Kate Romano, Huw Watkins, Ed Lyon and Sam Rudd-Jones

Three Sonatas (2019–23)
Variations (2023)
Jeux d’eau (2022)
Hardy in Love (2016–18)

"A remarkable debut, a disc of chamber music by 25-year-old Sam Rudd-Jones reveals a distinctive voice with a compositional talent that intrigues and makes you look forward to what comes next" Planet Hugill

‘Three Sonatas’ is a debut collection of chamber music recordings from the exciting young composer Sam Rudd-Jones. The majority of works on the album are in dialogue with older music, in particular classical forms (Three Sonatas, Variations) and impressionist-era ‘watery’ piano music (Jeux d’eau), though their actual harmonic and rhythmic language is unmistakably modern. Three Sonatas and Variations are both proudly formalistic and architectural in their design, with passages of great passion framed by those of an almost analytical detachment. By contrast, Jeux d’eau and Hardy in Love are driven purely by their own inner emotional logic, with the latter responding to the ironies and contradictions of Thomas Hardy’s love poems to his late wife Emma. The performers, all of whom have interpreted and recorded a wide variety of contemporary music, give readings marked by a close understanding of the essential elements of the composers’ style. The accompanying booklet contains a thoughtful, specially commissioned essay by John Fallas.

For more details of this recording, please see the CD web page