EM Records is delighted and proud to announce the release of a new disc featuring World Première Recordings of important works by one of Britain’s finest composers, Gustav Holst. As well as composing, Holst held several significant teaching posts, the most important and longest-lasting of which was at St Paul’s Girls’ School. This Musical Directorship brought him joy and delight; it also provided solace in the form of his sound-proofed room in the Music Wing, into which he was able to retreat and gain the peace and quiet he required for composition. Holst — who threw himself wholeheartedly into the life of the school — gratefully composed a number of works specifically for the school and its pupils, including all the works presented on this disc.

These works perfectly demonstrate how uncompromising Holst was in his pursuit of quality — the pieces on this disc are no less carefully textured and well-crafted than his works for professional ensembles and they highlight Holst’s integrity as a composer, along with his love for and appreciation of St Paul’s Girls’ School.

As well as the much-loved St Paul’s Suite and Brook Green Suite (the latter performed at the last concert that Holst ever attended), this disc features the World Première Recordings of the Gavotte — originally part of the Brook Green Suite — the “Playground Song”; and the Seven Choruses from “Alcestis”, with its heart-felt words by Euripides.

We are also delighted to enable music-lovers to hear “The Vision of Dame Christian”, a deeply-engaging Masque composed for the four-hundredth anniversary of St Paul’s School to celebrate its founder, John Colet, and his mother, with words by the then-High Mistress of the Girls’ School, Frances Gray. This important and beautiful work here receives its first professional recording. Holst stipulated that the Masque should not be taken out of the school, so we are even more pleased to have been able to honour his wishes by recording it in the beautiful wooden-panelled Great Hall, with the choir formed by current pupils. Also featured are the BBC Concert Orchestra conducted by Leigh O’Hara (Director of Music at the school at the time of recording) and the Director of EM Records, Em Marshall-Luck — herself an Old Paulina — as the reciter.

Full details of this recording, including a track listing, are available on this page.

EM Records is proud to announce a collaboration with the distinguished American composer Morten Lauridsen in a newly released disc of solo songs and duets, performed by the acclaimed soprano Caryl Hughes and the celebrated baritone Jeremy Huw Williams together with the remarkable and versatile pianist Paula Fan — who died suddenly last year whilst on a recital tour with Williams, the clarinetist John Reynolds and the cellist Peter Esswood.

Lauridsen is acclaimed worldwide for his many choral works which have been widely recorded and performed and his songs, although less well-known, beautifully complement his more extensively surveyed repertoire. The disc contains all three of Lauridsen’s vocal cycles: “A Backyard Universe” (three songs on poems by Harold Witt), “A Winter Come” (six songs on poems by Howard Moss) and “Cuatro Canciones” (poetry by Federico Garcia Lorca); the solo-voice versions of “O Magnum Mysterium” and the caberet song “Where Have the Actors Gone?” and the mixed-duet versions of “Ya Eras Mia” (“Now You Are Mine” — Pablo Neruda), “Dirait-on” (“So They Say” — Rainer Maria Rilke) and “Sure On This Shining Night” (James Agee), as well as the setting that lends its name to the disc’s title: “Prayer” (Dana Gioia). Lauridsen has a special fondness for composing for mixed duet and piano, being drawn as he is to the intimacy and expressiveness of the genre.

The disc was recorded in Wales, the artists being joined by Lauridsen for the entire sessions, and is a gorgeously performed recital of intensely heartfelt music by a remarkable composer.

For full details of this recording, including a track listing , please visit this page.

We are currently working on a new website for EM Records which we expect to be available later this year (2024). The site will have a responsive design — meaning that it will be easier to use on mobile devices — and will also feature a cleaner layout, improved typography, and a more streamlined purchasing process, including the facility to add a disc to the shopping cart directly from its ‘Details’ page. Naturally, a complete overhaul to the website such as this represents will take time to complete; but, in the meantime, please be assured that the current site will remain in service until the new one is ready.

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