busy mole music

Makers of small harps, lyres and psalteries

TEL: 01283 730602 

85 products found in 9 pages.
A Ceremony of Carols Benjamin Britten | Harry Christophers The Sixteen | Stock Code: bmcd034

A Ceremony of Carols
Benjamin Britten
Britten's A Ceremony of Carols is a masterpiece composed on board ship as Britten returned to England from the U.S.A. in 1948, a touching evocation of boyhood lost but never forgotten. A Boy was Born is a work that first made Britten famous, based on a theme and variations of astonishing ingenuity. The Missa Brevis, written for the boys of Westminster Cathedral, is a gem that in some ways looks forward to the War Requiem which came two years later.

Deutsche Schallplattenkritik
".. a disc of exceptional quality, reinforcing The Sixteen's reputation as one of the finest choirs of our day . this is a performance that works to extraordinary effect ." THE GRAMOPHONE

The Sixteen
Harry Christophers

COR16034


TRACK LISTINGS


A Ceremony of Carols (SSA)
A Shepherd's Carol
The Sycamore Tree
- Sweet was the Song
Missa Brevis in D
A Boy was Born

Price: £10.50 | Postage free on all UK CD orders

Padre Pio - Prayer MacMillan, Panufnik, Todd | Harry Christophers The Sixteen | Stock Code: bmcd031

Padre Pio - Prayer
MacMillan, Panufnik, Todd

The result of a fascinating partnership with the Genesis Foundation, this disc features new commissions from three of Britain's most respected contemporary composers: James MacMillan, Roxanna Panufnik and Will Todd. Whilst all are based on the prayer of the Capuchin priest, Padre Pio (the familiar name by which millions know St Pius of Pietrelcina), each new work is very different, but communicates equally powerfully the multitude of emotions expressed in the prayer – anxiety, frailty, warmth, confidence, ecstasy and, ultimately, peace. The brilliance of these three composers is exemplified not just by these remarkable new pieces but also by other works featured on this CD which The Sixteen brings to radiant life.

The Sixteen
Harry Christophers
Padre Pio - Prayer
MacMillan, Panufnik, Todd
COR16071
Track Listing
MacMillan Padre Pio's Prayer *
MacMillan The Lamb has come for us from the House of David
Todd Among Angels *
Fear not
Find only joy
Seek out light
MacMillan On the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin
Todd Stay with me (Padre Pio's Prayer)*
Panufnik Prayer
MacMillan A New Song
Panufnik Stay with me (Padre Pio's Prayer)*

*Commissioned by the Genesis Foundation

Price: £12.00 | Postage free on all UK CD orders

Henry Purcell & James MacMillan Bright Orb of Harm | Harry Christophers The Sixteen | Stock Code: bmcd030
Henry Purcell & James MacMillan

Bright Orb of Harmony
To celebrate their thirtieth anniversary, the three hundred and fiftieth anniversary of Henry Purcell's birth (1659) and James MacMillan's fiftieth birthday (16 July 2009), The Sixteen recorded live at the first concert on the 2009 Choral Pilgrimage a brand new disc of music dedicated to these most innovative of British composers. Purcell's extraordinary use of harmony sounds as modern today as it must have sounded in the seventeenth century. Putting his heartfelt Funeral Sentences alongside James MacMillan's powerfully emotive A Child's Prayer, written in memory of the Dunblane Tragedy, and his hauntingly beautiful O bone Jesu (a piece originally commissioned by The Sixteen) will give the listener the chance to experience the true power of this music.

The Sixteen
Harry Christophers
Henry Purcell & James MacMillan
Bright Orb of Harmony
COR16069
PURCELL Jehova quam multi sunt hostes mei
PURCELL Miserere mei
PURCELL Remember not, Lord, our offences
PURCELL Beati omnes qui timent Dominum
MACMILLAN O bone Jesu
PURCELL Let mine eyes run down with tears
MACMILLAN Mitte manum tuam (from The Strathclyde Motets)
MACMILLAN A Child's Prayer
MACMILLAN Sedebit Dominus Rex (from The Strathclyde Motets)
PURCELL O dive custos (soprano duet)
PURCELL Funeral Sentences (first set)
Man that is born of a woman
In the midst of life
Thou knowest, Lord, the secrets of our hearts (first setting)
Bonus track:
PURCELL Thou knowest, Lord, the secrets of our hearts (1695)

Price: £12.00 | Postage free on all UK CD orders

Lighten our Darkness Music for the close of day | The Cambridge Singers John Rutter conductor | Stock Code: bmcd028
Lighten our Darkness
Music for the close of day

The Cambridge Singers
John Rutter conductor

COLCD 131

Includes the full office of Compline

The service of Compline has inspired many incredibly beautiful compositions and this collection gathers together eighteen of the many lovely a cappella choral motets written to adorn the evening worship of the church.

Composers include Byrd, Guerrero, Rachmaninov and Sheppard, alongside such less well-known masterworks as Rheinberger's Abendlied and the four great Marian motets of Victoria. In addition, the Office of Compline, sung in English with its traditional chants, is included in its entirety on a bonus CD.

Lighten our Darkness sees John Rutter and his Cambridge Singers return to the austere surrounds and sumptuous acoustic of the Lady Chapel at Ely Cathedral, where many of their classic recordings from the 1980s and early 1990s were recorded.

"absolutely ravishing...well-nigh perfect choral craftsmanship and luscious sound." American Record Review

In Pace John Sheppard
Libera nos, salva nos John Sheppard
Justorum animae Orlande de Lassus
Pater noster Jacob Händl
O Lord, the Maker of all thing William Mundy
Visita, quaesumus Domine William Byrd
Abendlied Josef Rheinberger
O Christ who art the light and day William Byrd
O gladsome light Louis Bourgeois
Te lucis ante terminum Thomas Tallis
Alma Redemptoris Mater T.L. de Victoria
Ave Regina caelorum T.L. de Victoria
Regina caeli laetare T.L. de Victoria
Salve Regina T.L. de Victoria
Ave Maria Francisco Guerrero
Bogoroditsye Dyevo Sergei Rachmaninov
In manus tuas William Byrd
In manus tuas John Sheppard

Price: £14.00 | Postage free on all UK CD orders

Fancies | The Cambridge Singers John Rutter conductor | Stock Code: bmcd025
Fancies
The Cambridge Singers
City of London Sinfonia
John Rutter conductor

CSCD 516

Secular music by John Rutter

This album explores the secular works of John Rutter. Fancies is a cycle of six settings of Elizabethan poetry, described by the composer as ‘music for a summer's evening.' When Icicles Hang, another choral cycle with orchestra, is a winter piece, best known for its bitter-sweet setting of Shakespeare's Blow, blow, thou winter wind. The Five Childhood Lyrics, for unaccompanied choir, take a group of simple rhymes and set them in a spirit of fun and fairytale. The Suite Antique for flute, harpsichord and strings, consists of six short movements ranging from a simple, classic ‘aria' to an upbeat ‘jazz waltz'.

"four entirely delightful compositions." Gramophone
show tracks

Price: £9.00 | Postage free on all UK CD orders

Be thou my vision John Rutter | The Cambridge Singers John Rutter conductor | Stock Code: bmcd023
Be thou my vision
The Cambridge Singers
City of London Sinfonia
John Rutter conductor

CSCD 514

Church Anthems by John Rutter

This collection draws together many of the much-loved and most-requested shorter choral works by John Rutter.

Gathered from across the Collegium catalogue, Be thou my vision includes all of the church anthems and other sacred pieces for which Rutter is justly famous, representing for the first time a handy compendium of the best-loved Rutter works in their definitive performances by the Cambridge Singers, directed by the composer.

"The recordings of Rutter conducting his own music with the Cambridge Singers remain gleaming beacons of irrepressible music-making."
BBC Music Magazine
show tracks

Price: £9.00 | Postage free on all UK CD orders

Mass of the Children John Rutter | The Cambridge Singers John Rutter conductor | Stock Code: bmcd022
Mass of the Children
The Cambridge Singers
Cantate Youth Choir
City of London Sinfonia
John Rutter conductor

COLCD 129

Mass of the Children, and other sacred music by John Rutter

Rutter's Mass of the Children was written in response to a desire to compose a work that would bring children and adults together, in the same way that performances of Britten's War Requiem had done for him when a school chorister. In five movements, the work has rapidly been taken up by choirs the world over. Also on the album are several previously unrecorded anthems and motets.

with
Joanne Lunn soprano
Roderick Williams baritone

"Musically, this is vintage Rutter." International Record Review


show tracks

Price: £13.99 | Postage free on all UK CD orders

Earth & Air & Rain Five song cycles by Gerald Finz | Martyn Hill (tenor), Stephen Varcoe (baritone), Cl | Stock Code: BMCDD22070
Thomas Hardy's Collected Poems would have been one of Gerald Finzi's desert island choices. Not that he was ever himself marooned; but at the outbreak of the last war his friend the composer Robin Milford was isolated on Guernsey and, in discussing Hardy, Finzi wrote to him that ‘if I had to be cut off from everything that would be the one book I should choose'. More poignantly he wrote in 1949 to another friend that there were perhaps another hundred poems of Hardy which attracted him, but he suspected he'd go to his grave with most of them unset. This is borne out by his copy of the Collected Poems, in which he has lightly crossed through those he has set, and marked those he would like to set. There are many more marked than crossed through. Even so, he completed setting over fifty of Hardy's poems, forty-three of them recorded here.

The earliest songs date from the 1920s; the latest from a few months before his death in 1956. Such an association argues a commitment closer even than Fauré's with Verlaine, Schumann's with Heine, Wolf's with Mörike. Finzi and Hardy could have met. There is no record that they did, though they might have seen each other at Boughton's Glastonbury Festival of 1919. When Hardy's library was sold in 1938 Finzi went to the sale and, though he dared not hope he could get any of the books, he was at least able to buy Hardy's walking-stick. (It now belongs to the Dorchester Museum.) Later Howard Bliss, brother of Arthur, gave him the authograph of ‘We Field-Women', which became a treasured possession.
show tracks

Price: £13.99 | Postage free on all UK CD orders

Rutter Requiem and Magnificat | The Cambridge Singers City of London Sinfonia John | Stock Code: cd507

Rutter Requiem and Magnificat

The Cambridge Singers
City of London Sinfonia
John Rutter conductor

CSCD 504

Two of John Rutter's most enduring and endearing pieces.

The acclaimed Collegium recordings of John Rutter's Requiem and Magnificat conducted by the composer, packaged together at mid-price. Since its first appearance in 1985, the Requiem has been performed again and again all over the world. The Magnificat was premièred in New York in 1990 and has similarly enjoyed immense popularity ever since. This, the first recording of each work, is the composer's own definitive recording.

"Memorable and ineffably lovely." Hi-Fi News

Price: £12.99 | Postage free on all UK CD orders

Samuel Barber (1910-1981) Songs | Gerald Finley (baritone), Julius Drake (piano) | Stock Code: cd0704
Samuel Barber (1910-1981)
Songs
Gerald Finley (baritone), Julius Drake (piano)

GRAMOPHONE AWARD WINNER
GRAMOPHONE DISC OF THE MONTH
BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE CHOICE

The wonderful Gerald Finley, described recently as ‘the best living baritone currently at the peak of his powers' (The Globe and Mail), brings his ‘glorious sound and great dramatic instinct' to this fascinating selection of songs, sensitively accompanied by Julius Drake.

Barber's songs are among his greatest musical achievements, demonstrating above all his sustained lyric impulse and graceful melodic writing. Another aspect was his well-developed literary taste. He unfailingly selected texts of high quality, including English ‘Georgian' poets, Irish bards, the French Symbolists and poets writing in English who were affected by them, such as James Joyce, as well as some of his own American contemporaries. Throughout his song output, he found ways of embodying the poets' thought in musical correlatives that were never merely decorative, and developed an instinctive knack for embodying words in a memorable vocal shape. Presented here are a range of early and later songs including Barber's first success for voice, Dover Beach, which the composer sang on its first recording in 1935.
show tracks

Price: £11.99 | Postage free on all UK CD orders



View Basket shopping cart
Items: | Value
credit cards accepted

      All Major Credit Cards Accepted

Valid HTML 4.01 Transitional