Norman Stinchcombe reviews new discs from Chandos 

In 2029 Chandos will celebrate 50 years in the classical music business. It was founded by Brian Couzens, a talented music arranger and recording engineer in 1979, and since his death in 2015 has been managed by his son Ralph. In the early days Chandos started with brass band recordings, a flourishing niche market, but grew to become Britain's leading independent classical music company with a catalogue of 3,000 recordings. The Chandos name has always been synonymous with sound quality: they were one of the first companies to embrace digital recordings and compact discs and regularly release high-definition discs on SACD. In 2024 Chandos was sold to Naxos label founder Klaus Heymann but Ralph Couzens continues to run Chandos as an independent label. As well as sound Chandos is always renowned for series, backing conductor, soloists and orchestras to focus on particular composers. An early success was an outstanding Tchaikovsky cycle with a young tyro conductor Mariss Jansons and the Oslo Philharmonic, which are still in the catalogue 40 years later. Chandos now does what the great recording companies of the past once did; allowing artists to pursue their interests and give them room and resources to flourish. The huge success of conductor John Wilson and the revivified Sinfonia of London is a prime example.
Edward Gardner's recording career has flourished at Chandos with cycles of Mendelssohn and Schubert symphonies, both with the CBSO, of which he was he was principal guest conductor from 2010 to 2016, and Nielsen with the Bergen Philharmonic, of which he was principal conductor until 2024. With the latter he  recorded a cycle of Brahms' symphonies, completed with a second disc:
Brahms Symphonies 2 & 4: Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra  (Chandos CD & SACD) ★★★★ This is an exciting, bustling and beautifully played performance of Brahms' Symphony No.2, listen out for the gorgeous horn solo in the first movement and the piquant oboe at the opening of the lilting Allegretto grazioso. Gardner ensures a flowing pace in the opening movement while observing the structurally important exposition repeat which was often cut by conductors in the days of the LP, whereas Gardner has the luxury of a Chandos disc running to 81:24.  The spacious acoustic of Bergen's Grieg Hall home provides the recording with both warmth and clarity so that in Symphony No.4 the doom-laden brass have a biting edge while the winds are serenely consolatory in the Andante moderato. I felt Gardner's reading of the fourth lacked the last ounce of drama that the best performances of the symphony on disc - Haitink / Concertgebouw, Kleiber / Vienna - but this is a very enjoyable and generously-filled disc.
Gardner is also a very experienced opera conductor having worked with the English National Opera, Glyndebourne and the Norwegian National Opera. He and the Bergen forces released an acclaimed recording of Richard Strauss's succès de scandale 'Salome' in 2025 and now comes an equally impressive set of its successor:
Strauss, 'Elektra':  Baumgartner, Theorin, Holloway, Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra & Choir / Gardner (Chandos 2CDs & SACDs) ★★★★
Without the attraction, musical and theatrical, of Salome's infamous dance, 'Elektra' has always lived in its shadow and both the extreme vocal and orchestral demands its makes - a huge orchestra including eight horns, six trumpets, double timpani and two harps - means it's seldom performed. Like its predecessor a successful performance demands a dramatic soprano with both vocal prowess and immense stage presence: this set has one with the Swedish singer Iréne Theorin. She had celebrated her 60th birthday six months earlier when she recorded this live Bergen set in 2023. I would not have guessed that from her vibrant tone and cutting edge attack, and there's little sign of the vocal wear one would have expected from a career singing Brünnhilde, Isolde and Turandot. She does not have the superhuman power of Birgit Nilsson for Solti in Vienna in 1967 (still supreme) but Theorin compensates with lighter shades when required to be lyrical. The German mezzo Tanja Ariane Baumgartner's is a formidable Chrysothemis, the rest of the case are good and so is the Bergen Choir. Strauss makes the orchestra the real star and Gardner and the Bergen Philharmonic revel in the composer's outlandish (for 1909) tonal palette and searing chord clashes, sounding alternately lush, seductive and barbarous. They are aided by wide-ranging recording that, at the right volume level, has shattering power combined with lucid detail, especially on the high-definition SACD layer of the discs.
I have referred to Chandos's dedication to series of recordings with the same artist and that's exemplified by their advocacy of that most mercurial of pianists, the Frenchman Jean-Efflam Bavouzet. For them he has recorded 11 volumes of Haydn Sonatas, a complete set of Beethoven Sonatas and sets of piano concertos by Bartok and Prokofiev. Now comes the final volume in another highly successful concerto survey begun in 2016:
Mozart Piano Concertos Vol.12: Jean-Efflam Bavouzet, Manchester Camerata / Takács-Nagy (Chandos CD) ★★★★
There are some wonderfully executed and rewarding surveys of Mozart's piano concertos that have withstood the most demanding critical test, the test of time, namely Ashkenazy, Brendel and Perahia's and Malcolm Bilson's often revelatory fortepiano / original instrument set, all from the 1970 and 980s.  Bavouzet's approach fits into neither of these categories. He uses a modern piano (a Yamaha concert grand) and the Manchester Camerata, under conductor Gabor Takacs-Nagy, use modern instruments but the band is a small one, vibrato is light and the balance between them and the soloist is more akin to chamber music than what one hears in the concert hall or, normally on disc. Having traversed the solo concertos this disc features the triple concerto Concerto (No. 7), KV 242 ‘Lodron’ and double concerto Concerto (No. 10), KV 365 and Bavouzet  is joined by pianists Andrea Nemecz and Rose McLachlan. The performances are fresh, sparkling and full of vitality. All the players obviously well primed for the recording made at Manchester's Stoller Hall just after a concert featuring this programme. No.7 is often overlooked but listen to the Adagio, Mozart at his deceptively simplest yet most ravishing, and No.10's bustling Rondo finale, a musical nod-and-wink from the master. The disc is a very satisfying 75 minute concert including two opera overtures, ‘La finta semplice’ and ‘Idomeneo, rè di Creta’, plus two piano and orchestra rondos,  KV 382  and KV 386 as bonuses. A delightful end to a cycle which found something fresh to say about the concertos, in many ways the composer's most personal works.

Overtures from the British Isles Vol. 3: BBC Philharmonic Orchestra / Gamba (Chandos CD) ★★★★
The conductor Rumon Gamba is Chandos's go-to man when it comes to exploring the byways of British light music both for the cinema and concert hall. He has recorded two discs of 'British Tone Poems' and here is a third collection of 'Overtures from the British Isles' and the most interesting yet. Collections such as this are bound to be uneven with some shining gems and pieces rather duller, but there's plenty to enjoy here, not least the colourful, lively and vigorous playing of the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra. The eleven pieces were composed between 1938-1949 but display plenty of variety. Clifton Parker is best known for his film music (Gamba has conducted a Chandos disc devoted to it) but his charming miniature Overture to ‘The Glass Slipper’ was composed for a 1944 Cinderella play. The subject of Geoffrey Bush's 'Yorick' is equally well known, a lively portrait of Hamlet's 'a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy'. Robin Orr's 'The Prospect of Whitby' gets its premiere recording, a jovial rollicking portrait of a seaside pub. My own favourite here is Eric Fenby's 'Rossini on Ilkla Moor' a very funny collision between Italian comic opera and down-to-earth Yorkshire humour exemplified in the horn quartet's guying of 'Semiramide'. The disc also has works by Havergal Brian ('The Tinker’s Wedding'), Alan Rawsthorne ('Street Corner'), Dan Jones ('Comedy Overture'), Frank Bridge ('Rebus'), Richard Arnell ('The New Age'), Alan Bush ('Resolution') and Benjamin Britten's opera overture 'Paul Bunyan'.

Beethoven, The Last Three Sonatas: Imogen Cooper (Chandos CD) ★★★★
Imogen Cooper came to Chandos late in her career in 2014 but revealed her versatility and acumen with recordings of solo piano works by Brahms, Chopin, Faure, Liszt, Ravel, Schumann (Robert and Clara) and Beethoven. It is with Beethoven she bids farewell to recording having announced in January that the current concert season will be her final public appearances. She rejects the term "retiring", she will still play in private, but stepping out of the limelight and "into the sunshine" as she terms it. For her last disc she has chosen to tackle the triple peaks of Beethoven's final three piano sonatas Op.109, Op.110 and Op.111. Dame Imogen's performances are what might be termed patrician, patient, unhurried, occasionally emotionally cool but always intelligent. There are also moments of magic as in the final variation of Op.109's third movement, where Cooper's playing suggests that it's a nirvana reached after an often tempestuous journey, as in the second Prestissimo movement. The final movement of Op.110 is challenging for any pianist with its constant changes of emotional temperature as well as the fugal elements but Cooper's clarity is exemplary. Cooper excels in Op.111's final pages as the great Arietta moves into a realm beyond sound. Only in its amazing third variation, where the composer's rhythmic displacements anticipate boogie-woogie by a century, does Cooper disappoint. Cooper's disc ends hauntingly with Bartok's Dirge, Op. 9a No. 1, an ambiguous farewell. Chandos's Snape Maltings Concert Hall recording combines precision and warmth.

Madeleine Dring, Songs: Kitty Whately, Julius Drake(piano) (Chandos CD) ★★★★
The British composer Madeleine Dring will be a new name to many music lovers. She died in 1977, of a cerebral hemorrhage aged just 53. She was a child prodigy and was ten-years-old when accepted into the junior department of the Royal College of Music, offered scholarships in both violin and piano. Although she composed instrumental music - mostly short works for small ensembles - it is as a songwriter that she is best known, with interest in her music growing after the publication of two biographies, three volumes of songs and four volumes of cabaret and review numbers since 2000. This disc is a super introduction to Dring's talents, showing her versatility in ingenious settings of texts by Shakespeare, Philip Sidney and John Dryden to her own arrangement of Cole Porter's 'In the Still of the Night'. If you groan inwardly when seeing the title 'It Was a Lover and His Lass' with the thought of all those hey noninos, listen to Dring's sharp and witty take delivered with aplomb by mezzo-soprano Kitty Whately and that doyenne of accompanists Julius Drake. Dring's setting of her contemporary Michael Armstrong's four 'Night Songs' explores nocturnal doubts, fears and longings with Whately and Drake at their most sensitive. I hope the pair get the chance for another Dring disc; I'd love to hear them tackle her cabaret songs like her show stopping 'Song of a Nightclub Proprietress' from John Betjeman's poem.