PRE-ORDER: Brockless Centenary Strings - Brian Brockless: English Elegy [CD], Brockless Centenary Strings, CD

Brian Brockless (1926-95), London-born and -bred, was a conductor, organist, teacher and composer whose career embraced orchestral performance, sacred music, musical education and the revival of Renaissance polyphony. After studying with Herbert Howells, Matyas Seiber and Sergiu Celibidache, he taught harmony and orchestration at the Royal Academy of Music and served for many years as Director of Music at a City of London church. This album - the first recorded survey of his music - ranges from works for string orchestra and piano to songs, sacred vocal music and music for organ, most of them prepared from unpublished manuscripts. The music as a whole is marked by an essential Englishness, one which looks to earlier traditions and also reflects the modernity of the second half of the twentieth century.