SOMM Recordings is proud to announce a recital disc from cellist Adrian Bradbury and pianist Andrew West titled The Pre-Raphaelite Cello – at once ground-breaking and celebratory, and rich with first recordings. The curiosity piqued by the album’s unusual name will be amply rewarded with the fascinating story of the artistic threads this programme weaves together and their relevance to important commemorations being observed this year.

SOMM Recordings is pleased to announce Birdsong, a fascinating crossgender exploration of art songs associated with the female voice by baritone Roderick Williams, accompanied by pianist Andrew West. The recital features signature songs from the height of Romanticism by Brahms and Clara and Robert Schumann alongside a more recent quartet of sensuous songs by Sally Beamish. In his revealing foreword, Williams recalls having his choice of Brahms’s Sapphische Ode refused by competition organisers because it was “a woman’s song”.

SOMM Recordings explores one of the most significant partnerships in 20th-century British music with Façades, an album of piano-accompanied songs and music for four-hand piano by William Walton and Constant Lambert. Façades takes its title from Walton's era-defining "entertainment", heard here in arrangements for four-hand piano of its two orchestral Suites by Lambert - regarded by Walton as the definitive reciter of Edith Sitwell's nonsense verses.