Gramophone Magazine Features SOMM Recordings

Gramophone Magazine’s Guide to Record Labels features SOMM Recordings in celebration of the label’s 30th Anniversary!

In our latest guide to a classical record label, Tim Parry explores the catalogue of a thriving independent British label

“Having trained as a pianist and then worked as a freelance recording producer and for EMI and

Unicorn-Kanchana, Siva Oke founded SOMM Recordings in 1995 along with her late husband Keith. The company’s logo – oak leaves and acorns, drawn freehand by Keith Oke – was intended to symbolise strength as well as being a light-hearted pun on their North Devonian surname.

SOMM prides itself on its twin promotion of British music and young talent. Among the label’s early achievements was its successful New Horizons’ series, launched in 2002, which enabled young musicians to make a recording early in their career. Among those who benefitted from such exposure are pianists Mark Bebbington, Daniel Grimwood, George-Emanuel Lazaridis, Charles Owen, Cristian Sandrin and Cordelia Williams. For Mark Bebbington this has led to an extensive relationship with SOMM, with more than 30 recordings and an international reputation for championing British music – his album of Vaughan William’s piano music, also featuring Rebeca Omordia, is one of SOMM’s best-selling recordings.

In addition to playing a key role in launching the careers of young musicians, SOMM has worked with many established artists and composers, including John Joubert, John McCabe and Ian Venables, conductors Paul Spicer, José Serebrier and Jac van Steen, pianists Peter Donohoe, Clélia Iruzun, Leon McCawley, Rebeca Omordia and Valerie Tryon, the Brodsky, Dante, Endellion, Eusebius and Tippett Quartets, and tenor James Gilchrist and baritone Roderick Williams, among many others.

SOMM has always offered powerful advocacy of neglected repertoire, and its catalogue – encompassing over 400 titles – explores a rich seam of British music, thanks to the label’s close collaboration with and support from the Elgar, Vaughan Williams, Holst, Howells and Stanford societies.

Ever since SOMM’s very first release in 1995 – a historical recording licensed from Supraphon of Janáček’s Rikadla (“Nursery Rhymes’, with the Czech Philharmonic Chorus and Orchestra, recorded in 1957) and male choruses (with the Moravian Teachers’ Choir conducted by Antonin Tucapsky, recorded in 1969) – historical recordings have been a passion for Siva Oke. “The Beecham Collection’ was an early series, extending to 32 volumes, compiled in collaboration with Shirley, Lady Beecham, and her longtime friend and colleague the late Arthur Ridgewell. In 2000, SOMM released a 1971 recording of Bruckner’s Symphony No 8 from the Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra and Rudolf Kempe, a rare example of Kempe’s Bruckner-conducting on record. A remastered reissue of Vaughan Williams conducting his own Fifth Symphony at the Proms in 1952 won a Gramophone Award in 2008. Holding a special position in SOMM’s catalogue is a fascinating four-disc set of ‘Elgar Remastered’, drawing upon valuable pressings from the composer’s personal library. This includes stereo realisations made by Lani Spahr, a musician and restoration engineer whose collaboration with SOMM has delivered several notable archival projects, including three volumes of ‘Elgar from America’, forgotten recordings by George Szell and the Cleveland Orchestra, and anniversary tributes to Bruckner, Vaughan Williams, Holst, Bliss and EJ Moeran.”