Warrington-Runcorn New Town Development Plan – the one-man retro-futurist electronic project of Gordon Chapman-Fox – has announced his sixth album, Public Works and Utilities. It will be released via the Castles In Space label on October 10, alongside a new compilation, titled Appendix I, which rounds up the tracks from three Warrington-Runcorn EPs on one handy CD.
Public Works and Utilities is the sixth Warrington-Runcorn New Town Development Plan album in less than five years and continues to explore new towns and the demise of the post-war consensus. This time, Gordon’s gaze falls on our public services that have been starved of cash or privatised since 1980.
“It seems ridiculous in hindsight for a developed country to have packed up and sold off vital infrastructure such as power, water or the rail network,” he says. “Forty years down the line, and all of these vital industries are barely functional. Their prime function now is to drain cash from our pockets and into the bulging wallets of shareholders.”
This anger continues to power Gordon’s desire to make Warrington-Runcorn a statement for the here and now, with the themes more relevant than ever, rather than an exercise in rose-tinted nostalgia. As the epic, 18-minute album closer will attest, ‘The People Matter’.
“This album very much came from my live shows,” says Gordon. “A lot of these tracks were designed to be performed live, and you will have heard quite a few of them if you’ve seen me live in the last year.”
As a result, there is a certain rawness, not to mention an almost upbeat danceable quality. The atmosphere of the previous albums has become fused with an urge to get you to move your feet.
The full tracklisting of Public Works and Utilities is:
1. Swift Safe And Comfortable
2. Sunset Over Stanlow
3. 800 Yards Down At Ince Six Feet
4. Water Treatment Works
5. Renewal And Regeneration
6. The People Matter
Released on the same day as the new album, the compilation Appendix I brings together three Warrington-Runcorn EPs onto CD for the first time, bringing together some of the more esoteric elements of the world of musical new town planning.
Building A New Town from 2023 moved the reference point of Warrington-Runcorn back from the synth-drenched late-’70s to the more post-psychedelic, folk infused world of Mike Oldfield and Pentangle. The four tracks are guitar-led, but retain Gordon’s mix of optimism and sinister atmosphere.
The next EP, A Shared Sense Of Purpose was the lead single from last year’s Your Community Hub album, and released in both 7” and 12” versions. This CD takes the single edit from the 7”, and adds the bonus tracks from the 12” – including a remix from the legendary Vince Clarke, and a another guitar-led folk remix of the title track.
Lastly, Overspill Estates adds four songs taken from the sessions for Your Community Hub that didn’t make it onto the final album.
Listen to Appendix I
The full tracklisting of Appendix I is:
1. A Fresh Dawn For North Cheshire
2. The View From Halton Castle
3. Solid Foundations
4. The Cornerstone
5. A Shared Sense Of Purpose (Single Edit)
6. A Shared Sense Of Purpose (Vince Clarke remix)
7. Oakwood
8. A Shared Sense Of Purpose (1973 version)
9. The People Of The Town
10. All Mod Cons
11. Open Green Spaces
12. All You Need In Five Minutes Brisk Walk
Published post no.2,655 – Friday 12 September 2025
Vanessa Wagner continues her exploration of Philip Glass’s piano works with Etude No. 8, released on September 5th.
“Etude No. 8 is one of the most mysterious pieces of the cycle and undoubtedly the most lyrical of Book I. It begins with an ethereal unison between the right and left hands, sounding like a question, a call, and resolves into a phrase with a theme of heartbreaking tenderness. The central section, with its deep basses and 3-against-2 rhythmic sway, carries us into a universe of dark, passionate turmoil before returning to the initial unison—pure and bare, like a moment of renunciation. In just a few minutes, Philip Glass takes us through multiple emotional landscapes, all infused with gentleness, melancholy, and depth.” – Vanessa Wagner
Robin Rimbaud, aka Scanner, writes on his Bandcamp site:
Back in February 2007, I was invited to perform with my friend Todd Reynolds for the opening of the new season for Peregrine Arts in Philadelphia. It was a low key event, as I was about to present my museum performance/installation work, The Order of Things, at the Wagner Free Institute of Science in the same city in the following days.
Bahdeebahdu is an eclectic establishment in Philadelphia, PA that offers a unique blend of art, design, and creativity. It was an extraordinary space, filled with sculptures constructed almost entirely from everyday objects that the owner Warren Muller collected on regular pilgrimages to flea markets, junk stores and so on.
Todd and I set up in this remarkable space and performed an intimate interpretation of the classic work from British composer Gavin Bryars, The Sinking of the Titanic.
For years Todd has been violinist of choice for contemporary artists such as Steve Reich, Meredith Monk, and Bang on a Can, and he’s also a founder of the string quartet known as Ethel. He’s also collaborated with artists like Yo-Yo Ma, Todd Rundgren, Joe Jackson, Mark Mothersbaugh, and even Bruce Springsteen!
It has been remixed and remastered for this 2025 release. Purchase options are below:
On September 12th, Sony Classical releases Fortissima, the new double album by cellist Raphaela Gromes with the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin (DSO), conducted by Anna Rakitina and featuring Julian Riem on piano:
The album is a compelling collection of numerous world premiere recordings featuring works by neglected women composers. Their remarkable life stories can also be discovered in the book by Raphaela Gromes and Susanne Wosnitzka, published simultaneously in German by Random House. Fortissima is an inspiring musical document celebrating strong women figures who pursued their dreams under adverse conditions and refused to be held back by prescribed societal roles.
“Fortissima is about role models, for everyone, but especially for young women,” states Raphaela Gromes. “The stories of these artists are about personal integrity, the longing for freedom, and irrepressible creativity. It’s not just about outstanding music, but deeply inspiring personalities.”
Raphaela Gromes has been researching the music of women composers for more than five years. Her successful 2023 album ‘Femmes’ was already a result of this work. “In my education and career, I hardly ever came into contact with the music of female composers, and yet there is so much extraordinary music to discover,” explains Raphaela Gromes. “I want to help make these works more widely known and hope they will one day become part of the standard repertoire.”
The first half of the double album is dedicated to compositions for cello and piano by Henriëtte Bosmans, Victoria Yagling, Emilie Mayer, Mélanie Bonis, and Luise Adolpha Le Beau, complemented by an arrangement of All I Ask by Adele. The second half features cello concertos by Maria Herz and Marie Jaëll, a ballade for cello and orchestra by Elisabeth Kuyper, two newly composed orchestral works Femmage I and Femmage II by Rebecca Dale plus an orchestral arrangement of P!NK’s Wild Hearts Can’t be Broken.
Raphaela Gromes was inspired to record Maria Herz’s cello concerto by the composer’s grandson, Albert Herz, who contacted her following a radio programme about her 2023 album ‘Femmes’, which placed women composers firmly in the spotlight. Maria Herz, born in Cologne in 1878 into the Jewish textile dynasty Bing, was forced to flee Nazi Germany and initially lived in England, later in the United States. She left her grandson a large box full of compositions, letters, and pictures, in which the forgotten cello concerto was found. Gromes was instantly captivated upon first browsing the score: the cello leads through an exciting movement with virtuosic solo cadenzas, dense harmonically complex passages, and a jubilant final stretta that evokes the Jewish dance ‘Freylekhs’. Herz began composing after the birth of her four children and, following the death of her husband, sometimes published under a male pseudonym.
The struggle to gain recognition as a female musician and composer was shared by contemporaries Marie Jaëll, born 1846 in Alsace as Marie Trautmann, and Elisabeth Kuyper, born 1877. Although Marie Jaëll was hailed as a musical prodigy and toured across Europe as a child piano virtuoso, a career as a composer largely eluded her. She received private tuition from César Franck and Camille Saint-Saëns and, as personal secretary to Franz Liszt, edited and completed several of his works. Liszt aptly summarised her situation: “A man’s name above her music, and it would be on every piano.” Her virtuosic and moving cello concerto is considered the first such work by a woman and is dedicated to her late husband. Elisabeth Kuyper became the first woman to win the Mendelssohn Scholarship (1905) and was appointed composition lecturer in 1908 in Berlin, another first. Yet a lasting career as a composer and, especially, conductor, was denied her. She subsequently founded several women’s orchestras – in Berlin, London and the USA – all of which eventually failed due to lack of funding. Kuyper died impoverished and forgotten in Ticino. Many of her works are considered lost, including her Ballade for Cello and Orchestra, which Julian Riem reconstructed from a surviving piano score.
Emilie Mayer, born in 1812, and Luise Adolpha Le Beau, born in 1850, were fortunate to gain recognition as composers during their lifetimes. Mayer’s works were performed at the Konzerthaus Berlin, including for King Friedrich III. She had to finance both the performances of her works and their publication herself, which was only possible thanks to an inheritance from her father. The Sonata in A major for Piano and Cello is one of ten surviving cello sonatas. Luise Adolpha Le Beau was supported early on as a pianist by her parents and received lessons from Clara Schumann. She was the first woman to study composition under Josef Rheinberger in Munich and first gained attention for her compositions in 1882 with her Five Pieces for Violoncello Op. 24. The cello sonata Op. 17, recorded by Raphaela Gromes, was even recommended by an all-male jury as a “publishable enrichment.” Henriëtte Bosmans, born in 1895, also received some recognition as a composer in her homeland of the Netherlands, although she was better known as a pianist and, after the war, as a music journalist. Due to her Jewish heritage, she was forced to go into hiding during the Nazi regime and succeeded in rescuing her mother, who had been deported to a concentration camp. Her cello sonata was originally commissioned for the cellist Marix Loevesohn and was composed after the First World War.
Many of the early female composers were initially instrumentalists – a description that particularly applies to Victoria Yagling, a true star cellist. Born in 1946 in the Soviet Union, she studied with Rostropovich and won major competitions. Censorship in the USSR hindered her creative work, and it was only in 1990 that she was able to emigrate to Finland, where she became a highly respected professor. In an era when, in some circles, working as a female musician was equated with prostitution, Mélanie Bonis, born in 1858 in Paris, had to fight even for piano lessons. Exceptionally talented, she was eventually admitted to the Paris Conservatoire at the age of twelve to study with César Franck. Oppressed by her parents and forced into marriage, she suffered from severe depression during the final 15 years of her life. Yet it was during this period that she composed the delicate piece Méditation, which her granddaughter discovered in 2018 in an attic.
Three contemporary works are included on ‘Fortissima’: Femmage I and II were composed especially for Raphaela Gromes by British composer Rebecca Dale (b. 1985). In the reflective, cinematic ‘She walks through History’, Dale places a sweeping melody at the centre to highlight the vocal expressiveness of Raphaela Gromes’ cello playing. In ‘Meditation’, Dale unfolds a harmonically fascinating sound spectrum, with the cello solo rising from its lowest register to extreme heights. The adaptation of Adele’s ‘All I Ask’ pays tribute to one of the greatest soul voices and songwriters of our time, while P!NK’s ‘Wild Hearts Can’t be Broken’ holds special personal significance for Raphaela Gromes. The lyric “My freedom is burning, this broken world keeps turning, I’ll never surrender, there’s nothing but a victory. This is my rally cry.” could also serve as a motto for the women composers featured on the album.
As part of the album’s production, three new sheet music editions were also created: Henriëtte Bosmans’ cello sonata will be published by the renowned Henle Verlag. Marie Jaëll’s cello concerto, now including a newly discovered second movement recorded for the first time on this album, will be published in an edition by Julian Riem at furore Verlag. Elisabeth Kuyper’s Ballade for Cello and Orchestra, whose original score is lost, has been newly orchestrated by Julian Riem and Raphaela Gromes from the surviving piano version and will be published by Boosey & Hawkes.
‘Fortissima’ is released on September 12th by Sony Classical.
TRACKLIST:
CD 1 (feat. Julian Riem, piano)
1. – 4. Henriëtte Bosmans: Cello Sonata in A Minor
5. Victoria Yagling: Larghetto
6. – 9. Emilie Mayer: Cello Sonata in A Major
10. Mélanie Bonis: Méditation
11. – 13. Luise Adolpha Le Beau: Cello Sonata in D Major, op. 17
14. Adele: All I ask
CD 2 (feat. Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, conductor: Anna Rakitina)
1. – 4. Marie Jaëll: Cello Concerto in F Major
5. – 11. Maria Herz: Cello Concerto Op. 10
12. Elisabeth Kuyper: Ballad for Cello and Orchestra, op. 11
13. Rebecca Dale: Femmage I – She Walks Through History
14. Rebecca Dale: Femmage II – Meditation for Cello & Orchestra
15. P!NK: “Wild Hearts Can’t Be Broken”
Published post no.2,644 – Thursday 4 September 2025
Thomas de Hartmann is a composer whose profile has soared in recent years, thanks to well timed album releases from Wyastone and Pentatone, and a recent Proms debut where the Violin Concerto was performed by Joshua Bell, with the BBC Symphony Orchestra under Dalia Stasevka.
Today Pentatone make a small but meaningful addition to their discography. Cellist Matt Haimovitz has already recorded the composer’s Cello Concerto, but now he adds a meaningful extra in the solo work La Kobsa, composed by de Hartmann in exile in 1950.
The press release writes, “While the recording was made at Skywalker Sound in California, the emotional core of this project lies in Haimovitz’s four-city tour of Ukraine with the Odesa Philharmonic in May 2024, made possible by a grant from the U.S. State Department. During his journey, he performed impromptu sets in public squares and for wounded soldiers, accompanied by a documentary film crew, and brought de Hartmann’s music to his homeland for the very first time.”
What’s the music like?
Running in two short movements, La Kobsa begins with a deeply felt utterance, a profound piece from the cello:
The second part is more playful and optimistic, a dance with a rustic edge, which finds Haimovitz in exuberant but poignant form:
Listen / Buy
You can listen and explore download options from the Pentatone website
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