Mark Hartt-Palmer is the co-founder, managing and artistic director of Willowhayne Records. He is in conversation with Simon about its history and development.
Willowhayne Records came into being back in 2012 after I met a friend at a St Richard Singers concert in Chichester that I was recording. He had an interest in recording and he was asking me all sorts of technical questions about the equipment and software I was using. He’d always wanted to record his organist friend Keith John (who has made a lot of recordings for record labels including Hyperion and Priory), and it was his dream to record him in Gloucester Cathedral, where they were both choristers together. Together with co-founder John Balsdon, Willowhayne Records was formed. The resulting recording was our first Experience CD, which got an Editor’s Choice in the Organist Review magazine.
After the success of our first recording, we thought we’d continue with other releases, and we’ve been releasing a small number each year since then. One of our highlights was to record BBC Young Musician Finalist Ben Goldscheider, the horn player. This was his debut CD, and since then he has recorded a disc of horn concertos by Malcolm Arnold, Christoph Schonberger and Ruth Gipps with the Philharmonia Orchestra and Lee Reynolds conducting. One of our primary focuses has been to record young and emerging artists, as well as those well established.
More recently we have released a CD entitled “Myths and Legends” which I have been working on with Catherine Lawlor (violin) and Valentina Seferinova (piano) since 2020. Like the horn concertos disc, this one took some time to come to fruition due to the COVID pandemic. We’ve now got another project in the planning stages, the contents of which are a closely guarded secret at the moment!
Our catalogue is now nearing 70 releases, which include many world premiere recordings and lesser-known works, as well as some more established repertoire. I couldn’t have imagined that our catalogue would have grown this much from its first release back in 2013!
The Experience Series already mentioned now runs to a total of 10 CDs – 2 of them recorded in Gloucester Cathedral, as well as Cape Town, Arundel, Hereford, St Asaph and St Alban’s Cathedrals, and further releases recorded in St Mary Redcliffe, St Saviour’s Eastbourne and Engelberg Abbey.
As well as making our own we now distribute other labels as well as ours through Naxos worldwide, both physically on CD and as downloads and streaming. In total, this equates to around 700 releases!
I have had an interest in recording over many years – initially recording live concerts (particularly those with the Chichester Symphony Orchestra which I was associated with as Leader and Conductor from 2000-2017). So setting up Willowhayne Records and working ‘in the studio’ was a natural progression. I feel very lucky to be working with the range of artists we have throughout the entire process of making a CD – the planning, recording engineering and production, the editing process and finally the artwork to arrive at the final product. I always have a mixture of a thrill and some trepidation when the physical product on CD is delivered – trepidation in case something might have slipped through the net!
As well as recording for Willowhayne Records, I have also been engaged to record for other labels, including Naxos and Clarinet and Saxophone Classics. For Naxos, I was the engineer, producer and editor for the first ‘studio’ recording of local composer Francis Pott’s Passion Symphony Christus. Recorded in St Alban’s Cathedral and played by organist Tom Winpenny, this work is on a grand scale, running to around 2 hours!
People can purchase our recordings via our own website, and from other well-known outlets including Amazon and Presto, to name a couple. We’re also on the digital platforms and digital downloads are also available on our website.
For some releases CD sales are holding up compared to streaming and downloads, but the general trend is downwards. But it’s good that these days the manufacturers are geared up for shorter runs, which means that fewer CDs have to be stored.
One of the other things which has sometimes caused us some challenges “friend” Brexit. Getting things through customs, particularly in the early days, was tricky – they’d pick up on anything! But now one of our main distributors in Germany has its own manufacturing facilities. That’s good for us, because it means we don’t have to bother with fulfilling the requirements of Brexit, which incurs customs charges. We just send them the artwork and the audio. It’s the same in America now as well.
There’s also a CD of clarinet trios by Beethoven, Brahms, and Zemlinsky which is in the editing stages at the moment. These were recorded in the Wiltshire Live Music Centre, which is a purpose-built concert hall with a wonderful acoustic.
One of our recent releases was a CD of 20th and 21st century English song. Local composer Peter Thompson is represented with two songs, and the recording also contains repertoire by Peter Warlock, Carey Blyton, Arnold Bax, E.J. Moeran and John Mitchell. In this instance we didn’t actually record soprano Lorna Windsor and pianist William Hancox, since Lorna lives in Milan, and so it was recorded in Italy. Most of the CDs that are under our label have been recorded by us; we are quite often asked by artists who already have a project recorded to represent them on the label. In these cases, I’m sent the audio so that I can have a listen to ascertain if the repertoire is a good fit for us. I am pretty much self-taught when it comes to recording. I am also a violinist. One of my teachers was the late Sam Coates, who will be well-known to Music in Portsmouth readers. He was a really great influence, not only because he was a very good teacher; he also taught me a lot about various violinists through listening to recordings of the 20th century’s greats, including Fritz Kreisler, Jascha Heifetz and Nathan Milstein. I’ve always had an interest in recordings and listening that has developed from that experience.
About Mark
Mark Hartt-Palmer studied violin in Portsmouth with Samuel Coates and subsequently continued under Frances Mason at the Royal College of Music where he studied violin, viola and piano.
Solo performances have included the concertos of Mendelssohn, Bruch, Sibelius, Elgar, Dvorak, Tchaikovsky, Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante and Vaughan Williams’ The Lark Ascending. He gave a rare performance of the Coleridge-Taylor Violin Concerto at the 2006 Chichester Festivities, to critical acclaim, subsequently giving the Canadian premiere of the work in Ottawa in 2008.
He was associated with the Chichester Symphony Orchestra for over 15 years, being their Leader and subsequently their Conductor. He has also been the Musical Director of several local musical theatre companies.
As a recitalist, Mark have played for many years as a duo with Richard Barnes – notable features of their partnership being a recital series in Portsmouth’s Menuhin Room and a concert Magdalen College Chapel, Oxford. They have also given performances in Valetta and Gozo cathedrals, as well as Temple Church. They have specialised in combining rare violin repertoire with well-known works, most recently performing sonatas by Stanford, Parry and Jenner.
Several of his arrangements have been performed in the UK, Germany and the USA, most notably reduced orchestrations of Gilbert & Sullivan’s Iolanthe, The Gondoliers, HMS Pinafore and The Pirates of Penzance, as well as excerpts from The Mikado and Thespis.
