|
|
|
Pachelbel Canon and Other Baroque Hits
from: RCA
|
|
|
Rossini: Complete Overtures
from: Umvd Labels
|
|
|
Beethoven: Symphonies 2 and 7 [Hybrid SACD]
from: Bis
|
|
|
Yo-Yo Ma - Simply Baroque II ~ Bach & Boccherini / ABO, Koopman
: :This is the sequel to Yo-Yo Ma's wildly successful Simply Baroque, released last year. Again joined by the excellent Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra, with Ton Koopman conducting from the harpsichord, he plays with a baroque bow on his 1712 Stradivarius cello 'reconfigured' as a baroque instrument with gut strings and no endpin and tuned a half-tone lower. This gives it a mellower, more subdued sound, though his tone, despite very sparing vibrato, retains its unique expressive warmth and purity. (In concert, he currently performs on his Montagnana cello and one made recently ...
|
|
|
Bach Unaccompanied Cello Suites: Performed on Double Bass
from: Sony
: :The double bass only recently began to be regarded as a solo instrument, largely thanks to outstanding players who inspired composers to write for it. Until then, its repertoire consisted mostly of transcriptions, usually made by bassists themselves. Edgar Meyer, renowned as a bass virtuoso as well as a versatile, multifaceted composer, has now transcribed the Bach Cello Suites, three of which he plays on this disc. It is a brave and noble undertaking and a remarkable achievement. His command of instrument and bow, including a splendid chord-technique, is awesome, his ...
|
|
|
Handel: Music for the Royal Fireworks; Water Music
from: Decca
: :Sir Neville Marriner thins out the usual ASMF textures and leads vigorous, stately accounts of both the Water Music Suites and the Music for the Royal Fireworks. The playing is snappy, the feeling of dance-inspired animation just right. This is the ideal compilation, presenting both scores complete; and the sound is open, well balanced, and extremely well defined. --Ted Libbey
|
|
|
A Mormon Tabernacle Choir Christmas
: :The Mormon Tabernacle Choir has made more than 20 seasonal recordings since its first one (for broadcast to U.S. servicemen in Europe and the Pacific on Christmas Day, 1945), but none finer than this one, led by the group's newly appointed music director, Craig Jessop. Featuring lush arrangements by Mack Wilberg and Barlow Bradford, it emphasizes the gentler, more rapturous moods of the holiday, especially in such beautiful settings as Wilberg's of 'Whence Is That Goodly Fragrance?' and 'How Far Is It to Bethlehem?' and Bradford's fantasy on 'What Child Is ...
|
|
|
Mozart: Great Mass in C minor /McNair * Montague * Rolfe Johnson * Hauptmann * English Baroque Soloists * Gardiner
: :John Eliot Gardiner conducts Mozart's Great Mass with the Monteverdi Choir and the English Baroque Soloists. Or rather, what exists of the work: Mozart had imagined a work so ambitious it could never have been completed. What we do have--thanks partly to reconstruction by the conductor of this recording--is one of Mozart's most idiosyncratic works, rich in contrasts between the past (Bach and Handel) and the present (modern Italian composition). A wonderful disc. --Joshua Cody
|
|
|
Haydn, Hummel, L. Mozart: Trumpet Concertos
from: Sony
: :John Eliot Gardiner conducts Mozart's Great Mass with the Monteverdi Choir and the English Baroque Soloists. Or rather, what exists of the work: Mozart had imagined a work so ambitious it could never have been completed. What we do have--thanks partly to reconstruction by the conductor of this recording--is one of Mozart's most idiosyncratic works, rich in contrasts between the past (Bach and Handel) and the present (modern Italian composition). A wonderful disc. --Joshua Cody
|
|
|
The Great Thanksgiving
from: Sony
: :John Eliot Gardiner conducts Mozart's Great Mass with the Monteverdi Choir and the English Baroque Soloists. Or rather, what exists of the work: Mozart had imagined a work so ambitious it could never have been completed. What we do have--thanks partly to reconstruction by the conductor of this recording--is one of Mozart's most idiosyncratic works, rich in contrasts between the past (Bach and Handel) and the present (modern Italian composition). A wonderful disc. --Joshua Cody
|
|