|
|
|
Perotin / The Hilliard Ensemble
: essential recording:It would be impossible to adequately describe the inherent haunting beauty of Perotin's music, or to fully detail its far-reaching influence in latter-12th-century France. The opening 'Viderunt omnes' is a perfect illustration of the surprising vitality and highly charged sense of forward motion that can be obtained with relatively simple rhythmic impulses and harmonic devices. The male voices of the Hilliard Ensemble generate an electrifying resonance that vibrates everything in the room that's not solid or nailed down. You can literally feel this music, ringing with natural harmonics and set to ...
|
|
|
Handel: Messiah [Includes Bonus CD]
from: Coro
:Album Description:Brand new recording by one of the most celebrated ensembles in the world features distinguished soloists revered for their performances of Handel. 'What a winning combination: Handel's Messiah, the most popular oratorio ever written, sung by The Sixteen, the most richly sonorous of early music choirs.' -- The Telegraph 'The Sixteen are on fine form in a repertory that sees them at their most confident.' -- Gramophone
|
|
|
Haydn - The Creation / Piau, Padmore, Davies, Gabrieli Consort & Players, McCreesh
from: ARCHIV Produktion
:Album Description:Brand new recording by one of the most celebrated ensembles in the world features distinguished soloists revered for their performances of Handel. 'What a winning combination: Handel's Messiah, the most popular oratorio ever written, sung by The Sixteen, the most richly sonorous of early music choirs.' -- The Telegraph 'The Sixteen are on fine form in a repertory that sees them at their most confident.' -- Gramophone
|
|
|
Essential Purcell
: essential recording:The 'Essential' Purcell? Well, you could get a bunch of critics to argue about that for a few days, but in the meantime, here is a sampler of highlights from the King's Consort's three admirable Purcell series: the Complete Odes and Welcome Songs, Complete Anthems and Services, and Complete Secular Solo Songs. There are, of course, some of Purcell's most-performed pieces (which probably are 'essential'): Dido's Lament from Dido and Aeneas, 'Sound the trumpet' from Come, ye sons of Art, Rejoice in the Lord alway (the 'Bell Anthem,' named for the ...
|
|
|
Purcell - The Fairy Queen / Hunt, Pierard, Bickley, Crook, Padmore, Wilson-Johnson, Wistreich, Schütz Choir, LCP, Norrington
from: Virgin Veritas
: :Purcell worked immensely hard on his score for The Fairy Queen, but the original was lost. The version on which this performance is based arrived at London's Royal Academy of Music by devious routes a century and a half later. But in Roger Norrington's hands, it emerges in its pristine beauty: you could not wish for a better introduction to Purcell's greatest stage work. Only a 'semi-opera,' maybe, but one studded with exquisite songs and majestic choruses. The anonymous libretto is loosely based on Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, but its inexhaustible melodic ...
|
|
|
Christmas Through the Ages
from: Hyperion UK
: :Purcell worked immensely hard on his score for The Fairy Queen, but the original was lost. The version on which this performance is based arrived at London's Royal Academy of Music by devious routes a century and a half later. But in Roger Norrington's hands, it emerges in its pristine beauty: you could not wish for a better introduction to Purcell's greatest stage work. Only a 'semi-opera,' maybe, but one studded with exquisite songs and majestic choruses. The anonymous libretto is loosely based on Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, but its inexhaustible melodic ...
|
|
|
There Is Sweet Music: English Choral Songs, 1890 - 1950
:Album Description:‘I have rarely been so stunned by the opening track of a disc before. The performance of Stanford’s The Blue Bird here attains the sublime.’ Hi-Fi News & Record Review
|
|
|
Bach Cantatas, Vol. 24: Altenberg, Warwick
from: Soli Deo Gloria
:Album Description:‘I have rarely been so stunned by the opening track of a disc before. The performance of Stanford’s The Blue Bird here attains the sublime.’ Hi-Fi News & Record Review
|
|
|
Handel - Messiah / Gritton, Mingardo, Padmore, Miles, Tenebrae Choir, LSO, Sir Colin Davis [includes DVD]
from: LSO Live (UK)
: :With an outstanding solo quartet and a great chorus and orchestra, Davis leads a sterling performance that challenges the supremacy of his 1966 Philips recording of Messiah. Davis leads a dramatic performance; the famous 'Hallelujah' chorus appropriately grand, the final 'Amen' bristling with brazen energy, both sung with extraordinary tonal coloring and precise articulation by the chorus, which also shines in a lithe 'He shall purify' and a vividly virtuoso 'For unto us a child is born.' Soprano Susan Gritton's solos are a delight, whether in the measured 'Behold, a virgin shall conceive' ...
|
|
|
Purcell - King Arthur / Gens, McFadden, Piau, S. Waters, J. Best, Padmore, Paton, Salomaa, Les Arts Florissants, Christie
from: Erato (Warner Classics)
: essential recording:The Fairy Queen may be the most famous of Purcell's 'semi-operas' (spoken dramas with extended musical items incorporated--not to say dropped in), but King Arthur, with text by John Dryden, is undoubtedly the most satisfying. Not only is the music captivating on its own terms, it's unusually well-integrated into the action--for example, one musical scene depicts the heathen Saxons performing a pre- battle ceremony; another shows good spirits guiding King Arthur and his men through a dark swamp while evil spirits try to mislead them. The first three acts have a ...
|
|
