Modern scholarship directed at the English Reformation composer John Sheppard (c.1515-58) has come a long way since Peter le Huray’s research during the 1960s and David Wulstan’s pioneering performances a…
Author: David Truslove
Choir of Keble College, Oxford: Ave Rex Angelorum
Ancient plainchant, medieval texts and numinous harmonies form a unifying thread for this uplifting recent disc from the Choir of Keble College Oxford recorded in the warm acoustic of Buckfast…
Pagliacci: The Grange Festival
If theatre in general, and verismo opera in particular, is based on the tension between pretence and reality, art and life, this performance of Pagliacci at The Grange in leafy…
Simon Mold: Song Cycles
As an ex-chorister of Peterborough Cathedral and varied involvement as a lay-clerk, Simon Mold has enjoyed working within the centuries-old church music tradition, affording him valuable encounters with some of…
Britten: A Ceremony of Carols – Choir of Clare College, Cambridge
It’s a bold director who decides to explore Benjamin Britten’s smaller and relatively minor choral repertoire alongside the seldom recorded SATB version of A Ceremony of Carols. As the booklet…
Bruckner Mass in E minor & Te Deum: Collegium Vocale Gent
Philippe Herreweghe, Collegium Vocale Gent and the Orchestre des Champs-Élysées bring together two sides of Anton Bruckner’s deep-rooted spirituality. Whether expressed through the rich polyphony of the Mass in E…
Heaven full of Stars: Vasari Singers celebrate 40 years of music-making
With this 40th-anniversary disc celebrating four decades since its formation by the still-current director Jeremy Backhouse, Vasari Singers is now officially middle-aged. But with this twenty-eighth CD, there’s no sign…
Jaakko Mäntyjärvi
The Choir of Trinity College Cambridge / Stephen Layton Stephen Layton uncovers a rich seam of choral jewels in this collection of sacred music by Finnish choral composer and translator…
Liszt/Thalberg Opera Transcriptions & Fantasies: Marc-André Hamelin
‘Thalberg is the first pianist in the world – Liszt is unique.’ So declared, somewhat ambiguously, the impressively named Princess Cristina Trivulzio di Belgiojoso in her Parisian salon after hearing…
King’s College Cambridge: Bruckner – Mass No.2 in E minor/Motets
While religious convictions are not necessarily a prerequisite for composers of sacred music (the agnosticism of Vaughan Williams was no barrier to his Mass in G minor nor Fauré’s atheism…