Another coupling of Alfred Schnittke and Arvo Pärt from BIS brings together three unaccompanied choral works of the 1980s. Two close contemporaries, their spiritual journeys coincided with the revival of…
Author: David Truslove
Cinquecento present an outstanding collection of music by Heinrich Isaac
After hearing this excellent disc which Cinquecento have devoted to the music of Heinrich Isaac, I was compelled to find other recordings. How seldom the music of this Flemish-born composer…
Hurn Court Opera’s Dido and Aeneas
An outing to the handsome Romanesque-revival church in Wilton, Wiltshire for a performance of Dido and Aeneas by Hurn Court Opera provided food for thought. Established in 2017, this Dorset-based…
Polished performances from Sir John Eliot Gardiner in Bach & Handel
There’s no denying the energy and precision Sir John Eliot Gardiner can still coax from the Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists, founded by him over fifty years ago. In…
The Complete Songs of Fauré Vol. 4: varied performances highlight vocal diversity
The final instalment of Signum’s four-part Fauré exploration comes, as previously, with the ever-reliable collaborator Malcolm Martineau. This disc’s two dozen plus songs are shared by a luxury line-up of…
Restrained passions in West Green Opera’s Eugene Onegin
‘Being in love is a complicated matter; although anyone who is prepared to pretend that love is a simple, straightforward business is always in a strong position for making conquests’.…
Grayston Ives’s engaging Requiem
There’s a degree of inevitability that a composer who has made numerous contributions to the repertoire for church and cathedral choirs spanning some fifty years might want to add a…
El Nour: impressive debut CD by Fatma Said
There cannot be many sopranos whose debut CD takes the listener on a cultural tour around the Mediterranean. And what a fascinating exploration this is by a rising star who…
The Sixteen release their fourth volume of Purcell’s Welcome Songs for King Charles II
Harry Christophers and The Sixteen have now reached volume 4 in their ongoing exploration of Henry Purcell’s Welcome Songs for Charles II. Like the previous discs in the series, evolving…
Musically, a first-rate Midsummer Night’s Dream from The Grange Festival
Thank goodness for modern technology and sophisticated recording techniques, without which this production of Pears’s and Britten’s cherry-picked edit of Shakespeare’s play might have been scuppered. A month before curtain-up…