Francisco Guerrero from The Brabant Ensemble

Known by his contemporaries as ‘El cantor de Maria’, Francisco Guererro (1528-99) was a much-travelled musician and composer whose career bridged the gap between Cristóbal de Morales and Tomás Luis…

Glorious performances from Ensemble Aedes and Les Siècles

This recent Marian-themed disc from the French record label Aparté brings together a trio of works by two composers four centuries apart: a single offering by the Renaissance Clément Janequin…

New Millennium: Choir of St John’s College, Cambridge

Signum’s latest release of 21st-century choral music is a hugely rewarding survey of anthems and organ music from living composers, many of whom are graduates of Cambridge University.  With eight…

MacMillan, Tavener & Vaughan Williams: the Choir of Westminster Abbey

In its century-spanning traversal of sacred music, this recent issue from Hyperion and the Choir of Westminster Abbey – the last recording from the recently retired Director of Music James…

Medtner in England: a marvellous new release from SOMM

Composer-pianist Nikolai Medtner (1880-1951) has sometimes been labelled, like his compatriot and friend Sergei Rachmaninov, as being ‘born too late’.  The late-Romantic idiom in which they both wrote, well into…

The English Tenor: a debut disc from Scott Robert Shaw

The English Tenor might seem a rather odd title for a disc which is sung by a tenor who was born in Australia, trained at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music…

New College: Commissions & Premieres

A disc of commissions and premieres may seem a bold decision for a record company wishing to maximise on sales potential.  But this is the choir of New College, Oxford,…

Maltworms and Milkmaids: a new recording of Warlock’s orchestral music and songs

During his tragically short life, Peter Warlock – the pen name used by Philip Heseltine (1894-1930) – composed around 119 solo songs, 23 choral works (some unaccompanied and others with…

Joel Frederiksen and Ensemble Phoenix Munich offer the lyric mastery of Walther von der Vogelweide

In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the aesthetic and songs of courtly love travelled to Germany from Provence and northern France.  Minnesinger, like their Romance counterparts, composed both the texts…

Anime Immortali: Franco Fagioli offers a portrait of Mozart and the castrato voice

Mozart probably isn’t the first composer whom one thinks of in association with eighteenth-century castrati.  But, for over two decades – from Mitridate, re di Ponto K87/74a, written for the…