This first foray into the music of Heinrich Schütz from Les Cris de Paris is an absolute winner, a superb addition to the composer’s discography of more than 100 recordings.…
Category: Recordings
Enoch Arden: a new recording of Richard Strauss’s melodrama from Christopher Kent and Gamal Khamis
Melodrama: literally, the joining of music (melos) and drama. The word has various connotations, though, relating to genre, method and expression. Denoting a work for narrator and instruments, and sometimes…
Tormento d’amore: Italian love laments from Ian Bostridge and Cappella Neapolitana
The booklet article by the musicologist Dinko Fabris which accompanies Tormento d’amore – Ian Bostridge’s most recent recording, with Antonio Florio’s Cappella Neapolitana – is titled ‘From Venice to Naples…
From the Hills of Dream: the forgotten songs of Arnold Bax
In a 1949 broadcast, Sir Arnold Bax (1883-1953) declared: ‘Yeats’ poetry means more to me than all the music of the centuries.’ And, when the Irish poet and dramatist died…
Baroque pornography in Alexis Piron’s Vasta, Reine de Bordélie
One of the more enduring pleasures of having had a classical education – at least if you still remember it – is reading the richness of its literature: from Homer…
A third volume of British song from James Gilchrist and Nathan Williamson
With this third and final instalment of their survey of 100 years of British song James Gilchrist and Nathan Williamson bring us up to the present day. Their focus is…
Thrilling sounds from the Choir of King’s College Cambridge
On the surface this new disc from the Choir of King’s College Cambridge presents mainly standard repertoire for Holy Week and Easter. Some might consider the compilation a little too…
Impressive Mahler from Bychkov and the Czech Philharmonic
Any new recording from Semyon Bychkov is to be eagerly anticipated, not least the launch of this first disc in a new Mahler cycle, a recent collaboration with Pentatone. Judging…
Dove, Weir and Martin from the Choir of Westminster Abbey
Hyperion has brought together three composers with a special affinity for choral music, as already demonstrated in earlier recordings devoted solely to their music on Delphian, Naxos and Opus Arte…
Eastertide Evensong from St John’s College, Cambridge
Does the release of a second live evensong album from this celebrated choir reflect a growing interest in the music and ritual within our great cathedrals and collegiate chapels? Whatever…