The American conductor Thomas Schippers is a name largely unknown to many people. There may be several reasons for this. He died relatively young – at 47 – from lung…
Category: Recordings
An Akhnaten for our times from the Metropolitan Opera
Philip Glass’s major operas are hardly well represented on CD. Indeed, until recently only a single recording of each of Satyagraha and Akhnaten was available – and in the case…
Lucy Crowe & Anna Tilbrook venture into new musical territory
Emotionally charged songs by Richard Strauss interleaved with youthful offerings by Alban Berg and Arnold Schoenberg form the basis for Lucy Crowe’s first disc with Linn under the title Longing.…
Mixed delights from The King’s Consort in Purcell’s Birthday Odes for Queen Mary
Between the years 1689 and 1694 Henry Purcell conceived six successive Birthday Odes for Queen Mary who, until her death in 1694, ruled jointly with her husband William of Orange.…
Ruby Hughes in spellbinding form in Songs for New Life and Love
At first glance Charles Ives and Gustav Mahler make unusual bed fellows. But on this excellent CD from BIS they flank a song cycle by Helen Grime to form a…
Sumptuous performances of Schnittke and Pärt from the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir
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…
Respighi Songs: Ian Bostridge and Saskia Giorgini
In 1913, Ottorino Respighi (1879-1936) became professor of composition at the Liceo Musicale di S Cecilia in Rome, a post he held for over a decade. One of his students…
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…
An intriguing debut album from L’Escadron Volant de la Reine – Giovanni Girolamo Kapsberger: Il tedesco a Roma
Rome, the 1620s. Johann Hieronymus (Giovanni Girolamo) Kapsberger, virtuoso theorbist, singer and esteemed composer is at the peak of his fame and influence. Born to German parents in Venice in…
Songs of Travel and Home: a very personal debut album from baritone Julien Van Mellaerts
For his debut recital album, Julien Van Mellaerts has compiled a programme of English, French and New Zealand song which, the baritone explains, ‘shows a quasi-autobiographical insight into my life…