Hyperion
-
Where words and music most happily merge - for instance in Gibbons's Hosanna to the Son of David - the director and his vocalists exude confidence, animating melodic lines gracefully to reach... —
-
American Choral Music
with DOMINIC MARTELLI boy soprano, RACHEL MASTERS harp, GARY KETTEL percussion, THOMAS TROTTER organ, with CATHERINE DENLEY mezzo soprano
Corydon Singers, Matthew Best
Half of this programme is devoted to unaccompanied choral music by Copland: In the Beginning, a striking 15-minute 'Creation' for mixed four-part chorus and solo mezzo (which is eloquently executed... —
-
These splendid performances highlight the music's elemental aspects (not just evocations of forces of nature but the spirit of the country, long suppressed by occupiers), the Holst Singers'... —
-
here Osborne’s phrasing and pacing is pure and poetic, as well as raptly atmospheric in ‘The Snow is Dancing’ and it finishes with a deliciously louche cake-walk. —
Awards:
-
Gramophone Magazine, October 2017, Editor's Choice
-
-
Songs by Reynaldo Hahn
This two-CD set is the most representative recording of Hahn's songs ever made. It includes the complete Etudes Latines and Rondels (both with choir) as well as many of his most familiar songs.
Dame Felicity Lott (soprano), Susan Bickley (mezzo soprano), Ian Bostridge (tenor), Stephen Varcoe (baritone)
The London Schubert Chorale, Stephen Layton
The two cycles, Douze rondels and Etudes latines, are linked by a common fascination with the past.
The Douze rondels were composed to poems in a medieval metre, which allowed Hahn to try his... — -
Bach, J S: Mass in B minor, BWV232
Katherine Watson (soprano), Helen Charlston (mezzo-soprano), Iestyn Davies (countertenor), Gwilym Bowen (tenor), Neal Davies (bass)
Trinity College Choir Cambridge, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Stephen Layton
[Iestyn Davies] discharges a beautifully inflected ‘Qui sedes’, impeccably warmed and coloured by a discreet vibrato that instinctively knows its expressive place…Watson’s soaring soprano also... —
-
The most impressive work here is the Mass which is presented within a liturgical framework…in Versus est in luctum De Vivanco even approaches the sublimity of Victoria. However, these pieces... —
-
The Romantic Piano Concerto 81 - Rubbra & Bliss
Piers Lane (piano), The Orchestra Now, Leon Botstein
Rubbra’s Piano Concerto in G major is something special…Piers Lane’s solo playing throughout is a phenomenon of tireless technical strength, always beautifully aligned to each work’s different... —
-
A rewarding collection, very well played and recorded —
-
After Hamelin's fantastic virtuosity in the outrageously difficult Godowsky Studies on Chopin'sEtudes (for which he won the Gramophone Instrumental Award 2000) these two works for piano and... —
