I Am with You - Christ's Passion, the ultimate sacrifice, is the subject of I Am With You. This release includes one of two recordings of the chanted passion narrative according to the Gospel of John, featuring three cantors who assume the characters in the story of the passion. This stirring Gregorian chant evokes the passion, mystery, and beauty of the life of Christ.

Xiaogang Ye is regarded as one of today’s leading Chinese composers. The Macau Bride a colourful and evocative ballet based on a story from the 17th century in which Chinese sailor Chon Kou and Portuguese captain’s daughter Maria do Mar fall in love following a chance encounter in Belém. They set sail for Macau, survive a storm and an attack by pirates, and are finally reunited and married in Macau. The Four Poems of Lingnan from the classical literature of ancient Chinese dynasties.

A very good and well-conceived musical celebration of Queen Elizabeth’s Diamond Jubilee.

No doubt there will be plenty of recordings issued in 2012 to celebrate - or cash in on, the cynic might say - the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II. This is John Rutter’s contribution.
 
You may ask, what have Schubert’s psalm setting or a movement from the Brahms Requiem to do with the British royal family? It may be similarly objected that a piece such as the one by John Tavener has little to do with jubilee celebrations. After all, its sole connection with royalty is that it was sung at the funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales in 1997. The answer to such questions lies in the title of the disc. “Music on Royal Occasions” allows John Rutter to cast his net wide. In fact, all but two of the pieces included here have been performed either at a royal wedding or funeral between 1947 - the marriage of the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh - and 2011 - the wedding of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge. The two exceptions are the piece by Richard Rodney Bennett, which was written for the diamond wedding anniversary of the Queen and Prince Philip, and the extract from Britten’s opera, written to celebrate Queen Elizabeth’s coronation. In case you were wondering, the Schubert was sung at the 1960 wedding of Princess Margaret and Anthony Armstrong-Jones while the Brahms was heard at the funeral of Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother in 2002: I didn’t know those last two facts but the booklet helpfully tells us which piece was heard at which royal event.
 
Both of the new pieces written for the 2011 Royal Wedding are included. Rutter’s own offering is a nice, readily accessible piece. To be frank - and I speak as an admirer of Rutter’s music - it’s a trifle disappointing in that it’s pretty predictably Rutter-ish. Then, to be fair, an occasion such as the Royal Wedding is one when a composer probably ought to write something that is readily appreciated by a worldwide audience. As I wrote recently, when reviewing a disc of music by Paul Mealor, I’ve revised my view of his Ubi caritas since I first heard it. At the Royal Wedding I thought it a somewhat grey piece but hearing it again on the Mealor disc I thought it came over better. However, I clearly recall thinking when I first heard it that it wasn’t a patch on the Maurice Duruflé setting and hearing the two one after the other merely confirms that view. The Mealor piece is nice and sincere but Duruflé’s fluent setting is simply inspired.
 
New to me was the Richard Rodney Bennett piece and I’m delighted to make its acquaintance. Written for unaccompanied choir it’s a very fine setting of the famous passage from St. Paul’s Epistle to the Corinthians - ‘If I speak with the tongues of men and angels …’ It receives a v ery fine performance, as do all the other pieces on the programme. It’s enterprising to include this unfamiliar piece and it’s equally enterprising to include the extract from Britten’s Gloriana.
 
Soprano Elin Manahan Thomas is on hand to sing the solos in the Mozart and Handel selections. She sings both very well, though, to my taste, her ornamentation in the Handel is a bit too florid. Incidentally, the Handel is also distinguished by excellent silvery trumpet solos by Simon Cox.
 
The Brahms piece is given in English. I’d much rather hear it in German but I can understand why it’s done in English here since that’s how it’s done as a separate Anglican anthem - and, presumably, that’s how it was given at the Queen Mother’s funeral. The Elgar piece that follows is the prologue to the oratorio The Apostles and it, too, is often heard as a separate anthem. I was mildly disappointed to hear it done here with organ accompaniment - though Andrew Lucas plays splendidly. It’s a bit illogical to do the Brahms with orchestra and the Elgar without; I can only think that the Aurora Orchestra isn’t sufficiently big for Elgar’s scoring.
 
So, to anyone who might glance at this CD on a shelf and dismiss it as ‘just another Jubilee potboiler’ I’d say: think again. I must honest and say that’s what I expected when I saw the disc advertised but I was wrong. This selection is a bit different and a bit more thoughtful and reflective than one might expect. Perhaps one should coin a phrase and say ‘don’t judge a CD by its cover’. The performances are all expertly done and the recorded sound and documentation are very good. This is a very good and well-conceived musical celebration of Queen Elizabeth’s Diamond Jubilee.
 
-- John Quinn, MusicWeb International

A new recording by John Rutter and his Cambridge Singers is always welcome, and this one features 20 works drawn from the sacred choral repertoire of the Renaissance and Baroque. Most of these are motets and many are familiar (Palestrina's Sicut cervus and Exsultate Deo, Gabrieli's Jubilate Deo, Lassus' Timor et tremor, Josquin's Ave Maria) and all are included in Rutter's published anthology, European Sacred Music (Oxford). As Rutter states, the program's theme is to focus on the "wealth of sacred music...created in continental Europe out of the ferment of the age of Reformation", and while Rutter has chosen primarily works resulting from the "extraordinary flowering" of musical activity in the Catholic church during this period, we also are treated to a motet by Bach (O Jesu Christ, meins Lebens Licht BWV 118/231, often mis-classified as a cantata), a Magnificat (presumably) by Buxtehude, and a psalm (100) by Schütz.

Some listeners of course will disagree, but for me, the program's two longest pieces--Monteverdi's Beatus vir and the Buxtehude Magnificat--are the least interesting, the former's main thematic material formed primarily by repetitive scales and rudimentary harmony set to monotonous rhythm, the latter functional and pleasant enough but rather flat, undynamic, and static, a work that reminds us that just because a notable composer wrote (or may have written!) something and the score survived doesn't necessarily mean it's good or worthy of more than musicological interest.

No matter how you judge these two works, you'll be happy with the performances, which throughout this recording are at the high level we always expect from this choir and director: vibrant, articulate, carefully balanced, and always attentive to a given work's inherent expressive possibilities. And speaking of articulate, it's wonderful to hear the opening Jubilate Deo (a piece lovingly attempted and so often mangled by well-meaning choirs all over the world) sung with such clarity and agility, unrushed; likewise, Palestrina's sublime Sicut cervus is well-paced, each line given its due. Other highlights include the Ave Maria of Josquin (impressive intonation and sectional tone quality), Lassus' Ave verum corpus (those exquisitely sustained long lines!), and a curious--and quite beautiful--setting of Crux fidelis attributed to John IV, King of Portugal. The instrumental ensemble, the relatively "new" La Nuova Musica, is first-rate, its timbres adding textural variety and layers of color to nine of the selections. And completing the package is top-notch production and engineering by Simon Eadon, captured in the excellent acoustics of London's Great Hall of University College School. Needless to say: Highly recommended!

--David Vernier, ClassicsToday.com

Listen to the Naxos Podcast to learn more about this release

Enrique Granados is known for composing some of the most popular Spanish piano masterpieces. Along with these famous compositions, he also wrote a sequence of orchestral works. Marcha de los vencidos, which is the first track featured on this album, evokes the emotion of the painful march of "the defeated" from a lost battle. This album is the first in a series to be released in honor of the centenary of the composer’s death. The compositions on this album are performed by the Barcelona Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Pablo Gonzalez.

This recording, an exploration of sacred and secular music in the New World during the first years of the Baroque period, was made at the conclusion of a successful concert tour that formed part of the Festival de Wallonie 2012. Hanacpachap, recorded here, was the first sacred work in a native language to be published in Latin America.

For repertory and performance details, please see the individual discs comprising this set: Collegium 107 "Faire is the Heaven" and Collegium 113 "Hail, Gladdening Light".
Includes work(s) by various composers. Ensemble: Cambridge Singers. Conductor: John Rutter.