Classical Vocals CDs
Classical Vocals CDs
1514 products
Vasks: Mate Saule / 3 Poems By Czeslaw Milosz
Handel, G.F.: Opera and Oratorio Arias (My Personal Handel C
Skalkottas: 16 Melodies / 15 Little Variations / Piano Sonat
Milken Archive - Charles Davidson: A Singing Of Angels
Includes work(s) by Charles Davidson. Ensemble: Finchley Children's Music Group. Conductors: Nicholas Wilks, Bradley Lubman. Soloists: Douglas Webster, Amy Goldstein.
The Bach Collection / Christophers, The Sixteen
Three of The Sixteen's celebrated Bach recordings in one stylish boxed set. Weihnachts Oratorium (COR16017) - The Christmas Oratorio is one of Bach's greatest masterpieces and this recording is one of The Sixteen's finest. Mark Padmore is one of today's greatest 'Evangelist's', and this recording shows him at his very best. Cantatas 34, 50, 147 (COR16039) - During his years as Leipzig's Director Musices, Bach supplied at least three complete annual cycles of Cantatas for the church year. The rich variety of his writing for solo voices and orchestra along with thrilling choral textures is well represented in the three cantatas on this disc. Mass in B minor (COR16044) - Bach's Mass in B minor displays all the ingredients that contribute to his supreme ranking amongst his peers of any age, and also demonstrates the breadth of compositional skills amassed during his lifetime. It demands choral singing of blistering athleticism but also sensitive, responsive and, at times, majestic orchestral playing coupled with virtuosic obligato. "All hail the über-choir" The Independent
IVES, C.: Songs, Vol. 6
Bolcom: Songs of Innocence & Experience / Slatkin
"William Bolcom's gigantic, well-more-than-two-hour setting of William Blake's complete "Songs of Innocence and of Experience" poetic cycle is enormously difficult and expensive to perform. Looking down at the forces assembled for the University of Michigan performance in Hill Auditorium here on Thursday night was a mega-Mahlerian experience, with a stage extension needed to accommodate the nearly 500 musicians (bigger than the forces of any Mahler "Symphony of a Thousand" I have encountered). All that was missing were lighting effects and projections of Blake's engravings, suggested in the score. But they were on display in the lobby. So visually it was awesome, and musically it was pretty awesome, too. Mr. Bolcom, who is now 65, has taught at the University of Michigan since 1973. He first became interested in Blake's visionary poems - written in the late 18th century and full of Christian mysticism and a horror of modern life and human cruelty - in 1956, from when his first sketches date. Composed sporadically, the piece received its world and American premieres in 1984 and has been performed intermittently since. At its second appearance in New York, with Leonard Slatkin conducting the St. Louis Symphony at Carnegie Hall in 1992, Edward Rothstein ended the first paragraph of his review in The New York Times with the words, "It should be recorded." Now, at long last, it has been. Thursday's performance was again conducted by Mr. Slatkin and, with patching sessions, will be released on the Naxos label."
-- John Rockwell, New York Times, April 11, 2004
Frauen Sind Keine Engel... Pomp-A-Dur
American Classics - Beach: Songs / Kelton, Bringerud
--David Vernier, ClassicsToday.com
Bach: Secular Cantatas, Vol. 2 / Bach Collegium Japan
Times Go By Turns / New York Polyphony
Taking its title from a poem by the sixteenth-century Jesuit martyr Robert Southwell, Times go by Turns comprises three masses composed during a period when the conditions for English Catholics – and Catholic composers – underwent radical change. Active at a time – the 15th century – when the Catholic Church flourished in England, John Plummer’s death roughly coincided with the ascension of the Tudors, a dynasty that would irreversibly alter religious traditions. As a consequence, the bulk of Plummer’s music was destroyed during the Reformation, the remainder surviving almost exclusively in sources from the continent. Born a century later than Plummer, Tallis witnessed the separation of England from the Catholic Church and his Mass for Four Voices displays a simple lyricism and economic use of polyphony which may well have been driven by liturgical necessity. Such constraints had grown even stronger by the end of the century, when his student and colleague William Byrd composed his own four-part Mass, intended for clandestine worship at a time when dissidents were dealt with by cruel means. The vocal quartet New York Polyphony released endBeginning (BIS-1949) in 2012, a disc which focused on Franco-Flemish polyphony. Meeting with international acclaim, the ensemble’s first collaboration with BIS received top marks on website ClassicsToday.com and in the French magazine Diapason, as well as being included on the Best-of-2012 lists in The New Yorker and Time Out New York. While dedicated to the works of the great age of polyphony, New York Polyphony is also noted for its performances of contemporary music. For this disc the ensemble has commissioned two modern works, with Andrew Smith contributing a Kyrie – the movement which Tallis’ mass leaves out – and Gabriel Jackson providing the closing Ite missa est (‘The mass is ended’). The programme also includes one of the last compositions by Richard Rodney Bennett (1936–2012). A Colloquy with God, the setting of a poem by Sir Thomas Browne for four male voices, was dedicated to New York Polyphony.
Buxtehude: Membra Jesu Nostri
BUXTEHUDE Membra Jesu Nostri • Harry Christophers, dir; The Sixteen • CORO COR 16082 (61:23 Text and Translation)
After a thorough look at the extensive representation of this work on disc ( Fanfare 31:5), we get a reissue of an earlier version first reviewed by colleague Michael Carter (25:5), who described as “a smattering of recordings” a Buxtehude discography that has embraced more than 80 of the 120 cantatas stretching back to 1937, a count that is now up to 90, with more than a dozen versions of some of the more familiar works. This version’s performing forces were almost exactly replicated by Alexander Weimann in that recent disc, with five solo singers, nine string players, and organ (Weimann had eight Baroque string instruments). While Weimann delivered one of the two fastest performances in my collection, Harry Christophers hits the median timing, never a bad thing in ranking any competitive series. The recent solo-voice performances include René Jacobs (both versions), Konrad Junghänel, and Jos van Veldhoven in addition to these two, so that will narrow the field for purists. Otherwise, there are some fine performances among the more recent versions cited in the previous review. If I had to limit my choice to a single version, however, it would be Harry Christophers and his sterling group of soloists.
FANFARE: J. F. Weber
The Song I'll Never Sing: Works for Accordion
TEIXEIRA: Te Deum
Choral Music: PARSONS, R. / WHITE, R. / TYE, C. (Treasures o
IVES, C.: Songs, Vol. 2
Peterson-Berger och Poeterna: I männskor, varen intet så hår
Mahler: Songs / Peter Mattei
Kuula, Madetoja: Finnish Songs / Tiihonen, Salminen
Includes song(s) by Toivo Kuula, Leevi Madetoja. Soloists: Kirsi Tiihonen, Satu Salminen.
BOLCOM: Songs
Arias, Lieder & Cabaret Songs / Bergstrom, Ernman
Schubert: Lied Edition 5 - Die Schone Mullerin
The Celtic Muse
Bach: Cantatas Vol 30 / Suzuki, Sampson, Et Al
BACH Cantatas: No. 51; No. 210: Spielet, ihr beseelten Lieder. Alles mit Gott und nichts ohn? ihn, BWV 1127 ? Masaaki Suzuki, cond; Carolyn Sampson (sop); Bach Collegium Japan (period instruments) ? BIS SACD-1471 (Hybrid multichannel SACD: 71:17 & )
Volume 30 of Masaaki Suzuki?s highly regarded Bach cantata cycle is devoted mainly to Bach?s ?newest? work, the strophic aria ?Alles mit Gott und nichts ohn? ihn,? discovered in May 2005, and quickly authenticated and assigned the BWV number 1127 (thus, it?s separated from the cantatas, which occupy the first 200-plus spots in the catalog). Suzuki?s is the work?s first complete recording; abridged versions came first from Gardiner on his own Soli Deo Gratia label (12 minutes, combined with several other bits and pieces into a sort of cantate imaginaire ), and then from Koopman (17 minutes, in Volume 20 of his Challenge cantata series). Frankly, despite the beauty of Carolyn Sampson?s performance with Suzuki?s expert ensemble, Gardiner?s is the version of choice, simply because we don?t need to hear the same damn thing performed 12 times in a row over the course of 48 and a half minutes.
That?s what happens in a complete performance. In 1713, to celebrate the 53rd birthday of Bach?s early employer, Duke Wilhelm Ernst, a local town superintendent named Johann Anthon Mylius wrote 12 stanzas, each verse beginning with the German translation of the duke?s motto, ?Omnia deo et nihil sine eo? (?Everything with God and nothing without him?). The second line of each stanza and the following B section would change, but that second line would evolve in an odd way: only the third word would be replaced, and if you align the first letters of each of those third words you spell out the duke?s name. This is the sort of acrostic game that Bach loved, but it?s strange that he was assigned the task of setting the words to music. He was merely the Weimar court organist, and wouldn?t have any responsibility for writing cantatas until his promotion the following year. Perhaps more senior composers, including several in the Mylius family, had turned down the potentially tedious job. Perhaps the ambitious Bach lobbied for the assignment, hoping it would gain him the sort of attention that would result in the promotion he indeed received within a few months. At any rate, Bach merely wrote out the music for the first verse, intending it to be repeated as the text changed. To understand the acrostic, you need to see the entire text, but hearing the whole thing is hardly necessary. Bach provided an attractive, melismatic melody and an appealing instrumental accompaniment, but enough is enough.
To their credit, Suzuki and his elegant players do vary the instrumental bridges somewhat, and Sampson handles the melody with lovely grace, but it?s not enough to sustain interest for more than three quarters of an hour. All are heard to better effect in Cantata No. 51, a performance that floats and twirls, without losing its center of gravity in the weightier sections. For some reason, the aria ?Spielet, ihr beseelten Lieder? from BWV 210 is appended as a bonus track.
The 5.0 surround sound is, as expected from this source, outstanding in its balance and timbral fidelity, except that the important trumpet part in the outer movements of BWV 51 is too recessed, almost offstage. If you?re compulsively collecting the Suzuki series, there?s no reason to pass this up, but if all you want is BWV 1127, in this case there?s no merit to completism, and the Gardiner sampler is a more attractive option.
FANFARE: James Reel
