Reviews from the original recordings which make up this set:

The Sun's King's Paradise
The music on this charming CD comes from the time of Louis XIV (1643-1715), often referred to as the Sun King. It is music of dalliance, yet contains great subtlety; and it is music meant to entertain the upper classes while making no particular social statement. Of particular interest is the suite by Jean-Féry Rebel, which is a synthesis of popular dances of the time. This concise nine-and-one-half-minute work presents a time capsule revue of more than a dozen dance forms, including corrente, menuet, sarabande, and gigue, all played without interruption by recorder, violin, bass viol, and theorbo. By contrast, a more melancholy side of the era emerges in Etienne Le Moine's Chaconne, a theorbo solo played with exceptional sensitivity by William Carter. The performances throughout are stylish and sensitive and the recorded sound close up and clear. Those listeners looking for a representative collection of music from this era will find that this CD fills the bill handsomely.

--Rad Bennett, ClassicsToday.com

Les Elemens
This disc is "authentic" in two senses: in the selection of instruments as well as in the arrangement of the works for domestic performance. Actually, as the notes correctly point out, Rebel's full score doesn't really exist, so all versions are arrangements even though we know that he wrote the original for orchestra. Any suspicion that "Le Cahos" (Chaos) is going to lose some of its bite when played by recorder, violin, bass viol, and theorbo will be instantly dispelled on hearing the first chord, which nearly sent me through the ceiling. Still, I miss the tang of brass and percussion in the Tambourins and the silky tone of massed violins in the Air pour les Violins, however expert the playing on offer. This is simply a question of individual taste.

On the other hand, in the Marais Suite in A minor, drawn from a variety of pieces for one or two viols, the presence of the recorder enhances the music's color and charm, and the program rises to a truly triumphant conclusion with a brilliantly sustained romp through the composer's Folies d'Espagne. Best of all, Linn's sonics perfectly capture both the vivacity and intimacy of the performances, especially in multichannel format, where the players really do seem to be right in the room with you. You really can imagine yourself taking part in a convivial evening of Baroque music making, featuring the greatest hits of the day--and getting a naughty thrill at Rebel's startlingly dissonant representation of chaos. This is music for fun, and the performances fully convey its pleasures and delights.

--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

This recording brings together Florian Boesch, one of today’s foremost Lieder interpreters, and Malcolm Martineau, who is widely recognized as one of the leading accompanists of his generation. With a partnership honed over many concerts and several recordings together, including a Grammy-nominated Die schöne Mullerin, the pair turn their attention to two of the greatest song cycles of the nineteenth century. The recording opens with Schumann’s Op. 39, Liederkreis, settings of Joseph von Eichendorff’s poems, and finishes with Mahler’s Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen, written around forty years later. The songs selected all tell, in varying hues, of the Romantic individual’s sense of alienation from others and of transcendence, or the longing for it. An expressive and accomplished storyteller Boesch’s perceptive phrasing and exquisite range of colours is well matched by Martineau’s virtuosic and perfectly synchronized accompaniment.

Classical Music

Few British women composers of the early twentieth century are known today, either by name or by their music. Muriel Herbert is one who should be. ?Songs of Muriel Herbert? features many premiere recordings, each one beautifully delivered by soprano Ailish Tynan and tenor James Gilchrist, accompanied by David Owen Norris on piano.
? Muriel Herbert (1897 ? 1984) studied with Charles Stanford and Roger Quilter at the Royal College of Music, London. Her works consist mainly of songs inspired by poetry and works for violin and piano. This album focuses on her songs.
? Herbert was inspired by the poetry of many including Yeats and Joyce whom she met on many occasions. She was also intrigued by female poets such as Christina Rossetti. These songs have been brought back to life thanks to Herbert's daughter - the biographer Claire Tomalin. The songs are now all housed at the British Library Archive.
? The songs are hugely compelling and delightful and influences of one Herbert's favourite composers Debussy can be heard. Many of these songs are premiere recordings. Among the most popular are: Daffodils, Mirage, Autumn, Lost nightingale and Hips and haws.
? James Gilchristis in demand as a recitalist and chorus member and is a regular voice on BBC Radio 3 and a popular performer at the BBC Proms. He has sung at venues across Europe, America and the UK. His voice has been described as pure and sensitive with an even and beautiful tone. His first two solo albums on Linn Records were very well received; BBC Music Magazine listed ?Oh Fair To See? as a Benchmark Recording, and ?On Wenlock Edge? was a finalist in the Solo Vocal Album category at the 2008 Classic FM Gramophone Awards.
? In 2003 Ailish Tynan won the Rosenblatt Recital Prize at the BBC Cardiff Singer of the World Competition. Other awards include the Maggie Teyte Competition, Miriam Licette Award and the RTÉ Millennium Singer of the Future.
? David Owen Norris has been a featured artist in the Gilmore Festival in Michigan and in the English Music Festival in Dorchester. In 2008 he has given recitals from Edinburgh to Guernsey, including the City of London Festival, the Tate Gallery conference on Vauxhall Gardens, the Three Choirs Festival and Cheltenham.
Track Listing:
1. Loveliest of Trees 2. I cannot lose thee for a day 3. The Crimson Rose 4. I hear an army charging 5. Jour des Morts (Cimetière Montparnasse) 6. She weeps over Rahoon 7. On a Time 8. Have you seen but a white lily grow? 9. I dare not ask a kiss 10. Horsemen 11. To Daffodils 12. How beautiful is night 13. Renouncement 14. I think on thee in the night 15. Faint Heart in a Railway Train 16. Rose kissed me today 17. Lean out of the window 18. Love?s Secret 19. MS. of Benedictbeuern (Carmina Burana) 20. Autumn 21. The Lost Nightingale 22. Jenny kiss?d me 23. Children?s Song 1: Merry-go-round 24. Children?s Song 2: The Gypsies 25. Children?s Song 3: The Tadpole 26. Children?s Song 4: Jack Spratt 27. Children?s Song 5: Acorn and Willow 28. Children?s Song 6: The Bunny 29. In the Days of November (Hips and haws) 30. The Lake Isle of Innisfree 31. David?s Lament for Jonathan 32. Most Holy Night 33. When Death to either shall come 34. Cradle Song 35. Violets 36. Tewkesbury Road Reviews: 04 May 2009 The Observer Fiona Maddocks Your heart doesn't necessarily leap when a scholar announces the discovery of four dozen baroque flute sonatas by someone with a name like Vaporetto. Legions of neglected composers await rediscovery. But on rare occasions, the "lost" talent is real, the pleasure of stumbling across a new body of work exciting and lasting. This is so with Muriel Herbert (1897-1984), brought back to life in this collection of her art songs and performed here by a superb trio of musicians. Their commitment alone endorses the music's quality. Herbert studied music in an era when professional women composers were rare as woodlarks, yet every genteel young woman was expected to play and sing. Born in Sheffield to a musical family, she grew up, in straitened circumstances, in Liverpool, winning a scholarship to the Royal College of Music during the First World War. There she met the great composers of the day - Charles Stanford and the homosexual Roger Quilter, with whom, to no avail, she fell in love. Preferring to work on a small scale, she started writing the elegant songs which would become her main preoccupations. She had some early success. After the war, she lived a bohemian existence, associating with James Joyce and WB Yeats, composing, teaching at a girls' school and singing. But a bad marriage and a pram in the hallway put paid to the bigger career she might have enjoyed. Now her daughter, writer Claire Tomalin, has gathered a collection of her mother's often melancholy songs. She chose texts from a cross-section of poets: AE Housman's "Loveliest of Trees, the Cherry Now", Hardy's "Faint Heart in a Railway Carriage" (here retitled "Faint Heart in a Railway Train") and Yeats's "The Lake Isle of Innisfree". Piano accompaniments are poignant and skilfully played by David Owen Norris. Ailish Tynan and James Gilchrist sing with open-hearted commitment. I hope the pair incorporate many of these works into their recitals. Steeped in the English song tradition of the early 20th century, they grow on you with each listening. 14 April 2009 Musical Pointers Peter Grahame Woolf You just might have noted Muriel Emily Herbert's name in passing if you'd chanced upon Music Web's 2002 survey Some Women Composers - "Muriel Herbert's titles included Violets, Fountain Court, The Lake Isle of Innisfree, Contentment, Have You Seen But a White Lily Grow? and the familiar Housman words Loveliest of Trees: clearly her taste in lyrics was above the average." That is all... She had studied with Stanford at the Royal College of Music. A few of her songs were published in the '20s and James Joyce thought her settings of his poems were "much too good for the words"! With motherhood, and at a time of disinterest in women composers, her musical career faded into oblivion. This collection of mostly unpublished songs from the '20s and '30's is a treasure trove, re-discovered by her daughter, noted biographer Claire Tomalin, who had packed away all her papers upon Muriel Herbert's death in 1984; no-one was interested in them - ?Everyone's mother wrote songs...' she was told (mine included !). But a little interest surfaced later, first in a radio programme by a former pupil who had been taught by her when he was a boy soprano and who eventually produced this disc... This wonderful CD is the eventual outcome. It is not just Muriel Herbert's taste in poetry that was exceptional; so was her unselfconscious ease in prosody, the setting of words to music, which made me think of Hugo Wolf's. This has been an altogether happy project, with both Ailish Tynan and James Gilchrist in fine voice, supported ideally by David Owen Norris. These are honest songs that should find a welcome in anyone's recital. There is emotion which never becomes mawkish, and wit a-plenty. I greatly regret not having been able to come across Herbert's Children's Songs to Ada Harrison poems when I was trawling the publishers and libraries for repertoire for my boy singer son Simon; they are just as good as Malcolm Williamson's A Child's Garden which he recorded. You can access on Linn's website full information including sound samples of all the songs, two of the shortest Children's Songs, Merry-Go-Round and The Bunny complete. The songs are now archived at the British Library.

Gothic Voices, the world-famous early music ensemble, makes its Linn debut with a recording celebrating the biblical matriarch Mary. Pieces from contemporary composers Joanne Metcalf and Andrew Smith sit alongside setting of Marian texts from the 13th and 14th centuries. Notably, there is a rare setting of English biblical text which precedes the first publication of an English language bible by 150 years. Mary in her various guises – caring mother, virgin lover, guiding light – are explored through settings of ancient ritualistic texts showing her mythical and human aspects, whilst contemporary settings relate the themes to the modern day. The contemporary works are cleverly constructed around a modal core so that they fit perfectly with the structure and sound of the early music compositions. With over thirty years experience Gothic Voices’ complete understanding of every aspect of early music performance is exceptional. Throughout its career Gothic Voices has been world-renowned for the excellence, refinement and spirituality of its performances of medieval music and has appeared throughout Europe and in the Americas. Originally founded in 1980 by the scholar and musician Christopher Page, Gothic Voices has gone on to release over twenty recordings, three of which won the coveted Gramophone Early Music Award. With imaginative programs using voices in varying combinations to produce authoritative performances of great beauty, Gothic Voices has won the appreciation of audiences all over the world. Gothic Voices’ wonderfully evocative sound world resulted in over a million sales of its debut featuring the music of Hildegard of Bingen.

Elizabeth Kenny's Theatre of the Ayre reveals some of the most extraordinary music of the 17th century on The Masque of Moments, their debut recording for Linn. Focusing on the "Ayre", the central part of a Masque, it offers a fascinating glimpse of the audacious and experimental virtuosity that is often absent from our image of English music of this time. Inspired by the achievements of the "Luts and Voices", Kenny developed The Masque of Moments in 2015, highlighting the glories of little-known vocal music from the Jacobean and Caroline masque. Founded in 2007, Theatre of the Ayre is Elizabeth Kenny's platform for bringing dramatically-minded singers and players together to create inspirational programmes of 17th century music. They have performed in and broadcast from major festivals across the UK, Belgium and Germany. "This early music ensemble has made an asset of obscurity. Its weapons: a freshness of approach and a quasi-improvisatory freedom of delivery." (Financial Times) "It's not often you witness a player attacking their instrument with a bottleneck while another strokes theirs with a quill...both created sublime musical expressions of melancholy." (The Guardian)

Barb Jungr's "Every Grain of Sand" has deservedly become known as a modern cult classic and has won the singer a dedicated fan base around the world. Originally released in 2002 this insightful album established Jungr as one of the leading interpreters of the Bob Dylan songbook and entered the Top 10 "Jazz Album of the Year" lists in The Sunday Times and The Telegraph whilst the Wall Street Journal described it as "... The most significant vocal album of the 21st century thus far."Jungr's revelatory interpretations get right to the heart of Bob Dylan's lyrics, finding new depths and emotion in his works. The original release prompted more than a decade of Dylan performances with a Barbican tribute alongside Billy Bragg and Odetta. Jungr is supporting this re-release with a UK tour in 2017.

Classical Music

This new release features Mozart’s Serenade in B-Flat major, K. 361 "Gran partita" and Haydn’s Notturno No. 8 in G Major, Hob. 11:27. Mozart’s largest and possibly most innovative instrumental work, Gran partita demonstrates the composer’s sensitivity to the varying colors of wind instruments. Harpsichordist and conductor Trevor Pinnock leads the Royal Academy of Music Soloists Ensemble for this album.

Review:

The veteran Baroque specialist Trevor Pinnock has made a strong series of Mozart recordings with his English Concert historical-performance orchestra. Here, with the more youthful Royal Academy of Music Soloists Ensemble, he achieves one of his most distinctive Mozart creations. The sizable Serenade in B flat major for 13 winds, K. 361, is a work that lacks obvious tunes and can, in many performances, collapse under its own weight. Pinnock forges an extremely distinctive reading that brings out the inner polyphony in this outwardly non-polyphonic work. His ensemble passages are dense blocks of sound that have an abstract, almost Webern-like quality. To hear it at its best, sample one of the pair of minuets (tracks 2 and 4), where any galant quality to the music is pushed deep into the background. It's hard to imagine this as a "serenade," but the truth is that the circumstances of composition of this work, like those of the last three Mozart symphonies, are unknown, and Pinnock's reading is as valid as any other. An added attraction is the little-recorded Notturno No. 8 in G major, Hob. 2/27, which brings down the curtain and lowers the tension a bit with a fine example of the mature Haydn's jocularity. An often fascinating example of Pinnock's way with Mozart.

– All Music Guide (James Manheim)

This recording is the first in a new series with Thomas Søndergård and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra. The programme features music by Richard Strauss: the concert suite from Der Rosenkavalier and Ein Heldenleben, a work they have performed together in concert to critical acclaim. The tone poem tells the epic story of an imaginary hero and offers a stirring introduction to the world of the German Romantics. Strauss demands uncompromising virtuosity from both the orchestra and the horn player who is tasked with portraying the bold hero. Following a concert performance of Ein Heldenleben in March 2018 The Scotsman stated: “From the swaggering confidence of Strauss’s bounding heroic theme to the gleefully grotesque carpings of his critics, Søndergård delivered a bold, utterly committed account – this is clearly music that matters to him.” Closing the recording is the concert suite from Der Rosenkavalier in which Strauss’s colourful and evocative orchestration recalls many favourite moments from his most popular opera.

The Chamber Orchestra of Europe performs Stravinsky's Apollon musagete and Pulcinella Suite, repertoire that demands the fresh and energetic delivery for which the COE is renowned. The COE deliver the 'wonderful freshness' Stravinsky himself envisioned in Apollon musagete with their bright and spirited performance. The Guardian commented: "In Stravinsky's Apollon musagete each and every player contributed to the distinctive, rich-toned sonority." The Pulcinella Suite is a ballet based on some of Pergolesi's most memorable music. The COE has recorded the more unusual 1949 'revised' version of the 1922 concert suite which is in eight sections and performed without voices. The Independent commented: "Stravinsky's Pulcinella Suite brimmed over with the energy and insight of first-rate musicians discovering every opportunity such sunny music offered them." The COE recorded this album at eglise Maronite Notre-Dame-du-Liban, Paris, in November 2008. They performed this Stravinsky programme at Cite de la musique, Paris, Konzerthaus, Vienna and Philharmonie, Luxembourg to widespread critical acclaim.

Classical Music

Classical Music

Louis-Claude Daquin (1694-1772) was a French organist, harpsichordist and composer. He was also a child prodigy. After taking some harpsichord lessons from his godmother Elisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre, and composition lessons from Nicolas Bernier, he was capable of playing before Louis XIV at the age of six and of conducting his own Beatus vir in the Sainte-Chapelle at the age of eight. The Nouveau livre de noëls were published in November 1757 and is the fruit of many improvisations. This premiere recording marries Daquin's Twelve Noels (well-known as organ pieces) to the original late mediæval verses from which they were derived.

Simon Wright realised the score from the keyboard original and matched it to the original carol melodies before orchestrating it with remarkable imagination. Mark Darlow researched and put together the text during a period of stud leave in Paris. Through a process of consultation the verses were sifted, and a pastoral progression of solos and choruses has emerged, with the shepherds who 'tended their flocks by night' a sthe main characters. The RSAMD is Scotland's International Academy for Music and Drama, with Professor John Wallace as their Principal.

John Butt and the Dunedin Consort present the 1610 Vespers in its customary order with no chant additions, accepting the view that this ‘work’ is a collection of sacred pieces deliberately ordered in the general shape of an ‘imaginary’ Vespers service. In other words, the Vespers as most people know it.

The result is a ‘chamber’ version in which clarity of detail and the beauty of individual voices (recorded fairly closely and in many places clearly recognisable) provide an alternative to the grand gestures and bold colours of other more monumental performances. It also allows for plenty of attention to text, not just in the solo motets but in the larger psalm-settings as well.

The sound is first-rate as ever from Linn, with a sampled Italian chest organ discreetly adding warmth and incisiveness. With so many Vespers recordings out there, this one joins the ranks of those with both a character of its own and something to say.

– Gramophone

Following its Linn debut which saw the ‘revitalization of an iconic group’ (Choir & Organ), Gothic Voices presents The Dufay Spectacle, featuring special guest Andrew Lawrence-King. In a pageant of versatility featuring France’s greatest pre-Renaissance composer we enter the world of a grand New Year’s Day wedding feast, full of optimism and vision, tempered by playful emotional hardship, the music teasingly exploring the relationship between both, solemnized with some of Guillaume Dufay’s greatest motets and a festive use of instruments to mark the splendor of the occasion. From this final flourish of the mediaeval era we hear in Dufay’s quintessential Burgundian virtuosity how its musical richness has reached the point when it is about to burst into the new artistry and ideas of the Renaissance. The Dufay Spectacle celebrates this artist’s genius with an eclectic show of frolicking and passionate robustness, plaintive devotional ardor, with slow, dark rhythms, upbeat cascades of melody, and thrilling complex rhythms. As the central chanson rings out its New Year’s promise ce jour de l’an is indeed a day to celebrate.

Two discs from the Palladian Ensemble: Bach Trio Sonatas & Bach Sonatas and Chorales

Import Hybrid-SACD pressing.

Import Hybrid-SACD pressing.

Import Hybrid-SACD pressing.

Nigel North presents a beguiling selection of English Renaissance ballad tunes for the lute by John Dowland and his contemporaries. Originally released in 2003, 'Go From My Window' has been re-issued as part of Linn's ECHO series which offers a second chance to enjoy the best of the label's award-winning catalogue. To the Elizabethans and Jacobeans of early seventeenth-century England, the lute was undoubtedly the most important instrument at all levels of society. It was the principle instrument used to accompany the voice, at court, theatre or home; amateurs played it for domestic music making; professionals like John Dowland entertained royalty around Europe with their own music composed and performed on the lute. Familiar favourites, like 'Greensleeves' and 'Go From My Window', sit alongside pieces whose popularity has since been forgotten. North has grouped pairs of the same tune by different composers allowing the listener to compare the different variations. 'Go From My Window' was well reviewed upon release with Gramophone naming it a 'Choice' recording. Renowned as one of the world's most respected lutenists Nigel North has developed a unique musical life embracing work as a teacher, accompanist, soloist, director and writer. With the ensemble Romanesca, North, together with Andrew Manze (violin) and John Toll (harpsichord & organ), performed and recorded 17th century chamber music winning several international awards for their recordings.

Benjamin Zander conducts the Philharmonia Orchestra in Mahler’s hugely popular ‘Resurrection’ Symphony in a GRAMMY-nominated recording. Exceptionally challenging and thrillingly powerful it is the perfect showcase for Zander’s distinctive balance of insightful musicianship and emotional intensity. With London’s famed Philharmonia Orchestra, he is recording the complete cycle of Mahler symphonies, recordings which have been received with extraordinary critical acclaim and several awards. Zander’s recordings of Mahler symphonies have inspired critics worldwide to use superlatives such as ‘revelatory’, ‘exhilarating’, ‘illuminating’ and ‘remarkable’. The featured soloists are Sarah Connolly, one of the foremost British mezzo-sopranos who has impressed at La Scala and Glyndebourne, and Swedish soprano Miah Persson, who is in great demand with the major opera houses including Royal Opera House Covent Garden, Metropolitan Opera New York.