The Renaissance composer John Dowland was the foremost lutenist and lute song composer of his generation. While renowned as the master of musical melancholy, he was reputedly a cheerful man, though disappointed by his long failure to find employment.

Classics at the Movies: Comedy 2

Classics at the Movies: Drama

Classics at the Movies: Love

Miserere: Classical Music for Reflection and Meditation

Dixit Dominus is a psalm setting by George Frideric Handel (catalogued as HWV 232). It uses the Latin text of Psalm 110 (Vulgate 109), which begins with the words Dixit Dominus ("The Lord Said"). The work was completed in April 1707 while Handel was living in Italy. It is Handel's earliest surviving autograph. The work was written in the baroque style and is scored for five vocal soloists (SSATB), chorus, strings and continuo. It is most likely that the work was first performed on 16 July 1707 in the Church of Santa Maria in Montesanto, under the patronage of the Colonna family. The score was published in 1867. A typical performance lasts a little over 30 minutes.

Classics at the Movies: Adventure

CHILL WITH RACHMANINOV

The 18th century Italian comic intermezzo, originally inserted between the acts of serious operas, won enormous contemporary popularity.

Along with Falla, Albeniz, Granados and Mompou, Joaquin Turina made an outstanding contribution to Spanish piano repertoire. This fourth volume of Turina' complete piano music focuses on the child' universe. The two sets of Ni erias both evoke.

The most beautiful music from the world's greatest ballets (Swan Lake, Spartacus, Copp�lia, Masquerade, The Nutcracker, Sylvia, Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun and Giselle). The word 'ballet' is French; it was adopted by the English sometime in the seventeenth century. It was during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that the genre really started to develop into the art form that we recognize on the stage today. A fusion of dance, music, drama, sets and lighting, ballet is one of the ultimate arts. Following are the stories of some of the world's greatest ballets, so the listener may enjoy more fully the collection presented here.

When Emperor Joseph II established a professional wind ensemble drawn from the Viennese court orchestra in 1782, he initiated an influential trend that gave composers an important opportunity to popularize their operatic music. The beautifully craft.

Giles Farnaby' compositions comprise no less than one-sixth of the contents of the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book, an immense anthology of keyboard works by the English virginalists. These pieces firmly establish Farnaby in the esteemed company of Byrd, Bull.

The New Zealand String Quartet' first Naxos recording of Mendelssohn' string quartets was praised as 'an auspicious start' by Gramophone and 'opulently recorded' by Classic FM magazine. It's warmly affectionate accounts continue with this second of t.

Written in Vienna in 1864, and perhaps an early tribute to the city he had made his home, Brahms' Waltzes, Op. 39 were originally conceived as piano duets and arranged for solo piano in 1867.