Symphonic thought is at the heart of Elisabetta Brusa’s oeuvre, whether in larger forms or solo instrumental works. As with the composer’s Symphony No. 1 (8.573437), the Symphony No. 2 follows a Classical four-movement form with harmonies that are essentially tonal and richly colored. Emotions are vivid and the rhythms are punchy and passionate whether in fanfare figures or in the beautiful solemnity of the slow movement. Simply Largo is a short ‘song without words’ with a seamless melodic clarity that reflects Brusa’s power to summon up great expressive depth.

The two new choral pieces in this fifth volume of works by Elisabetta Brusa offer a revealing look at her response to her own spirituality. The Stabat Mater was written as a trial for the Requiem and is the more expressively brusque work. Both works, heard here in world premiere recordings, follow traditional models, with the Requiem evoking an archaic atmosphere with luminous elements and transcendent effects. Previous volumes of Brusa's music can be heard on 8.574263 (Vol. 4), 8.573437 (Vol. 3), 8.555267 (Vol. 2) and 8.555266 (Vol. 1).

Darko Nikčević and Srdjan Bulatović, the internationally renowned guitar duo from Montenegro, are acclaimed for their virtuosity and for exciting performances that blend influences from the Mediterranean and Middle East. This program captures the spontaneous nature of their musical creativity and documents the strange period in which the world first stood still under the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic. Drawing on a shared Balkan heritage and using eloquently transparent melodies, these pieces express uncertainty and isolation as well as the deepest and most beautiful of emotions, from inner peace and contentment to a cheerful appreciation of life itself.

Composer and novelist; Anthony Burgess; was a remarkably diverse artist. The three guitar quartets on this album range from the well-crafted First Quartet intended as a homage to Ravel; while the Second and Third Quartets explore virtuoso technique alongside adventurous and at times haunting harmonies and polytonality. A selection of Burgess’s arrangements for guitar quartet are also featured; including Holst’s Mercury; the Winged Messenger from The Planets. Three of Burgess's orchestral works can be heard on 8.573472 and The Bad-Tempered Electronic Keyboard: 24 Preludes and Fugues on Grand Piano GP773.

Anthony Burgess, celebrated author of A Clockwork Orange, memorably filmed by Stanley Kubrich, once said, “I wish people would think of me as a musician who writes novels, instead of a novelist who writes music on the side.” Initially thwarted in his desire for a professional musical career, Burgess returned to composition in the mid-1970s, writing prolifically in many genres. His music is mostly tonal but sometimes dissonant, a hybrid of Holst and Hindemith. Mr. W.S. is an imaginative evocation of the Elizabethan era while Mr. Burgess’s Almanack is a variegated work of ingenuity and charm with a nob towards modernism. This is the first recording of Burgess’s orchestral music.

Busoni's operatic masterpiece, Doktor Faust, was left unfinished on his death in 1924. A DVD (37998) and Blu-ray (57998) of this performance was released on Dynamic in March of this year, receiving much critical acclaim. Cornelius Meister conducts the orchestra and chorus of Maggio Musicale Fiorentino with Dietrich Henschel in the title role. This release marks the 100th anniversary of the composer's death. May 2025 will be the 100th anniversary of the opera's premiere performance.

All six of these orchestral works exemplify Busoni's personalized classicism. The Lustspielouverture (Comedy Overture) is light, and almost Mozartian in clarity, whilst Gesang vom Reigen der Geister (Song of the Spirit Dance) is a delicately scored chamber piece, forward-looking in both style and content. Both the Concertino for Clarinet and the Flute Divertimento reveal Busoni's affinity for solo instruments; the former is deftly organized and the latter more obviously capricious. The spirit of Johann Strauss II haunts the infectious Tanzwalzer and the Rondo arlecchinesco unleashes Busoni's broadsides of wit. In 2002 Francesco La Vecchia was appointed Artistic Director and Resident Conductor of the Orchestra Sinfonica di Roma. Under his leadership the orchestra has rapidly achieved success in Europe and in highly successful tours to St Petersburg, Madrid, Belgrade, Brussels, Rio de Janeiro, Brasilia, London, Athens, Berlin, Beijing and Shanghai.

Here comes yet another cycle from Naxos, this time Ferruccio Busoni's piano music. Presumably this overview will encompass all the original works and transcriptions. Busoni's original compositions, in fact, often behave like transcriptions. The mighty Fantasia Contrappuntistica, for example, is a full blown fantasia with the final, unfinished contrapunctus of Bach's The Art of Fugue as its centerpiece. An die Jugend's five movements pay a sort of hommage to keyboard styles past and present (meaning Busoni's present). The Preludietto, Fughetta ed Esecizio's whole-tone scales sound like Debussy echt Deutsch. The third movement is essentially Bach's D major Prelude and Fugue from the Well Tempered Clavier Book 1 with discreet textural padding, followed by the prelude and fugue ingenuously combined.


It reminds me of Godowsky's chicanery (his combination of Chopin's "Black Key" and "Butterfly" Etudes, for example), but minus the fun. Like Messiaen and Reger, Busoni's music is utterly devoid of humor, and it requires a special kind of pianist. Although Wolf Harden may not possess the visionary drive and narrative sweep distinguishing recorded Fantasia Contrappuntistici from Christopher O'Riley, John Ogdon, Alfred Brendel, and Egon Petri (the latter two were on long-out-of-print mono LPs), there's much to savor in his clean fingerwork and rich, bass-oriented sonority. He digs into Busoni's massive chord climaxes like a hungry trencherman about to enjoy his aged Porterhouse steak, and he shades the composer's polytonal arpeggios with great sensitivity. There's no doubt that Harden has the technique and temperament for this repertoire, and I look forward to more. Next time, however, I hope the piano tuner doesn't leave when the recording sessions start.
--Jed Distler, ClassicsToday.com

Busoni: Piano Music, Vol. 2

Includes work(s) by Ferruccio Busoni. Soloist: Wolf Harden.

As I've noted in previous reviews, the nature of the keyboard writing in Liszt's massive organ fantasy and fugue based on the chorale Ad nos, ad salutarem undam from Meyerbeer's Le Prophete lends itself well to the piano. Although Liszt himself made an effective piano duet arrangement, Busoni's two-handed piano version can stand toe-to-toe with Liszt's B minor sonata as a virtuoso showpiece. That is, if you have the right pianist.

By and large, Wolf Harden is up to the task. He effortlessly navigates the outer sections' technical difficulties and stamina-testing textures, and sensitively sustains the central lyrical movement. Perhaps the latter emerges with more austere transparency in Hamish Milne's Hyperion studio recording, while the formidable fugue benefits from Giovanni Belluci's greater animation and dramatic sweep in an out-of-print recording on the small Assai label. And perhaps you could imagine more incisive and assertive interpretations of the weak "fake Brahms" F minor sonata Busoni wrote as a teenager and of the composer's late, bitonally obsessed Prélude et etude arpèges. However, this is definitely worth it for "Ad nod" and for Richard Whitehouse's extensive, highly informative booklet notes.

--Jed Distler, ClassicsToday.com

The essence of Busoni's music lies in a synthesis of his Italian and German ancestry: emotion and intellect, imagination and discipline, often allied with a re-creative approach to the musical past.

Busoni embodied an essentially recreative approach to the music of the past. His Bach transcriptions reveal an absolute command of intricate polyphony and a limpid clarity. Mozart stood as an aesthetic and technical exemplar while Cramer’s little-known Etudes are adapted for modern piano technique. Busoni preserved the Lutheran austerity of Brahms’s Chorale Preludes for Organ, Op. 122 whereas in the Mephisto Waltz No. 1 he augments Liszt’s heady writing with a super-virtuosity of his own. Wolf Harden I one of the most versatile pianists of his generation. He has enjoyed great success in the Trio Fontenay, an ensemble that he founded in 1980 and with which he has toured to all the world’s major music centres. Harden devotes himself not only to chamber music but, with the same success, to the solo piano repertoire.

Wolf Harden continues his survey of piano works by Busoni with this penultimate volume in the series. Featuring three of Busoni's strikingly individual Sonatinas, the Drei Albumblatter and more.

Volume 13 is the final instalment in Wolf Harden's series of Busoni's piano music, coinciding with the 100th anniversary of the composer's death in 2024. It features selections from the multi-volume Klavierubung ('Piano Exercise') as well as some early miniatures, and more.

All the works on this recording were composed when Busoni was between the ages of eleven and fifteen. Full of charm and wit, they reveal his precocious absorption of earlier models- principally Bach, Mozart, Weber and Schumann- as well as exceptional technical finesse. Una festa di villagigio charts the day’s events of a village festival whilst Suite campestre, one of his most distinctive early compositions, possesses moments of inwardness that presage the mature works to come. Wolf Harden, who was born in Hamburg in 1962, is one of the most versatile pianists of his generation. He has enjoyed great success in the Trio Fontenay, an ensemble that he founded in 1980 and with which he has toured to all the world’s major music centres. Harden devotes himself not only to chamber music but, with the same success, to the solo piano repertoire. His concert tours have taken him to South America and India as well as to countries throughout Europe, and his special affinity with unusual repertoire is attested by numerous recordings. He was the first to record a complete version of Hans Pfitzner’s Piano Concerto and has recorded piano music by Erno Dohnanyi, Franz Lehar and Ferruccio Busoni.

Ferruccio Busoni composed a significant number of works for two pianos throughout his life. While Bach’s pervasive influence is already evident in some of his early compositions including the Preludio e Fuga and Capriccio, it reaches its most complex and glorious expression in the definitive 1921 version of his Fantasia contrappuntistica. In the case of Schumann’s Op. 134 for piano and orchestra, Busoni simply reduced the orchestral part for a second piano. However, his skill as a master transcriber and composer is revealed in his brilliant arrangements of Mozart’s works, which also highlight the subtlety and originality of his style. Aldo Orvieto has recorded extensively, releasing more than 70 albums dedicated to composers of the 20th century on a wide variety of labels, many receiving critical acclaim. Aldo Ciccolini appeared on the Naxos release of Achille Longo’s PianoQuintet (Ciccolini’s teacher) with the Circolo Artistico Ensemble (8.572628), which was nominated for an International Classical Music Award (ICMA).Classical Lost and Found wrote that: ‘Considering Ciccolini’s intimate association with his mentor’s quintet, this would have to be considered a definitive performance.’ Marco Rapetti received his Diploma cum laude at the Accademia Perosi in Biella. Rapetti has been awarded many prizes in national and international competitions, and has released several recordings, including the complete piano works of Borodin, Liadov, Dukas and Debussy.

Includes work(s) for organ by Dietrich Buxtehude. Soloist: Julia Brown.

Lively, tonally varied performances … a very attractive sound.

This is volume two of the Naxos reissue of Lars Ulrik Mortensen’s Buxtehude series. It previously appeared on Dacapo. This particular volume was Dacapo 8.224117.

Mortensen is a fine musician, whose approach to Buxtehude is vivacious and dignified in equal proportions. His Buxtehude has both passion and seriousness - but not solemnity - of mind. Mortensen makes sparkling use of the resources of his instrument, a copy by Thomas Mandrup-Poulsen of an original by Ruckers. Though the notes to this present CD give no further details, it sounds like the beautifully-toned instrument, made in 1984, which Mortensen played on some of his Bach recordings (CPO 999 989-2) and Froberger (Kontrapunkt 32040). It sings delightfully – at least it does when played by Mortensen! The use of mean-tone tuning will surely disturb very few modern listeners.

The theme of the set of variations on More Palatino (not More Palantino as printed on the back cover) is a student drinking song, though the rather stately form in which Buxtehude presents it is not especially redolent of the tavern. Still, it is an attractive and melodically various set, Mortensen’s varying use of registration producing some charming effects and some insistently dancing rhythms. The same is true of a second set of variations played here, those on Courant Zimble – a title we might translate as ‘Simple Courante’, and aptly so, since it is an uncomplicated piece which invites – and gets – some direct and appealing variations from Buxtehude. Mortensen resists the temptation to over-inflate these or make any excessive claims for them.

Each of the two Suites is made up four movements, in the order Allemande-Courante-Sarabande-Gigue. In each work the allemande is the most substantial movement, considerably longer than any of the other three movements. The allemandes also tend to have a greater musical gravity, that which opens Bux WV 242 being particularly grand in manner and phrasing; the courantes have, by way of contrast, a rippling vitality, that in Bux WV 25 being full of pleasant twists and turns. Buxtehude’s sarabandes have a graceful simplicity about them, a quality heard to perfection in Mortensen’s performances of the two in these suites, especially that in the E minor suite, where the registration is beautifully judged and employed. The gigues of the two suites make more much use of counterpoint, especially in comparison to the simpler lines of the sarabandes which precede them. But these are by no means academic fugues and in both suites the final movements very forcefully remember the dance origins of the gigue.

All of the shorter pieces in this programme have their genuine attractions and all are well characterised by Mortensen. The chorale ‘Nun lob, mein Seel, den Herren’ is more often heard on the organ, although it makes no requirements that the harpsichord can’t fulfil – as Mortensen persuasively demonstrates. Indeed there is a particular sprightliness to this reading that is distinct from anything that can be achieved on the baroque organ and which offers an alternative, equally valid, view of the music. Bux WV 170, 171 and 174 are pieces which survive amongst the manuscripts of Buxtehude’s organ music but which, again, are eminently playable on the harpsichord. The fugal writing here is more ‘correct’ than in the gigues of the suites, but don’t let that make you imagine that these are unduly staid pieces. Here they have the same vivacity which characterises this programme as a whole and they are played with the same loving care for the aptness of instrumental sound and tone.

Without wanting to claim Mortensen’s as the ‘best’ recordings of Buxtehude’s harpsichord works – if one had to pick I suppose the vote might go to Ton Koopman – there is not the slightest reason to feel in any way dissatisfied with this fine recital. If you don’t know Buxtehude’s writing for harpsichord – this is an excellent value-for-money place to start; if you are already an aficionado of this repertoire you will surely be just as keen to add this to your collection.

-- Glyn Pursglove, MusicWeb International

The names Bach and Buxtehude are inextricably linked in that the young German was deeply influenced by the older Danish keyboard virtuoso and Werkmeister. In fact, following his visit to Denmark in 1705, he allowed that, in retrospect, he had gone to hear Buxtehude "in order to comprehend one thing and another about his art". That this is in itself rather striking commentary from arguably the greatest composer in the history of Western Classical Music cannot be denied and speaks volumes on the importance of Buxtehude in evaluating the early Baroque period.
Diapason d'Or winner Lars Ulrik Mortensen, well known for his collaborations with John Holloway and Jaap ter Linden, among others, brings to Buxtehude's music a unique blend of virtuosity and scholarship in the area of performance practice. His playing, while astonishingly accurate and controlled, never gives the impression of being a calculated affair. His informed music making is inspired and breathes fresh life into every bar of this oeuvre. Worthy of note is Mortensen's handling of the cadenza-like arpeggio section in the Prelude in G Major; the building effect is breathtaking, the resolution exultant.
Gramophone (1/00, p. 85) - "...[Mortensen] arranges his programmes
effectively to illustrate the wide range of Buxtehude's art, though the
contrapuntal facility that drew Bach to trudge 200 miles to hear him is
everywhere apparent....enthusiastically recommended..."

REVIEWS:
American Record Guide (11-12/97, p.111) - "...The recording was made in the church of Santa Maria Maggiore in Treviso, where the reverberation makes both instrumental and vocal tone rich and sumptuous....On the whole, it is a performance that is technically assured, well-paced, and coherent, with more a chamber than church music feel..."

Naxos launches a survey of Buxtehude's complete organ works with a well-varied selection of chorale preludes, fugal works, and virtuoso showpieces. Volker Ellenberger's fluent technique and intelligent musicianship particularly come across in the chorale preludes and in larger-scaled works like the Magnificat primi toni (BuxWV 203), where the four fugues effortlessly emerge from their more freely conceived preceding episodes. The bassoon-like clarity of the pedal registration in the G major Prelude and Fugue BuxWV 147 helps move the music forward, as does Ellenberger's sharply etched phrasing in the fugue. The latter contrasts with Rene Saorgin's slower, more yielding (though no less valid) treatment. On the other hand, Saorgin's ebullient dash through the BuxWV 149 G minor Praeludium's introduction presents the music in a more improvisatory light compared to the shorter phrase lengths Ellenberger stresses.


The 1997 organ of the Evangelical Lutheran City Church in Bückeburg, Germany benefits from clear and close-up engineering, similar to what producer Wolfgang Rübsam enjoyed in his fine (and sadly out-of-print) Buxtehude cycle recorded for Bellaphon in the early 1980s. Should the remaining releases in this series match Volume 1's high performance and engineering standards, we'll have a Buxtehude cycle on par with Saorgin's classic Harmonia Mundi recordings from the late '60s/early '70s.
--Jed Distler, ClassicsToday.com

BUXTEHUDE: Organ Music, Vol. 3

BUXTEHUDE: Organ Music, Vol. 4

BUXTEHUDE: Chamber Music (Complete), Vol. 1 - 7 Sonatas, Op.

Includes sonata(s) by Dietrich Buxtehude. Soloists: John Holloway (Violin), Ursula Weiss, Jaap ter Linden, Mogens Rasmussen, Lars Ulrik Mortensen.

The suites offered here present the intimate, domestic aspect of Buxtehude’s keyboard art. In each case, the allemande is the weightiest element, “the proposition in a musical suite, from which the corrente, sarabande and gique [sic] flow as parts”, in the words of Buxtehude’s grandstudent Martin Heinrich Fuhrmann. Indeed, the openings of Buxtehude’s correnti often follow the melodic contour of the allemande, and in the case of the Suite in F major, BuxWV 238, the corrente approaches an actual variation of it. The Ryge manuscript usually spells this movement “Courent” in a curious mixture of French and Italian; in fact Buxtehude usually follows the Italian corrente, with its lightly running quaver motion, rather than the more subtle French courante. Fuhrmann characterizes the sarabande as an “instrumental aria, usually eight measures, going slowly in triple”, and this is the shortest and simplest movement of a Buxtehude suite. Two of the present suites (BuxWV 226 and 233) offer a second sarabande that is not a double, or variation, of the first. The second sarabande of BuxWV 233 has a distinctly vocal quality, as opposed to the more instrumental stile brisé of the first. The gigues in Buxtehude’s suites have a more contrapuntal texture than the other movements, but they are not strictly fugal, usually dissolving into homophony after a few entrances. It is through the gigue, however, that the dance makes itself most strongly felt in the other genres of Buxtehude’s keyboard music.

The set of three variations named simply Aria, BuxWV 249, are based on the sarabande. Its second and third variations contain written-out varied repetitions of each of the sections of the binary form, demonstrating how Buxtehude might actually have performed those repetitions that he normally indicated only with repeat marks.

Buxtehude’s chorale settings for keyboard are preserved mainly in manuscripts compiled by Johann Gottfried Walther, organist in Weimar and cousin of J. S. Bach. Although most of them require two manuals and pedal, a few do not, and there is no reason why they should be confined to the church organ. One in particular seems appropriate for performance on the harpsichord: the Partita: Auf meinen lieben Gott, BuxWV 179. Here Buxtehude combines three genres, the dance suite, the variation set, and the chorale setting, to produce an unusual hybrid form, consisting of Allemande (unnamed), Double, Courante, Sarabande, and Gigue. Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern, BuxWV 223, belongs to the genre of the chorale fantasy, in which each phrase of a chorale melody is developed rather extensively in a different manner. Here too the gigue makes a prominent appearance, concluding the work in a fugal treatment of the entire melody.

Buxtehude’s free keyboard works - those independent of a preexisting melody or dance pattern - are mainly transmitted in manuscripts that include both pedaliter and manualiter works. Among these, his most original and justly famous works are praeludia and toccatas in the stylus phantasticus, which intermingles highly unpredictable free sections in virtuosic and idiomatic keyboard styles with more structured fugal sections. Since organists naturally prefer the pedaliter works, those for manuals alone are much less frequently performed, thus offering rich opportunities to adventurous harpsichordists. Even in these free works one can find elements of dance and variation. In place of a second fugue, the Toccata in G major, BuxWV 165, contains a brief passage of ostinato variations that are faintly reminiscent of Pachelbel’s famous canon. Buxtehude may have conceived his canzonas as teaching pieces; they are all manualiter works, and students most often practised on the clavichord or harpsichord. They are variously titled canzon, canzonet, or fuga and consist either of a single fugue (BuxWV 225) or of three related fugues (BuxWV 166 and 176) in the manner of the variation canzona inherited from Frescobaldi and Froberger. The gigue makes an appearance yet again as the second fugue of BuxWV 166.

Kerala Snyder

This second volume in the Naxos series of Buxtehude’s vocal music was previously issued on Dacapo (Dacapo 8.224160). It is made up of four sacred cantatas – and one ‘interloper’, a setting of the Magnificat mistakenly identified as Buxtehude’s back in 1931 by Bruno Grusnick, but pretty certainly not his.

The four cantatas give us the chance to hear Buxtehude employing a variety of strategies.

Das neugeborne Kindelein sets the four verses of a Christmas hymn first published in 1588 by Cyriacus Schneegass (1546-1597), German hymn-writer, composer and music theorist. The words have a simple radiance, each of the four stanzas made up of four lines rhymed aabb. Buxtehude treats them interestingly; he adopts different approaches for each of the four stanzas. In the first he sets the opening three lines, the initial announcement of the recurrent ‘new’ birth of Christ and its significance, relatively plainly, allowing the words to dominate and hold the attention. Then, as if to celebrate the significance of the words of proclamation, the final line of Schneegass’s first stanza is richly elaborated through repetition and contrapuntal echo. Between each stanza we get an instrumental ritornello and after its first return, the second stanza offers yet more vocal elaboration and responds beautifully to the text’s assertion that the angels are singing in the sky, a response heightened by a greater use of instrumental accompaniment interwoven with the vocal phrases than was allowed to happen in the first stanza. The third stanza speaks of the battle against “Teufel, Welt und Höllenpfort” and the sense of conflict is heightened by much greater use of instrumental interjections which break up the vocal phrases and the lines of the verse. In the fourth stanza, as the text grows to a full realisation that the birth of “das Jesuslein” guarantees the possibility of human salvation, the musical metre changes and the instruments and voices work more obviously together, so that verse, voice and instruments embody, in their new relationship, the transformation into coherent meaning of which the hymn speaks. Buxtehude, in short, has integrated text, singers and instrumental ensemble with a completeness of achieved purpose that makes Das neugeborne Kindelein a minor masterpiece.

In Der Herr ist mit mir the text is taken from the Psalms (Psalm 118 verses 6-7). In the Authorized Version it reads thus: “The Lord is on my side; I will not fear: what can man do unto me. The Lord taketh my part with them that help me: therefore shall I see my desire upon them that hate me”. To the German translation of these verses is added a concluding ‘Hallelujah’. Buxtehude sets the Psalm text in predominantly homophonic fashion, the text remaining clearly and emphatically audible, its meaning emphasised by some patterned rhythmic and harmonic touches. With the ‘Hallelujah’ Buxtehude launches into a virtuoso ciacona made up of nineteen variations over two-bar ostinato bass. The contrast with what has gone before is startling and exciting.

The most dramatically expressive work here is Fürwahr, er trug unsere Krankheit, setting verses from Isaiah prophetic of the crucifixion. There is some powerful instrumental writing and Buxtehude’s music articulates a powerful response to the idea of the Passion; the writing, both for the bass soloist and for the chorus, as well as for the sections of the chorus, is consistently intense and moving. The response to the imagery of Christ’s wounds and “stripes” is especially poignant. Fürwahr, er trug unsere Krankheit is a fine piece, full of sustained melodies and aching harmonies, and it comes off particularly well in this recording.

Alles, was ihr tut is perhaps the most familiar of these four cantatas. It is an exhortation to ensure that (in the words of the Epistle to the Colossians) “whatsoever ye do in word or deed, [ye] do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God and the father by him”, as well as a petition that God might assist both individual and community. Buxtehude fruitfully juxtaposes elements of the sacred concerto and the aria, as well as the setting of a chorale text to an already existing melody; homophonic passages and contrapuntal writing are employed by turns; the interplay of instruments and voices is always effective and interesting. In passing phrases – both textual and musical – between soloist and chorus, Buxtehude seems to offer an artistic statement as to the proper relationship between the individual and the community in a Christian society. The whole work breathes an untroubled faith and the continuo work from the Dufay Ensemble is particularly striking here.

The external evidence makes it unlikely that the Magnificat is Buxtehude’s; although one copy of the work was found in the collection of Buxtehude’s friend Gustav Düben, who certainly owned copies of works by Buxtehude, it has to be said that he also owned works by other composers too; other surviving copies of this setting come from areas of Europe where Buxtehude is not known to have had any connections. Nor, indeed, does it really sound like Buxtehude; it lacks the subtlety and inventiveness of Buxtehude at anything like his best. It is pleasant but undistinguished and is perhaps best attributed to that old favourite ‘Anon’.

These are not perfect performances. The closing ‘Hallelujah’ of Der Herr ist mit mir hasn’t quite the brilliance and lightness of touch that the music deserves; Johan Reuter’s bass, though tonally very apt and attractive, isn’t quite as expressive as one might wish; just now and then, by the highest standards, the voices of one or two of the choir’s soloists sound overtaxed. On the other hand, the Choir as a whole sings beautifully, their work tonally lovely, their diction exemplary. The performances are certainly plenty good enough to give the hearer a pretty good idea of just how fine this music is.

-- Glyn Pursglove, MusicWeb International

The fantasia was in the process of being adapted for keyboard from lute and consort music during William Byrd’s youth, and his formidable mastery of counterpoint brought the form to a pinnacle equivalent to his matchless vocal works. These splendours combine with lively dances and virtuoso display and quotations from songs of love and death. They also may hold fascinating symbols which mark secret Catholic allegiances, a gift for Elizabeth I, and a memorial to the tragic Mary, Queen of Scots. Our cover image shows the only possible contemporary impression of Byrd, as a Gentleman of the Chapel Royal at the funeral of Elizabeth I.

BYRD: Consort and Keyboard Music / Songs and Anthems