Taner de Gala - Juan Carlos Rivera

Rating: 5/5

Review:
A cracking disc

I really like this disc.  It is a programme of music from 16^th-Century Spain of music for vihuela – a sort of precursor of the guitar.  It's a rich repertoire from composers like Luis de Narváez, Luys Milan and others, and it's very fine music indeed.  It is full of variety from lively dances to mournful laments, and the melody and harmonic invention is terrific.  I find more in this every time I listen to it.

Part of this is due to the playing of Juan Carlos Rivera, who is excellent.  He rises to the technical challenges with ease and imbues each piece with a real sense of engagement and emotion.  The sound of his vihuela is lovely, and very well recorded here.  In short, it's a cracking CD and if you have any interest in the music of this period, don't hesitate.  Warmly recommended.

Lobo, Alonso - Missae - Musica Ficta

Rating: 3/5

Review:
Unengaging performances

Alonso Lobo was a very fine composer, ending his career as master of the chapel at Seville Cathedral. I am pleased to see more of his works recorded recently because they deserve to be heard. Sadly, I don't think this is a very good recording and I certainly don't think it does justice to these two lovely mass settings.

Musica Ficta are technically very competent, their intonation is good and many of the singers have fine voices. However, the voices fail to blend at all - partly due to some very obtrusive vibrato which prevents the harmonies and particularly the resonant chords from ringing as they should. I didn't really feel that there was much engagement with the text and I also found the dulcian (or bajon) playing in unison with the sung bass gave the whole thing a ponderous feel which really detracted from Lobo's often luminous writing. For me, the overall effect was rather unengaging and felt more like a singing exercise than a committed performance of passionate and beautiful sacred music.

I am sorry to have to be so critical. The disc is by no means bad, it just left me very cold, which Lobo's music certainly shouldn't. My advice is to wait and hope that perhaps a group like the Brabant Ensemble or Stile Antico might record some of Lobo's masses soon.

Bach - Violin Concertos - Bernardini/Dunedin Consort/Butt

Rating: 5/5

Review:
Excellent Bach

I like this recording very much.  These concertos have been recorded so often and by so many very fine violinists that another may seem an irrelevance, but this stands with the best, I think.

The programme consists of the two concertos that Bach actually left as solo violin concertos (BWV1041 and 1042), the famous double violin concerto BWV1043 and the concerto for violin and oboe BWV1060.  They are all brilliant works (which explains why they have been recorded so often, of course) which are full of Bach's wonderful melodies, emotion and essential pulse – and the slow movement of BWV1043 is simply sublime as the two violin parts twine around each other.  There is also a lovely little Sinfonia from Cantata 21 for violin and oboe.

Cecilia Bernardini plays beautifully.  Her tone is lovely throughout and she really brings out the meaning in these pieces without ever overlaying Bach's music with over-emphatic or sentimental gestures.  Her two solo partners are her father Alfredo Bernardini playing the oboe and violinist Huw Daniel , both of whom are excellent, as is the Dunedin Consort.  They are a chamber-sized ensemble here of four violins, viola, cello and violone with John Butt directing from the harpsichord.  They are ideal here – supple and empathetic, with some genuine welly when needed and aas a whole this sounds to me just as Bach should.

This won't supplant my dearly loved versions by Andrew Manze, Rachel Podger, Alina Ibragimova and others, but it's alongside them and I'll be playing this just as often, I think.  It's excellently played, superbly recorded and has very good accompanying notes, so I can recommend this in the warmest terms.

Tallis, Tye Sheppard - Audivi vocem - The Hilliard Ensemble

Rating: 5/5

Review:
Another beauty from the Hilliard Ensemble

This is a really fine disc of church music from three of England's finest composers of the 16th Century. It is fabulously beautiful and chosen from the last decades of the reign of Henry VIII to illustrate the rapidly changing religious practice of those times and its effect on the music written for worship, making a varied and interesting programme, consisting of Tye's Missa Sine nomine interspersed with very fine motets by Tallis and Sheppard.

Whether or not you like this disc depends on whether you like the distinctive sound of the Hilliard ensemble. I love it and think this is one of their loveliest discs - it reminds me of their wonderful disc of Tallis's Lamentations and Four Voice Mass, which has been a favourite of mine for many, many years. They sing at a low pitch, with the top line taken by David James's distinctive, plangent countertenor and the recording sounds as though the microphone is placed some distance from the singers. This gives a haunting, rather spare sound which sounds to me as though it is coming from a hidden cloister of a plain but beautiful ancient stone church, rather than the rounder, Cathedral-filling sound of The Tallis Scholars or Stile Antico, for example. I also have their recordings of many of the motets sung here and love them too, in their different ways. This disc is equally beautiful and evocative, but evocative of different things and, to me, a wholly different musical experience.

It's a very beautiful rewarding disc, with excellent recorded sound and first-rate notes by David Skinner, and highly recommended.

Josquin Desprez - Missa Gaudeamus

Rating: 3/5

Review:
Thin sound and unengaged performances

I'm afraid this isn't a very good recording.  I have never got on well with A Sei Voci's recordings of Josquin; I have found them rather thin in sound and somewhat unengaged as performances.  The addition here of the children's choir, however well-intentioned, certainly doesn't help and I find the whole effect rather unpleasing.  It certainly doesn't show Josquin's magnificent music at its best.

There is now a truly excellent recording of this mass by De Labyrintho.  Rather than go on at length about why I find this A Sei Voci performance unsatisfactory, I will simply recommend that you try De Labyrintho.  You will find samples to play on Amazon's mp3 page HERE . I suggest that you try them and if you like the sound, snap up either the download or the CD.  It's a real treat.

Musik am Dresdner Hof - Virtuosi Saxoniae/Guttler

Rating: 4/5

Review:
A good box

This is rather a good box, I think.  The performances are very decent and there's a very good selection of music by a variety of composers.

The box contains 8 discs of music written for the Dresden Court in the late 17^th- and  18^th Centuries by composers like Vivaldi, Telemann, Pisendel, Zelenka, Heinichen and others.  There is a variety of secular and sacred music and it makes a varied and very enjoyable set.

These recordings were made between 1989 and 1995, and they are pretty good, without being up to the phenomenal standard set by some more recent ensembles under people like Rachel Podger, Fabio Biondi and many others.  They are technically very sound and have a decent engagement with all they perform, so I find that especially playing just one or two pieces at a time they are very enjoyable.

At the current price for 8 discs of very good music in decent performances which are well recorded, I think this box represents good value and I can recommend it.

Bach - Sonatas and Partitas - Galbraith

Rating: 3/5

Review:
Virtuosic playing, but the interpretations aren't always for me

This is excellent in many ways, but I'm not quite as bowled over by it as some reviewers.

The first thing to say is that Paul Galbraith is an excellent musician whose mastery of the eight-string guitar is remarkable.  He has the quality of technique to make even the most demanding passages here sound natural and straightforward, and the sound of his instrument is simply lovely throughout. 

The transcriptions, by Galbraith himself, are also very good.  The nature of the violin means that the harmonies in Bach's original pieces are often (brilliantly) implied rather than explicitly stated and Galbraith does a fine job of filling in the harmonic structure to suit an instrument which can sound many notes at once, without overlaying the music with superfluous additions.

My reservations are purely personal and lie in the interpretations, which, although they have a lovely overall sound, seem to me to lack some of Bach's essential pulse and drive in places and certainly aren't varied enough in approach for me.  The mighty chaconne from the D minor Partita, for example, needs some bite and even emotional bleakness in places, but the continuous flow of soft-toned notes and gentle phrasing to me robs it of a good deal of its power.

Many people have found this set a real delight and you may well agree, so do read other reviews as well, but for me, however excellent the playing, this doesn't quite hit the spot and I can only give it a qualified recommendation.