Beethoven - Complete Works for Cello & Piano - Philips/Guy

Rating: 5/5

Review:
An excellent set

I think this is excellent.  I love the cello (it was my instrument as a teenager) but I have often struggled with Beethoven's Cello Sonatas.  Even in the hands of great musicians like Rostropovich and Richter I have often found them forbidding and rather impenetrable, but there have been two sets which, in their different ways, I have enjoyed very much in more recent times by Isserlis and Levin and by Muller-Schott and Hewitt.  This ranks with them I think.

I am not really musician enough nor sufficiently knowledgeable about Beethoven to analyse closely why this set works so well.  Plainly Philips and Guy are excellent musicians, whose technique and virtuosity is apparent throughout.  The balance of the two instruments is beautifully judged, there is never any sense of strain here even in the most demanding passages and there is a thoughtful, engaged feeling about the whole set.  Somehow, too, there is a sense of  welcome and inclusion of the listener; I always feel as though they want to share their love of this music with us, which allows me into the music in a way which I haven't always found possible.

I'm sorry this is such a subjective ramble, but I don't think I can do much better.  This is superb music, played in a way which really allows it to speak to me.  I cannot say whether it will do that for you, but the playing is superb and the recording very good, so I would suggest you give it a try.  I love it.

Tallis - Complete Works - Chapelle du Roi/Dixon

Rating: 5/5

Review:
A superb set

This is a truly excellent set, and at a bargain price. I have loved Tallis's music for many years and have a lot of dearly loved recordings by The Tallis Scholars, Magnificat, the Hillard Ensemble and others which won't be superseded by this set, but are certainly beautifully complemented by it. The approach of Alistair Dixon and Chapelle du Roi is calm and restrained, and the music glows as a result. The singers are very good, tuning is virtually faultless and the absence or restrained use of vibrato ideal. The overall sound is very warm, by and large, emphasised by resonant acoustics in all the recording venues, and this eight-year project is a very fine achievement which does real justice to one of England's greatest composers.

The music itself is magnificent. Obviously, in any Complete Works there will be some pieces which are of less interest to individual listeners, and while I'm not over-keen to hear lengthy organ settings of Felix namque on a regular basis, there will be those who are. There is a wealth of magnificent music and, of course, there are little-recorded gems to discover among the better-known pieces. It's worth saying that Disc 9 - The Instrumental Music and Songs - was named by a reviewer on Radio 3's CD Review as an Essential Tallis disc. Quite right, too, in my view - the playing by Charivari Agréable is excellent and the counter-tenor Stephen Taylor is very good, too. The disc also includes `Ye sacred muses', Byrd's lament on Tallis's death, which is a real bonus.

Brilliant Classics make a pretty good job of the packaging. It's cardboard, but attractive and durable. All the original liner notes and texts are supplied on a CD-ROM as Adobe Acrobat files. It's good to have them, although one can't really sit down comfortably with the text in front of you as you could with a booklet. For so much superb music at such a price, though, this is a sacrifice well worth making - it's a fantastic set of wonderful music and very warmly recommended.

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.