12 Songs

This selection by Carole Farley of my songs covers forty years of my writing for both concert and theater. Not everyone can shift stylistic gears as easily and brilliantly as she from straight-out Broadway parody (Casino Paradise’s Night, Make My Day) to difficult art music (the I Will Breathe a Mountain cycle). Who but a courageous soprano would start a recording with a scream? Carole has begun her programme with You Cannot Have Me Now, from the 1969 opera for actors Greatshot, written for the Yale Repertory Theater in 1969; the character is a German war-bride …….

William Bolcom

Following the iconic series of the complete songs of Schubert and Schumann, Graham Johnson further demonstrates the phenomenal depth of his knowledge in the expert programming of this recital. Each disc in the series represents a different journey through the repertoire, and thus through Brahms’s life. This new volume is sensitively balanced, the opening and closing folksong transcriptions possessing beguiling charm and the five songs of Op 49 being performed in their entirety.

Accetto Miracoli is one of the most anticipated albums of this Christmas: an amazing album by Tiziano Ferro. Produced by Timbaland and anticipated by two singles, Buona (Cattiva) Sorte and Accetto Miracoli both at the top of the digital and airplay charts, is an album that Tiziano immediately defined as "fresh, honest, energetic, born of the need to deliver me to new experiences ".

Stanford’s eight-part Latin Magnificat was posthumously dedicated to Parry, whose own Songs of farewell are unmistakably valedictory in mood. Personal as well as musical associations run deep in this poignantly expressive programme from Westminster Abbey Choir.