3096 Tage (2013)

From 1957-1973 Werner recorded 55 of Bach's church cantatas as well as the St. John and St. Matthew Passions, the Christmas, Easter and Ascension Oratorios, the B minor Mass and the motets. MusicWeb stated, 'Werner's pacing of the (St. Matthew Passion) and his vision of it is compelling. The drama moves inexorably forward and the entire story is most movingly related.'

Christmas Oratorio is topical, it’s also universal. It doesn’t require lights or tinsel or presents under the tree to instruct, inspire, and/or entertain, especially if it is presented in as fine a performance as this one fashioned by Stephen Layton and his cohort. Layton is the director of music at Trinity College, Cambridge (having succeeded Richard Marlow), and his choir is top-notch, as is the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, mercifully identified as OAE. OAE’s roster is rife with such familiar names from the period instruments movement as Margaret Faultless (who is just that here) and Alison Bury. To mention Anthony Robson, oboe, and David Blackadder, trumpet, is not to slight any of the other players.

After celebrating his 2012 Grammy-winning "Echoes of Love", Omar softens the mood to serenade us with the romantic melodies of "Daytime Dreamer". Featuring six brand new tracks and five previously released selections, the familiar splashes of Omar's signature world textures (oud, duduk, violin and guitar) weave back and forth in a sublime dance with his exquisite piano compositions.

Willem Mengelberg - The Concertgebouw Recordings (2013) {15CD Box Set Decca rec 1939-1941}
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© 1939-41, 2013 Decca / Universal Music | 0289 480 7636 9
Classical / Orchestral

Mengelberg attached huge importance to what he considered a link between Beethoven and himself. For through his studies in conducting, theory and composition in Cologne under Franz Wullner, a friend of Anton Schindler who in turn had been a friend, secretary, biographer and pupil of Beethoven himself, he felt that there was a oral tradition passed down to him. At times the conductor does get near to Beethoven's metronome markings with his swift tempi. Well, Mengelberg is not boring.

This 55-CD set chronicles the remarkable Archiv label, begun in 1947. Devoted mainly to early and Baroque music, the recordings presented here, in facsimiles of their original sleeves (a nice touch), cover the period from Gregorian chant to Beethoven’s Fifth and Sixth symphonies, played on period instruments. There are stops in between for a great deal of Bach, music of the Gothic era, the French Baroque (Mouret, Delalande, Rameau, etc), Gibbons, Handel (Alcina, La Resurrezione, Messiah, Italian cantatas), Telemann, Zelenka, Gabrieli, Desprez, Haydn, LeJeune, and plenty of the usual, as well as unusual, suspects. There’s also a final CD with selections of new releases (more Handel, Cavalli, Gesualdo, Vivaldi).

The appetite for evolving performance practices in Bach’s St Matthew Passion appears undiminished as we have gradually shifted, over the generations, from larger to smaller ensembles and also towards a greater dramatic understanding of the implications of Bach’s ambitious ‘stereophonic’ double choir and orchestra choreography. René Jacobs has never been shy of a new hunch and taking it as far as (and sometimes beyond) what is either reasonable or defining.