Amadeus Folge 14

Ameling, one of the world's most beloved recitalists is captured here in a 5 CD collection offering some of her most beautiful recordings of song. While we are used to her perfection in songs of Bach, Mozart, Schubert, Schumann, Faure and Hahn, an added joy is her "pop" side, tackling - without a whiff of pretension, Porter, Kern, Gershwin, Ellington, et al. What an absolute joy it is listening to this amazing artist sing these songs with an almost uncanny natural ease. There is no resorting to a "pop" voice and yet most of these pop standards songs sound as though they could have been written for her. Clean attacks, sometimes a bit of the pop technique of hanging on to a consonant longer than a classical artist normally would shows an appreciation and understanding of the style. Still, there is never once a compromise of her vocal beauty.

Schon bei seiner Gründung 1962 hatten es sich Collegium Aureum als Ziel gesetzt, alte Musik auf historischen Instrumenten aufzuführen. Während der langen Zeit seines Bestehens veröffentlichte das Ensemble zahlreiche erfolgreiche LPs und CDs und konzertierte in den großen Konzertsälen ganz Europas.

The solo boy soprano album has a kind of intensity, born of knowing that the sound will soon end, that attracts some and puts others off, but Norwegian treble Aksel Rykkvin, with flawless schoolboy good looks, has become something of a sensation with this album of Baroque and Classical arias. His voice has a rather metallic quality, and you might think that forcing it into these big arias would be an unnatural thing. Yet in fact some of these pieces, including the tough arias from Handel's Alcina, were originally written for a boy soprano, and Bach's church music made use of them as well. Rykkvin handles the acrobatics quite well.