Carissa's Wierd Brooke Daniels' Tiny Broken Fingers

Multi-instrumentalist Eddie Daniels first came to prominence with the Thad Jones-Mel Lewis Big Band. His swinging tenor sax won many admirers but gradually other aspects of his playing came to the fore and in the '70s his maturing clarinet work became his most pesonal voice. This beautiful interwoven collaboration (originally released in 1973) with guitarist Bucky Pizzarelli shows off the intimate side of Eddie, featuring him on clarinet, bass clarinet, flute and alto flute. It is an intriguing set with a broad range of material and styles, producing endless flow of creative musical ideas.

It has been a several years since David Daniels’ last recital for Virgin Classics – in 2004 the renowned countertenor explored Berlioz’ Les Nuits d’Eté - and his most recent recital of Baroque works, the critically acclaimed Oratorio Arias by Handel, dates back to 2002. For this new release, Daniels returns to sacred works of the Baroque era with this programme of sacred arias and cantatas by Bach. He lends his beautiful countertenor voice and immense musicianship to this programme of famous cantatas, namely “Ich habe genug”, and arias from Bach’s Mass in B minor and the Saint Matthew’s and Saint John’s Passions. The programme was recorded in London in September 2007.

The ever-increasing popularity of Handel and his contemporaries, and their employment of alto castratos, has encouraged the development of countertenors capable of similar vocal feats to the original interpreters of the heroic roles in these works. Among these the distinguished American, David Daniels, who burst on to the scene here a couple of years ago at Glyndebourne in Theodora, is a leading contender. If I would place Scholl in the category of Deller and Esswood, with their luminous, soft-grained tone, Daniels is closer to the more earthy sound of Bowman, his voice — like Bowman's — astonishingly large in volume.

After a fine Handel recital CD, not to mention taking part in a dozen other major recordings, countertenor David Daniels has hit the jackpot. This fascinating, handsomely recorded CD offers us arias from Mitridate and Ascanio in Alba, and a concert aria by Mozart (the only one he composed for male alto), as well as some Handel and Gluck arias. With them, Daniels takes us through every quality a classically trained singer should have and comes through with flying colors. The arias are about vengeance, sorrow, love–the usual–but within baroque strictures that means that some require lush, limpid singing, others ferocious coloratura and exclamatory heft, and some all of these.

After a fine Handel recital CD, not to mention taking part in a dozen other major recordings, countertenor David Daniels has hit the jackpot. This fascinating, handsomely recorded CD offers us arias from Mitridate and Ascanio in Alba, and a concert aria by Mozart (the only one he composed for male alto), as well as some Handel and Gluck arias. With them, Daniels takes us through every quality a classically trained singer should have and comes through with flying colors. The arias are about vengeance, sorrow, love–the usual–but within baroque strictures that means that some require lush, limpid singing, others ferocious coloratura and exclamatory heft, and some all of these.

By the eighteenth century, Palermo-born Alessandro Scarlatti was the most widely performed Italian composer of vocal music having written more than sixty operas and well over a hundred cantatas. The cantata, more concentrated than opera, was considered at that time as the higher artistic form. Scarlatti was extremely prolific and many of his works including cantatas still remain unrecorded.

This is a beautiful selection of arias from Handel’s oratorios composed in the latish 1740s. Each one is a gem and David Daniels again proves himself the leading “operatic” countertenor of our day. He possesses one of the few countertenor voices that might be called “sensual”, not to mention one of the few with any respectable volume. He even puts pressure on it occasionally–as opposed, say, to Drew Minter or Alfred Deller, who aim (aimed) for a diaphonous sound.

–Robert Levine