Howard C.j

Gardiner’s reading of the St. Matthew Passion is conceived and executed on the highest level, an example of period practice that is unlikely to be bettered any time soon. The performance as a whole vibrates with life: soloists are first-rate, and wonderfully well chosen for their respective parts, and the work of chorus and orchestra is exemplary. The recording, made in 1988 in the spacious ambience of The Maltings, Snape, near Aldeburgh, is well balanced and exceptionally vivid.

As a composer of instrumental music, Louis Spohr was second only to Beethoven in the category of widespread attention and recognition during the first half of the nineteenth century. After Beethoven's death in 1827 he was regarded by large segments of the music public as the greatest living composer. In 1828 the leading music critic Friedrich Rochlitz asked very rhetorically, 'Who else should now write symphonies?' Spohr was supposed to continue what Beethoven had begun. However, even then Spohr's symphonic music was recognized as the absolute opposite of the type of the Beethovian symphony. If genial musical license holds sway in Beethoven's oeuvre, then in Spohr classical order prevails.

A brilliant and affectingly different collection of transcriptions of favourite Bach movements, at times uniquely exhilarating, at others showing Bach at his most expressively touching… Adams's recorder playing is musically dazzling…but the other players complete an ensemble which is delightfully fresh and alive.

The "extravagantly talented" (The New York Times) American organist Cameron Carpenter releases his first album on Decca Gold, a recording of J.S. Bach's The Goldberg Variations, BWV 988 juxtaposed with his own transcription of American composer Howard Hanson's Symphony No. 2 in D-flat Major, Opus 30, W45, "Romantic." Both works are performed on Carpenter's tailor-made instrument, the International Touring Organ, which was designed to allow him to perform at almost any location worldwide.

Between the early 16th and the middle of the 17th century, as the lute reached its zenith as a solo and accompanying instrument throughout Europe, Pierre Attaingnant, Adrian LeRoy, and the Ballard family dominated the business of printing music in France. The chansons and airs de cour they published and, in many cases, composed combined exquisite poetry with both polyphonic and homophonic lute accompaniments, yielding some of the most affecting and artful expressions of love ever composed.

We talk of the nine symphonies of Beethoven and Bruckner but what about the ten of Spohr? Howard Shelley and the Orchestra della Svizzera Italiana conclude their survey of his symphonies with two that push the boundaries of the genre itself. Both Nos 7 and 9 are programmatic works, something that Spohr along with Berlioz did much to champion. In the Seventh, titled ‘The earthly and divine in human life’ and inspired by a holiday in Switzerland, he uses not one but two orchestras to great colouristic effect. His Ninth explores that perennial favourite theme of composers from Vivaldi to Glazunov, the Seasons (though Spohr starts with winter rather than spring). As if that were not enough, Howard Shelley also offers the premiere recordings of a brief, powerful Introduzione and a triumphant, at times almost Rossini-ish, Festmarsch.