Bostridge is sharply attuned to the subtlety of Handel's work setting, colouring his sound with a rich palette of timbres and effects: sonorous and sensuous in 'Ombra mai fù', hauntingly stark in 'Total eclipse'. …Harry Bicket's direction is sensitive and unfussy - tempos are well-judged, allowing him to shape Handel's long-breathed melodic lines with supple grace.
Chandos’ featured release is a new recording of the first English operatic masterpiece, Purcell’s tragedy Dido and Aeneas. Starring Sarah Connolly, Gerald Finley, with the Orchestra and Choir of the Age of Enlightenment, it is released to commemorate the 350th anniversary of Purcell’s birth.
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.
Anyone interested in a high-quality performance of Mozart's violin concertos on period instruments needs to look no further than this inexpensive set. All the youthful exuberance of the music comes through brilliantly in this interpretation, enhanced by the transparent texture of period instruments. Everything from tempi to dynamics is well-chosen and well-rendered, and nothing stands out as being out of place.
The crowning glory of this collection rests in Frans Brüggen’s marvelous set of the 12 “London” Symphonies. These, along with some of the lesser-known late works, such as Symphonies Nos. 86 and 90 (with its thrilling horn writing), alone justify purchase of this inexpensive 13-disc collection–but really it’s all pretty fine. One of the more anachronistic aspects of the “authentic-instrument” movement has been that works written to be performed without conductor at all (or in collaboration between concertmaster and players) receive the loving ministrations of “specialists” such as Brüggen (and Harnoncourt, for example) whose inclinations in terms of tempo manipulation and expressive phrasing could make a Stokowski blush. And so we find a finale of Symphony No. 88 that’s even slower than Karl Böhm’s, and when you come right down to it, it’s none the worse for the experience: it makes up in charm what it lacks in sheer energy.
Gustav Leonhardt's account of [the symphonies] is the one to have if you want them on period instruments. They are lively and alert, and distinguished by fine musical intelligence… It is difficult to imagine a better partnership to provide authentic versions of these three fine works.
The violin concertos here are not the familiar pair in A minor and E. Bach composed a number of concertos for orchestral instruments and later transcribed them as keyboard concertos. Reversing Bach’s procedure, Wilfried Fischer has taken the harpsichord versions and from them has reconstructed the originals. BWV 1056 is a transposed transcription of the Keyboard Concerto in F minor (though New Grove identifies the outer movements as being from a lost oboe concerto). The D minor work is also usually heard in its keyboard adaptation. The concerto in C minor for two harpsichords appears in its original instrumentation for violin and oboe, the soloists here being perfectly balanced for clarity of line. It was Tovey who suggested that the A major concerto may have been intended for the oboe d’amore, an instrument pitched between the oboe proper and the cor anglais.
If there is one Mendelssohn symphonic recording that makes the case for a more favorable reassessment [of the composer], it's this pairing of the Italian Symphony and some of the Midsummer Night's Dream music by Sir Charles Mackerras…. The clarity of texture here [in the Symphony] is extraordinary, even when the brass and winds add their clout. As a result, every line of Mendelssohn's orchestration comes through clearly, leaving a listener with a renewed respect for this composer's inventiveness…. The Midsummer Night's Dream music is even more miraculous….