Nigel m

This album brings together three works for cello and piano. The first of them, Gabriel Faure's Cello Sonata No. 1, is a cornerstone of the repertoire for this medium. It was composed in 1917 and premiered by cellist Gerard Hekking and pianist Alfred Cortot.

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.

Naxos has collected its four volume traversal of the lute music into a handy slipcase. All the volumes are available singly, but you can also buy the four together as a quartet of excellence, presided over by Nigel North, the acknowledged hero of the hour. What follows is a reprise of two volumes already reviewed - volumes 1 and 3 - and a look at volumes 2 and 4.

The album covers of the iconoclastic British violinist Nigel Kennedy often promise more craziness than they actually deliver, and that's true in the case of this release, presenting to the buyer a cartoon of a mohawk-wearing figure saying "Shhh!" The contents differ considerably from what the cover would suggest; Shhh! is a more or less straight-ahead album of jazz in various styles. Kennedy came by his inclination toward jazz honestly, playing jazz on the piano as a child and appearing in a duet concert at age 16 with Stéphane Grappelli despite warnings from his teachers. Here he appears, as on several other albums from the 2005-2010 period, with an all-Polish group of musicians (except for Afro-British percussionist Xantoné Blacq)…

There's always an air of pretentiousness that accompanies classical performances of pop and rock classics, and most performances are quickly dismissed to the muzak-filled realms of elevators and doctor's waiting rooms. The fact that classical violinist Nigel Kennedy has dropped his first name for this set (to become Kennedy) doesn't bode well. Which makes it all the more surprising that this collection is quite good. Teaming up with producer Jaz Coleman (who has previously reworked Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin in the same vein) and the Prague Symphony Orchestra, Kennedy's violin replaces the vocals of Jim Morrison. Fortunately, lurking underneath Kennedy's guise as a rebel lies the thing which first brought him so much attention: his ability to play exquisite music, both technically and emotionally…

Jordi Savall, Nigel Rogers, Anthony Bailes - A Musicall Banquet 1610 (1977) {EMI "Reflexe" CDM 7 63429 2 rel 1991}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 246 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 124 Mb
Full Artwork @ 300 dpi (jpg) -> 20 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 1977, 1991 EMI Classics / EMI Electrola / EMI Reflexe | CDM 7 63429 2
Classical / Renaissance / Baroque

"Furnished with a varietie of delicious Ayres, collected out of the best authors in English, French, Spanish and Italian". Robert Dowland the son of Dowland "The English Orpheus" was the compiler of this fine anthology dedicated to Sir Robert Sidney, once Lord Chamberlain. In an age of "conceit" It was common enough to select some contrasting idea or image and apply it to an unrelated concept—hence the title "Musicall Banquet" which Robert Dowland charmingly describes as "like a careful confectionary", continuing that "as neere as might be I have fitted my Banquet for all tastes".