Sacred Spirit Virgin

Celebrated as the musical poet of the English landscape, Vaughan Williams was also a visionary composer of enormous range: from the pastoral lyricism of The Lark Ascending and the still melancholy of Silent Noon to the violence of the Fourth Symphony and the grand ceremonial of All people that on earth do dwell, he assumed the mantle of Elgar as our national composer. This edition, released to mark the 50th anniversary of his death, presents all the major orchestral, chamber, vocal and stage works, as well as many lesser pieces and rarities, in the finest interpretations. All your favourite Vaughan Williams is here, in over 34 hours of music on 30 CDs.

Rodelinda was the first of Handel's operas to be revived in modern times (at Gottingen, in 1920) and the first to be performed in the USA (at Smith College, Northampton. Massachusetts, in 1931), and this summer it adds to its laurels the distinction of being the first Handel opera (as opposed to oratorio) to be staged at Glyndebourne. Composed just after Giulio Cesare and Tamerlano, it must, I think, rank in many people's top half-dozen of the Handel operas, with its complex plot of dynastic intrigue revolving around the powerful, steadfast love of Bertarido (the ousted king of Milan) and his queen Rodelinda: just the kind that unfailingly drew strong music from Handel.

Giovanni Battista Sammartini, son of the French oboist Alexis Saint-Martin, was most likely born in Milan in 1700 or 1701; his death certificate, dated 1775, gives his age as 74. Not much is known about his childhood. In 1724 he is already documented as being a maestro di cappella; we also know that he was active as a performer on the oboe and organ, winning admiration for the individuality of his touch on the latter instrument…
Maria Daniela Villa / Translation by David S. Tabbat

Giovanni Battista Sammartini, son of the French oboist Alexis Saint-Martin, was most probably born in Milan on 1700 or 1701; his death certificate, dated 1775, gives his age as 74. Little is known about his childhood, but in 1774 he is already documented as being a maestro di cappella, and we know that he was active as a performer on the oboe and organ, winning admiration for the individuality of his touch on the latter instrument…
Maria Daniela Villa - Translation by David S. Tabbat

Winton Dean, the, ahem, dean of modern Handel scholarship, considered Joseph and His Brethren one of Handel's weakest oratorios. Don't believe it: the music is wonderful, and even the libretto isn't nearly as bad as Dean makes out. The King's Consort gives the same high-quality performance it always gives to Handel's oratorios. James Bowman sounds particularly comfortable in the title role; while all the soloists are good, soprano Yvonne Kenny (who gets all the best arias) is terrific. –Matthew Westphal

The music of William Byrd has been something of an obsession for the members of Phantasm, featuring on their early recordings Still Music of the Spheres (1996) and Byrd Song (1998), as well as their 2004 collection The Four Temperaments. Here they return again to the Elizabethan composer with the benefit of nearly two decades’ performing experience, to gather together his complete output for viol consort, bar the fragmentary or spurious works. Spanning some 40 years of Byrd’s life, this is a condense but subtly varied album of styles: courtly dances interleave with cryptic spiritual and devotional works – fleeting expressions of the recusant Catholic’s unwavering faith – and variations on popular Tudor songs, like the magnificent tour de force, Browning. Among the finest works are the Fantasias, which range from lush-textured six-part tapestries to the laconic three-part pieces, haiku-like in their poetic expressivity. Throughout them Byrd retains the ‘Angelicall and Divine’ qualities that his contemporaries remarked upon – qualities that Phantasm captures perfectly in this collection.