Christine Gross Ioh

Baroque dedicatory letters seek to fmatter the addressee, such as those sent to Duchess Sibylla of Württemberg. This custom was as necessary as it was natural. However, it is remarkable how much Philipp Friedrich Böddecker (*1607, Hagenau in Alsace; †1683, Stuttgart) emphasised the particular musical abilities of the dedicatee in the preface to his Sacra Partitura, published in Strasbourg in 1651.

During her years with Fleetwood Mac, Christine McVie only recorded one album. It was released in 1984, after Mirage had run its course and the band was taking an extended break. Given its release date, it's not surprising that Christine McVie sounds like it could have been recorded during the Mirage sessions – it's a collection of soft rock/pop and ballads that are pleasantly melodic and ingratiating…

During her years with Fleetwood Mac, Christine McVie only recorded one album. It was released in 1984, after Mirage had run its course and the band was taking an extended break. Given its release date, it's not surprising that Christine McVie sounds like it could have been recorded during the Mirage sessions – it's a collection of soft rock/pop and ballads that are pleasantly melodic and ingratiating. Only a handful of cuts, such as the wonderfully catchy, lightly bouncy hit single "Got a Hold on Me," work their way into the memory, but nothing on Christine McVie is anything less than agreeable. The record simply suffers from a rather predictable fate – it's a little too sweet and laid-back to be consumed in one sitting, and its best songs would have sounded even better if they were balanced by Lindsey Buckingham's insular, paranoid pop genius and Stevie Nicks' hippie-folk mysticism.

The works of Franz Danzi did not achieve especially widespread appeal during his lifetime, nor have they been particularly popular in modern times despite the trend of resurrecting lost or unknown compositions. In addition to being a prolific composer, Danzi was quite active as an educator, though his pedagogical achievements are equally unrecognized. While not all of his compositions are necessarily worthy of a second look, his chamber works are of interest. In particular, his wind chamber music finds the composer hard at work advancing his ideals of wind performance and the advocacy of the "new," modernized versions of wind instruments. This set of three piano quintets (for fortepiano plus winds) is an ideal setting. The fortepiano, played by Christine Schornsheim, is clearly the dominant force throughout the three quintets, the winds are given several opportunities to stand alone. Danzi sought a more equal treatment of the wind instruments, even bringing the bassoon out of its more traditional role as a mere bass accompaniment instrument.

On 2018’s Chris, French singer-songwriter Héloïse Adelaïde Letissier embodied a masculine alter ego to cover a variety of subjects. With this five-track follow-up EP, Letissier leaves the Chris persona behind and gets a little more personal. On “Je disparais dans tes bras” [“I disappear in your arms”], she rejects a lover’s mixed messages over a kinetic beat—doubling down on 2019’s dance-floor sizzler with Charli XCX “Gone.” “People, I’ve been sad” and “Nada” are more measured and thoughtful, with Letissier opening up about painful childhood memories and heartbreak with vulnerability. She sings, “Voglio fare l'amore con questa canzone” [“I want to make love with this song”] in Italian on the bubbly, synth-driven title track featuring Caroline Polachek, exuding a playfulness that is hard to resist.

Christine Perfect's (or McVie's) earliest work on the Blue Horizon label is as bluesy as it is dated. While it never offers a dull moment, with McVie singing with a convincing amount of energy, "The Complete Blue Horizon Sessions" never offers the later songwriting chops McVie would later gain in Fleetwood Mac…