Clio

Tavener wrote the extraordinarily moving …Depart in Peace… following the death of his father. Written for soprano, violin, tampura and strings it features Eastern elements and a glittering setting of the Song of Simeon ; Patricia Rozario and Clio Gould are outstanding soloists in this beautiful piece. Clio Gould’s perfectly pitched and emotive violin playing takes centre stage in My Gaze is Ever upon You and Tears of the Angels . John Tavener, who passed away in 2013, was described as one of ‘ the very best creative talents of his generation ’ by The Times; these compositions are among his finest.

Leslie Clio has already achieved a huge musical step with her album PURPLE - it is the document of an artistic development that has only succeeded in Germany. And it is precisely this development that Leslie Clio impressively demonstrates in her pre-release "Darkness Is A Filler".

Hyperion’s Record of the Month sees the long overdue return to the studio of The King’s Consort, under the baton of the group’s newly appointed Artistic Director Matthew Halls. Here the ensemble presents the premiere recording of Handel’s Parnasso in Festa: a unique example in Handel’s enormous creative career of a fully-fledged celebratory serenata (or Festa teatrale). This form was rare in England but had developed in parallel with opera in Italy, where it was popular for commemorating special occasions of international significance. Parnasso in Festa was written for Princess Anne’s marriage to Prince William of Orange.

By the time that Alessandro Scarlatti was writing the two serenatas recorded here by Fabio Bonizzoni and La Risonanza and inaugurating an exciting new series on Glossa, that celebratory cantata form, often employing allegorical characters, had been in existence for a mere half century. Scarlatti, as Bonizzoni says, “was one of the main sources of inspiration for Handel whilst the latter was in Italy, and this creates a real continuity with what we have been doing in the recent past”; notably the much-admired septet of recordings devoted to the Saxon composers Italian chamber cantatas.

The David harp is a type of harp from the German Baroque period. The figure of King David is usually depicted on the head of the harp column. The strings are fitted with brays, which gives this instrument a typical buzzing sound. In addition to the David harp, however, a number of other types of harp were used in baroque Germany, such as the single-row hooked harp, on which the pitch could be altered with hooks on the strings, or double-row chromatic harps.