Handel Requiem

Paul McCreesh is one of the better-known figures in London's active early music scene, particularly as a conductor of small ensemble music of the Baroque. He grew up playing the cello. While at Manchester University, he formed a student chamber choir and ensemble of period instruments. In 1982 he organized it formally as the Gabrieli Consort and Players. .

Gramophone Classical Music Awards 2014 Choral category winner! Purely on grounds of performance alone, this is one of the finest Mozart Requiems of recent years. John Butt brings to Mozart the microscopic care and musicological acumen that have made his Bach and Handel recordings so thought-provoking and satisfying.

«A mes yeux, cet enregistrement du requiem est incontounable, la sérénité qui s'en dégage, l'équilibre général, la qualité de l'interprétation tant vocale qu'instrumentale en font une version de premier plan, même si le choix est vaste, ma préférence est toujours restée pour cette version.»

This is an excellent and varied selection of composers from the very well known like Palestrina, Monteverdi, Bach and Vivaldi, through the less famous but familiar like Frescobaldi, Sainte-Colombe and Zelenka, to the downright obscure. It is all delightful: the musicians are uniformly excellent, and include such great names as Gustav Leonhardt, Cantus Colln, Christopher Hogwood and so on. They give fine performances both of the familiar works and of the less familiar ones. Obviously there will be discs you like more than others and you may already have favourite versions of some works, but these discs are never less than very good and are often outstanding.

Few record labels from the dawn of the LP era are recalled with more admiration and affection than Westminster Records – its first records from 1950 established Westminster as a pioneering source, exploring new and exciting corners of repertoire.

With Water & Fire, B’Rock Orchestra and Dmitry Sinkovsky present Handel’s Water Music alongside his Music for the Royal Fireworks. Both spectacular works were written for royal open-air ceremonies, and may well have been drowned out by the noise of pyrotechnics and the waves of the Thames. Still, after Handel’s lifetime, they quickly became audience favourites. B’Rock performs these captivating suites with an ensemble that approaches the ca. 50 musicians that Handel originally employed, conveying the pomp and splendour of the occasion while also highlighting the coloristic richness and refinement of the score.

The eighteenth century is probably the most extraordinary period of transformation Europe has known since antiquity. Political upheavals kept pace with the innumerable inventions and discoveries of the age; every sector of the arts and of intellectual and material life was turned upside down. Between the end of the reign of Louis XIV and the revolution of 1789, music in its turn underwent a radical mutation that struck at the very heart of a well-established musical language. In this domain too, we are all children of the Age of Enlightenment: our conception of music and the way we ‘consume’ it still follows in many respects the agenda set by the eighteenth century. And it is not entirely by chance that harmonia mundi has chosen to offer you in 2011 a survey of this musical revolution which, without claiming to be exhaustive, will enable you to grasp the principal outlines of musical creation between the twilight of the Baroque and the dawn of Romanticism.

Modern day recognition of the music of Benedetto Marcello (1686-1739) has been totally eclipsed by the music of Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1741). If one looks back at Marcello's popularity in the first half of the 18th century in Venetian Music, you will find that he was considered to be one of the musical glories of Italy on a par with Palestrina and Pergolesi, and was referred to as the 'Noble Venetian'. He was admired for his skillful counterpoint, his masterly attention to the words of the text he set and the noble simplicity of his melodies. All of these attributes are present in this lovely and entertaining Requiem.

The music in this collection, inspired by religious thought and liturgical text, has been selected in honor of Pope John Paul II's visit to Paris in August of 1997 to celebrate Mass as part of the Worldwide Days of Youth. Much of the music here is very familiar to even casual listeners to classical music. From J. S. Bach's "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring," to a rousing version of "Hallelujah" from Handel's 'Messiah,' this CD plays like a greatest hits of church music from the last 400 years.