Oswald

Constantly in search of eclectic and meaningful programmes, the soprano Anna Prohaska here celebrates ‘life in death’. An ambitious programme, conceived with Robin Peter Müller and his ensemble La Folia, which takes us on a journey across the centuries and through many different countries, with French chansons of the Middle Ages (including one by Guillaume de Machaut), seventeenth-century Italian pieces by Luigi Rossi, Francesco Cavalli and Barbara Strozzi, German composers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (Dietrich Buxtehude, Christoph Graupner, Franz Tunder) and the English luminaries Henry Purcell… plus John Lennon and Paul McCartney. A musical and spiritual quest that even takes in a detour to North America with a universally known song by Leonard Cohen.

The original stories by P.G. Wodehouse are delightfully amusing and worthy of out loud chuckling at times. The films series Jeeves and Wooster are as close as one could come to the dry wit of uber intelligent Jeeves, as he contends with his witless (and certainly not dry) employer, Bertie Wooster. Their shenanigans usually revolve around various comedies of errors set in that mystical feudal society of 1930s Britain. This collection of music and a bit of dialogue from the series is just as delightful, embodying the bouncy, whimsical style of light music from the 1920s and 30s. Recommended.