Quodlibet

Here is a package that satisfies intellectual curiosity and is musically delightful. This two-disc set begins with a precise, but still musical, harpsichord performance of Bach's Goldberg Variations by Céline Frisch. Her Aria is clean, with both the melody and the bass line countermelody clear and phrased so that everything comes together well. Her ornaments fit naturally into the melodies throughout the variations, without drawing attention away from the tune, and she always has a sense of direction and forward momentum. The second disc contains the 14 canons on the first eight notes of the bass of the Aria from the Goldberg Variations and the two songs that are contained in the quodlibet near the end of the Variations. The canons are rich and warm performed by Café Zimmermann, a string sextet that includes a double bass, with excellent contrasts in the feel of each canon. The song Cabbages and Turnips Have Driven Me Away is the highlight of the two discs. Period instruments accompany Dominique Visse as he sings about a hunter bringing a girl home to meet his mother. Visse switches from a jolly, idiomatic tenor voice for the hunter to a smooth alto for the girl, and a slightly grating alto for the mother, often in mid-verse.

There have been two recordings so far of this Requiem by the Portuguese renaissance composer Pedro de Escobar, the other being Requiem , sung by the Ensemble Gilles Binchois directed by Dominique Vellard. The present disc, by the one-voice-per-part ensemble Quodlibet, was recorded in 1989 and reissued in 2005. The group sing with spirit and conviction; their ensemble and blend are not always ideal, but they rise to the occasion as we get to the Requiem itself halfway through the programme. In fact, among the motets and other items we find on the first eight tracks, there are also some lovely things, including a beautiful `Stabat Mater' (track 3) and a splendidly theatrical `Clamabit autem mulier' (A Canaanite woman cried out, track 5), where the ensemble admirably conveys the human drama of this gospel story.

While Glenn Gould was a pianist who performed the works of many composers, his name is inextricably linked to that of Johann Sebastian Bach. More than any other composer, Bach was Gould's speciality. From his first recording of Bach's Goldberg Variations in 1955 to his final recording, again of the Goldberg Variations in 1981, Gould recorded nearly all of Bach's keyboard music.

As you like - jocular, sensual, dramatic. opia delves into the musical depths of this game - merging literature from the Renaissance to the early Baroque.