Rooley

Monteverdi's Sixth Book of Madrigals (1614) is significant for including both traditional polyphonic and stile nuove concerted madrigals. In his booklet-notes, Rinaldo Alessandrini points out that this is also a 'book of partings': many of the madrigals seem to have been written much earlier than the published date, at a time when Monteverdi suffered the loss of his wife Claudia and his live-in pupil, the singer Caterina Martinelli.

Emma Kirkby - The Complete Recitals (2015) {12CD Decca-Editions de L'Oiseau-Lyre Official Digital Download}
FLAC (tracks) - 16bit/44kHz - Official Digital Download (qobuz.com) -> 2.92 Gb | MP3 @320 -> 1.59 Gb | Artwork (pdf+jpg) | 5% repair rar
© 2015 Decca / Editions de L'Oiseau-Lyre | 0289 478 7863 6
Classical / Early Music / Baroque / Vocal Music

This 12CD collection brings together Emma Kirkby’s complete L'Oiseau-Lyre recitals in a single set. The world’s most popular period-instrument soprano, Kirkby’s pure, crystalline sound defined how vocal music of the baroque and earlier eras should sound for a whole generation or more. Accompanied in the main by Anthony Rooley, the set features works by Purcell, Handel, Bach and Mozart as well as rarely recorded works by Edwards, Campion, Dowland, Morley, Ferrabosco and many more.

The conventional view of the Lawes brothers sees the older, Henry, as achieving greatness as a writer of songs and the younger, William, as doing his best work in his instrumental music.

Since it's founding in Freiburg in 1958, Deutsche Harmonia Mundi has been one of the most important and ambitious labels for period performances. Over decades, globally-acclaimed recordings were created with outstanding musicians. The limited edition "Deutsche Harmonia Mundi: 100 Great Recordings" contains 100 outstanding DHM recordings with some of the most important and best artists in their field: Nuria Rial, Dorothee Mields, Al Ayre Espanol, Hille Perl, Concentus Musicus Wien, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, the Freiburger Barockorchester, Skip Sempé, Capriccio Stravagante, La Petite Bande, Gustav Leonhardt, Andrew Lawrence-King, Frieder Bernius, the Balthasar-Neumann-Chor, Thomas Hengelbrock and many others.

Technically, this an excellent CD, with calm, assured playing by Rooley and (as always) careful, beautifully-articulated singing by Kirkby. I wanted to like it very much. But there's something inert about it all. Some of the songs are dances but you'd not realise it here, where everything is made elegaic and exquisitely sad. In the end this swamps the songs, flattening them in tone and nuance. It also links maybe to the sound of the CD; I don't think it's got added reverb but, rather, something else in the mixing which makes Kirkby's voice put your teeth on edge; there's a glacial, icing-sugar finish to her tone in this recording. I find it hard to listen to, despite the brilliance of it.

La Venexiana's Secondo Libro del Madrigali is the second volume in an edition devoted to the recording of all eight of Claudio Monteverdi's madrigal collections undertaken by the Spanish label Glossa. In promotional materials for the series, Glossa admits that this is a "time when 'complete' recordings seem to be coming less meaningful and attractive for the music lover" but have decided that there is need for such a series, especially as La Venexiana is so well-versed in the madrigals of Monteverdi.

In 1968, six former choral scholars from King’s College, Cambridge established the King’s Singers, later described by The Times as “the superlative vocal sextet”. The group has always comprised two countertenors, a tenor, two baritones and a bass, and over the years it has proved consistently exceptional for vocal distinction and breadth and diversity of repertoire. This celebratory collection of eight CDs focuses on Renaissance composers from Italy, England, France, Spain, Germany and the Low Countries.

With her almost supernaturally clear and agile soprano, Emma Kirkby has enchanted audiences ever since she first appeared on the Early Music scene in the 1970s. And as the art of historically informed performance has become more and more widely appreciated, so has her style of singing, to the extent that she in 2007 was included in a listing of ‘the 20 greatest sopranos ever’ made by the BBC Music Magazine. Throughout her career, Emma Kirkby has made a large number of recordings of a wide range of music. Released on the occasion of her 60th birthday, the present collection celebrates her collaboration with BIS, which has resulted in ten discs to date.

John Jenkins: yet another seventeenth century English composer who deserves to be more widely known. This delightful CD from The Consort of Musicke directed by Trevor Jones is no dutiful study of a hidden but rather uninspiring corner of English early Baroque consort music; rather, a mosaic – rich in color and shape, carefully crafted and full of surprises. Listen, for instance, to the unpretentious, jaunty and appropriately figurative progress through the Saraband (52, tr.6) and the restrained melancholy of the Fancy-Air (4, tr.7). Jenkins' counterpoint is well-wrought, his instrumental palette fresh and crisp and his melodies catchy without being fey or superficial in any way. He is in excellent hands with the Consort of Musicke… eight string players of the caliber of Monica Huggett and Alison Crum violins; Alan Wilson organ and Anthony Rooley theorbo. If fresh, beautiful, expertly-played English consort music appeals to you, don't hesitate to get this gem of a CD – actually a reissue of a Decca disc from 1983: it's unreservedly recommended.