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ID: RRC1027
CDs: 1
Type: CD
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Nash Ensemble (Trout. |
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ID: RRC1051
CDs: 1
Type: CD
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Kolektion: Vocal CollectionSubkolektion: Oper
Felicity Lott with Graham Johnson (pno) 8 page booklet (74 mins). |
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ID: CHRCD013
CDs: 1
Type: CD
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Kolektion: Choral CollectionSubkolektion: Christmas Music
Dame Felicity Lott and the Joyful Company of Singers serve up rich Christmas fayre with 'Plum Pudding', well-spiced with favourite carols and readings by actor Gabriel Woolf.
PLUM PUDDING
‘A rich boiled suet pudding with raisins, currants, spices, etc.' (OED).
You'll find no ‘boiled suet' in our offering, but rich and well-spiced fare abounds - and unlike its namesake our pudding is bursting with plums! First, though, a warming drink as we Wassail with the merry folk of medieval Yorkshire: ‘…all over the town… in the wassail bowl we'll drink unto thee'. Vaughan Williams, renewing his quest for traditional airs after the horrors of war service, made his exultant arrangement in 1919. Almost a century earlier, in his beloved Northamptonshire village, John Clare was immortalising country life through the seasons; in December, when ‘GladChristmas comes…' he vividly evokes the simple pleasures of that ‘day of happy sound and mirth'. Close contemporaries, Victoria (1548-1611) and Byrd (c. 1543-1623) both began their musical life as choristers, at Avila Cathedral in Spain and at London's Chapel Royal respectively. The former's magnificent motet O magnum mysterium, its arching phrases intertwining like a great cathedral's vaulting, was written in Rome in 1572. Byrd's equally intricate but more worldly This Day Christ Was Born - subtitled ‘A Carroll for Christmas Day' - appeared in his last published songbook in 1611. Moving back to medieval times, to the Wakefield Mystery Plays, we hear God - portrayed by a worthy merchant in his guild's ‘pageant' - reflecting on his treatment of Adam, and summoning Gabriel to tell Mary that she will bear his Son.
Only the ‘Pageant of Shearmen and Tailors' survives from Coventry's contemporary play-cycle, and it is this which furnishes the text of the “Coventry Carol”, Lully, lullay - sung here in Kenneth Leighton's glorious 1956 setting for ethereally serene soprano and choir. By way of contrast Rhian Samuel (b. 1944 and, like Leighton, a distinguished teacher as well as composer) brings Jolly Wat the Shepherd to vivid life in her strikingly harmonised ballad.
After such exuberance, it is time for calmer contemplation. The 15th-century poem I sing of a Maiden, with its gentle portrayal of the sleeping Maid, and haunting refrain ‘He cam also style … as dewe in Aprylle …' is perfectly complemented by the lovely Mariä Wiegenlied; in Peter Broadbent's arrangement of Reger's 1912 ‘slumber-song' a pair of sopranos duet ecstatically above a soft choral accompaniment. Felicity Lott returns to tell the story of The Three Kings ‘from Persian Lands afar'; Elgar's organist friend Ivor Atkins (1869-1953) wrote the familiar arrangement of this Weihnachtslied (Christmas song) originally written in 1856 by Liszt's pupil Peter Cornelius. A darker view of The Journey of the Magi informs T.S. Elliot's 1927 poem, in which one of those kings, years afterwards, recalls the bitter cold and hardship of their journey and, for all its ‘satisfactory' end, reflects equivocally on the changes wrought by that Birth.
There is bleakness, too, rather than the rustic revelry which Laurie “Cider with Rosie” Lee's name might lead one to expect, in his 1954 poem Twelfth Night, adroitly set to music by the American composer Samuel Barber in 1968. This austere meditation on the earth's ‘utter death', more animated at ‘his birth our Saviour', returns at the close to a restatement - albeit more hushed - of its opening line: ‘No night could be darker than this night'. Lee's memories of Christmas in Seville, on the other hand - he had a lifelong love affair with Spain - bring welcome respite. The children who sang him carols, ‘their faces set in a kind of soft unconscious rapture', moved him deeply - understandably so, if they even approached the purity of tone and radiant sense of innocence which the Joyful Company of Singers conjure up in Guerrero's heart-easing Virgen Sancta, written in 1589. How those same children might have revelled in Andrew Carter's arrangement of the Spanish Esta Noche (‘This Night'), with its guitar effects and infectious high spirits.
How many poets have made such music from words alone as Dylan Thomas? He wrote (and read) his original Memories of Christmas for BBC Radio in 1945. Two years later, for the magazine Picture Post, he added a postscript to it, the Conversation About Christmas; Gabriel Woolf's reading captures all the sly wit embodied in its dazzling wordplay. One of the best-loved English carols, The Holly and the Ivy, introduces the topic of traditional Christmas Decorations, a theme taken up by the journalist, novelist and Punch contributor E.V. Lucas (1868-1938). A sequence of letters between a rector and his parishioners - aptly interspersed between lines from the rousing old Welsh song Deck the Hall - reveals how the best-laid plans can go increasingly awry. No festive celebration of this kind would be complete without The Twelve Days of Christmas - and we are treated to two variations on the theme: John Julius Norwich's hilarious warning against taking the old song's message too literally is aptly counterpointed by Andrew Carter's roistering choral arrangement. Another swift change of mood ensues. In Christmas Truce Captain R.J. Armes, writing home from the muddy hell of the First World War's trenches, touchingly describes an utterly unexpected experience. Then, across the desolate no man's land, steal the strains of the Stille Nacht. On Christmas Eve in 1818, in the Austrian village of Oberndorf, disaster struck when the church organ broke down. The organist, Franz Xaver Gruber, gratefully accepted some verses written two years earlier by the parish priest, Josef Mohr, and hastily set them to music; the choir sang the piece that night, to the accompaniment of a guitar - and the rest, as they say, is history. In another remembrance of Christmases past, Leonard Clark tells how he had almost forgotten the Singing in the Streets, before Gruber's immortal melody returns, this time in English. Joyful indeed are Felicity Lott and the Company of Singers as Silent Night, in Peter Broadbent's richly-harmonised arrangement, brings our festive feast to a contented close. |
| 15.00 eur Buy |
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ID: CHRCD003
CDs: 1
Type: CD
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Kolektion: Vocal CollectionSubkolektion: Vocal and Piano
A brand new release from Dame Felicity Lott, with Graham Johnson at the piano. Described as “The Queen of English Classical”, here Felicity Lott, known as 'Flott' to her friends, performs a selection of lighter repertoire, from Cole Porter to Ivor Novello, Coward, Barber and Berlin.
Well-known and loved the world over for her musicality, beautiful tone, easy ascents into the upper register, and superb delivery, here Dame Felicity is expertly accompanied by Graham Johnson, who also provides us with extensive and well-written booklet notes. |
| 15.00 eur Buy |
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ID: CHRCD008
CDs: 1
Type: CD
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Kolektion: Vocal CollectionSubkolektion: Vocal and Piano
She went on to say:
The upper reaches of Lott's still gleaming soprano inhabit Barber's ?Shining Night' and Fauré's ?Clair de lune'. And her robust English version of Schubert's ?Who is Sylvia?' finds an irresistible companion in Arne's ?Where the Bee Sucks', with its veritable midsummer night's dream of an accompaniment from Johnson. The artists' palpable sense of joy and well-being gathers momentum as they visit Berlioz's ?L'île inconnue' and as they sing on the water with Schubert. . . . And Lott and Johnson know well that the only way to face sentiment is to acknowledge its own integrity, as they do when they listen to Haydn Wood's ?Little Brown Bird' and eavesdrop with Fraser-Simson on Christopher Robin saying his prayers.
This CD features songs from a great variety of composers - Gershwin, Barber, Cole Porter, Bernstein, Brahms, Schubert, Arne, Schumann, Berlioz, and many more. A full 29 tracks of summer-themed songs! |
| 15.00 eur Buy |
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ID: SIGCD074
CDs: 2
Type: CD
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Kolektion: Sacred MusicSubkolektion: Choir
A stellar line-up of soloists, conductor, choir and orchestra combine forces in the re-mastered 2 CD set of Mozart's arrangement of Handel's much loved 'Messiah'.
In April 1742, shortly after the first performance of Messiah in Dublin for the city's Charitable Musical Society, the Dublin Journal reported that the oratorio "was allowed by the greatest of Judges to be the finest Compostion of Musick that was ever heard".
Sir Charles Mackerras continues the constantly evolving performance history of one of the world's most enduring masterpieces. |
| 26.00 eur Buy |
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ID: SIGCD247
CDs: 1
Type: CD
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Kolektion: Vocal CollectionSubkolektion: Vocal and Piano
Composing over 150 works for piano and voice over a period of 44 years, the songs of Francis Poulenc remain consistently popular to concert audiences the world over. Varying in their individual style and character in a way that defies generalisation, Poulenc set his music to a wide range of French poetry - both ancient and modern, and from the serious to the surreal.
This release marks the first in a new series charting the complete songs of Francis Poulenc, performed by some of the greatest singers of the day and accompanied by the exceptional Malcolm Martineau. Future releases will feature several works that have never before been recorded.
This disc includes the vocal works: Cocardes, Metamorphoses, Chansons gaillardes, À sa guitare, Épitaphe sur un texte de Malherbe, Trois Poèmes de Louise de Vilmorin, Bleuet, Dernier poème, Rosemonde, Fiançailles, Parisiana and La Courte Paille. |
| 18.00 eur Buy |
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ID: SIGCD263
CDs: 1
Type: CD
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Kolektion: Vocal CollectionSubkolektion: Vocal and Piano
Composing over 150 works for piano and voice over a period of 44 years, the songs of Francis Poulenc remain consistently popular to concert audiences the world over. Varying in their individual style and character in a way that defies generalization, Poulenc set music to a wide range of different French poetry - both ancient and modern, and from the serious to the surreal.
This second release in a new series charts the complete songs of Francis Poulenc, performed by some of the greatest singers of the day and accompanied by the exceptional Malcolm Martineau. |
| 18.00 eur Buy |
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