Lennox in Paris
Given some of the nonsense handed out to customers as liner notes by big companies recently, it is a relief to have a full and sensible booklet for this issue from the small Willowhayne label…
An Old Belief
The album takes its title from the fourth of Parry’s Songs of Farewell. This is one of those programmes that I suspect works wonderfully in concert but feels too fractured to hang together on disc. There is logic, in that it is the latest edition of the group’s choral pilgrimage that they tour round England’s cathedrals, but it perhaps is best thought of as a souvenir of that progress…
Tormento d’Amore – Arias
As one would expect from a historian of Bostridge’s calibre this is a superbly constructed survey of the way the Venetian operatic style of the early 17th century, developed by Cavalli, spread South to Naples, was followed and adapted there, and came back to Venice reinforced in the 18th…
Bach – Goldberg Variations
Rondeau takes quite deliberate tempi but this gives him the chance to explore the glorious melodic lines in the Aria and thirty variations fully…
Camille Saint-Saëns : Centenary edition Episode 2
This enormous box set is distinguished by the inclusion of the piano concertos in the recordings made in 1985 and ’87 by Collard, Previn and the RPO. It was then and remains the best overview of these fluent and engaging concertos, much more substantial than so many virtuoso vehicles of the time…