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Reviews (6)
07 Apr, 2020
A sound investment!
I was meaning to replace my old Hi-fi speaker wires for my Sony system, but have put up with various lengths of wire joined together by small junction boxes. Having finally decided to do the necessary upgrade, I am very pleased with my purchase. I now have one interrupted length of speaker wire from my Hi-fi to each speaker and it has made such a difference, and I believe the sound quality has imprived tremendously. Everything sounds so much clearer - I'm currently playing a CD of Haydn Symphonies and it's as if the Orchestra are in the room as well. Fantastic purchase! 🎼🎵🎶📯
06 Jan, 2021
Sweet Jubilation!
This CD replaces an old version of this great recording on audio cassette which has been played to death. It has always been a favourite choice of Seasonal Christmas music on record, and is a welcome change from traditional Christmas Carols. The choice of music on the programme is some of the best Polychoral Christmas Music of the 17th century from Venice (Giovanni Gabrieli) and Germany (Praetorius, Schutz - my phone doesn't 'do' umlauts - and Scheidt), and is a wonderful collection of choral masterpieces. Martin Neary's Winchester Cathedral Choir of 1986 are in excellent form, with some stunning singing from the two named Boy Treble soloists in Scheidt's Wie schon leuchtet der Morgenstern. Accompaniment is provided by organist Tim Byram Wigfield as well as the London Cornett and Sackbut Ensemble. It is a wonderfully joyful programme of choral music for the Christmas season but there are works of sublime beauty such as Gabrieli's O Magnum Mysterium. Therefore, it will be a recording that will find its way into my CD player at all times of the year to cheer myself up; especially during the current and prolonged Lockdown period. Warmly recommended.
04 Apr, 2021
A splendid Dream
I've lost count of just how many recordings of Elgar's Oratorio The Dream of Gerontius, Opus 38, I have, but was moved to buy this recording conducted by the late Colin Davis. Having already acquired his recording with the London Symphony Orchestra when that was released years ago, this seemed too good an opportunity to miss. This is a terrific account of a work - recorded at the Palm Sunday concert in Dresden's Semperoper on March 28, 2010 - which Colin Davis knew well and the Dresden chorus and orchestra (Staatsopernchor and Staatskapelle respectively) certainly give it their all. Of course Elgar was well-known in Germany and this work was performed in Dusseldorf - more successfully than at the work's disastrous premiere at Birmingham in October, 1900, under the direction of an over-cautious Hans Richter - and Richard Strauss, who was in the audience, rated the work highly. Of course it's heavily influenced by Wagner (all of Elgar's big Oratorios use Leitmotives as Wagner did in his operas), which gave rise to Sir Thomas Beecham's infamous summing up of the work as, 'Holy Water in a German Beer Barrel' or, `The sort of work Mendelssohn might have written after spending a week in Bayreuth'. The Dresden choir is well-drilled and the big choruses are performed with panache (why doesn't anyone ever do the 'dispossessed' bit in the Demon's chorus with pinched noses? it would sound great) ; although, personally speaking, the semi-chorus parts in recordings of this work will never surpass the use of King's College Choir in Benjamin Britten's 1972 Decca recording for the sheer beauty and ethereal quality of having boys' voices on the top line. The orchestra seem to be relishing every bar of this piece and the overall detail achieved in this recording is more than a match for other, more well-established, recorded performances of The Dream; as a horn player, there are hand-stopped and muted sections in the score that I've not heard as clearly as in this recording. The soloists are good, but I have heard better. Paul Groves gives a good account of the demands of the protagonist's tenor role, but I think Paul Rendall is better for Davis's LSO Live recording. That said, I will always go back to Richard Lewis's superb Gerontius in Barbirolli's classic recording with the Halle as my benchmark interpretation; although I feel we Gerontius lovers have been cheated by the sad fact that Philip Langridge was never approached to record this work onto CD - he gives a towering performance on DVD conducted by Andrew Davis from St. Paul's Cathedral, London. John Relyea (Bass) as the Priest in Part One and the Angel of the Agony in Part Two is adequate, but at times - at thean point towards the end of Part One's 'Go Forth upon thy journey...' for instance - he seems to struggle to be heard above choir and orchestra in full tilt. Sarah Connolly (Mezzo soprano) as The Angel is the best of the three soloists on this recording, in my humble opinion; but then again I can't get away from Janet Baker for Barbirolli. I know I'm splitting hairs over my criticisms of the soloists, but it's a question of personal taste at the end of the day. For me, the orchestra and Colin Davis's interpretation - he certainly doesn't hang about at the beginning of Part Two, giving real belief in The Soul of Gerontius's words, 'I went to sleep, and now I am refreshed.. ' - are the most impressive things about this recorded performance. However, it is a Live performance game and the recording team have done a great job in capturing the atmosphere at what was obviously a very special event. The accompanying booklet is superb: a sumptous 75 page publication with full texts in German (obviously) and English, interesting articles about the history of the work, an invaluable printed interview with Sir Colin, along with wonderful performance photos as well as historic photographs. Rather amusingly, a photo just inside the back cover shows Elgar with his beloved bicycle, Mr. Phoebus, as if he might be saying, 'Well, that's quite enough music for one day, I'm off for a bike ride.' In summing up then, and despite a few niggly aforementioned moments, this is a hauntingly beautiful and powerful rendition of this glorious work and yet another lasting memorial to the wonderful conductor - and much missed champion of British music - Colin Davis. Fellow Gerontius enthusiasts are urged to buy it and enjoy.