Posts tagged as "david-thomas"

Handel: Coronation Anthems; Ode for the Birthday of Queen Anne

April 29, 2016

Some of Handel’s most magnificent and regal choral writing is collected on this CD. The most popular work on it, by far, is the Coronation Anthem ‘Zadok the Priest’. Both the Coronation Anthems and the ‘Ode for the Birthday of Queen Anne’ were written for monarchs and the opening of the ‘Ode’ with its trumpet […]

Pastoral Dialogues

April 20, 2016

Anthony Rooley writes: ‘In the mid-1970s this humble lute-player had theatrical pretensions! I realised quite early on in my performing career that audiences generally needed more help to “get inside” the beautiful obscure music I was discovering and if their appetite was to be fostered, a new dimension in the manner of presentation had to […]

Le Chansonnier Cordiforme

April 20, 2016

This set of three CDs contains the complete ‘Chansonnier Cordiforme’, perhaps the most beautiful of all surviving music manuscripts whose first owner was Jean de Montchenu (d. 1497). It was compiled during the 1470s and contains 43 songs from the preceding 30 years by Dufay, Binchois, Ockeghem, Busnoys and other composers of the time. This […]

Danyel: Lute Songs (1606)

April 20, 2016

Anthony Rooley writes: ‘Even in 1926 when Peter Warlock published his brief essay on the English Lute Songs, John Danyel was singled out as being perhaps the finest lute-song composer (John Dowland not excepted) by perceptive Warlock. Nobody believed him then and not much has changed now – but I agree with Warlock. John Danyel […]

Musicke of Sundrie Kindes

April 20, 2016

Renaissance secular music between 1480 and 1620 is large in quantity, high in quality, rich in colour, diverse in form and very different in content from a similar time-span of any later period with which we may be more familiar. This set of four compact discs provides a comprehensive survey of sixteenth-century secular music. Composers […]

Amorous Dialogues

April 19, 2016

Anthony Rooley writes: ‘“Amorous Dialogues” perfectly describes this unusual repertoire – although the variations on the theme of erotic love familiar to all of us tells the basic story of amatory exploits, desires and dreams in fresh ways. For example, can we be expected to believe that “He” doesn’t know what a kiss is and […]

Handel: Orlando

March 12, 2016

Completed in 1719 and first performed in 1733, Handel’s opera seria Orlando is widely recognised as one of the eighteenth century’s greatest operas. One of the work’s most acclaimed recordings is that of Christopher Hogwood, with a stellar line-up of Baroque vocal specialists, including James Bowman, in the title role and Emma Kirkby and David Thomas. […]

Music of the Monarchs

March 12, 2016

More than 250 years of music celebrating the reign of the great British monarchs CD 1 – HANDEL: Coronation Anthems Handel’s four uplifting Coronation Anthems, including the epic Zadok the Priest with the Choir of King’s College, Cambridge, and his beautiful Ode for the Birthday of Queen Anne, with its celestial invocation for trumpet and counter-tenor, ‘Eternal […]