Raymond Leppard’s second and more renowned contribution to the modern revival of Cavalli: a classic among Baroque opera recordings which won the coveted Rosette award from the Penguin Record Guide. In 1651, seven years after ‘Ormindo’ (also reissued by Eloquence in Leppard’s recording, 482 9382), Cavalli and his librettist Faustini scored another hit with the […]
PhilomusicaSeveral Eloquence releases have celebrated the pellucid timbre and vivid characterisation of the British soprano’ Jennifer Vyvyan. ‘A treasury to treasure’ was the BBC Music Magazine’s verdict on ‘Songs of England’ (482 5045), a L’Oiseau Lyre recital from 1953. Four years later, she took part in the first complete recording of Purcell’s masque, ‘The Fairy […]
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 […]
The names of Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears are forever linked by their personal and creative partnership. Composer and interpreter have rarely enjoyed so long-standing or fruitful relationship. They met and became friends in 1937 while going through the papers of a mutual friend who had accidentally died. Within a couple of years, they had […]
A beautiful collection of Purcell favourites, both from recent times with artists of the calibre of Emma Kirkby and Christopher Hogwood, to such Purcell champions of the mid-20th century as Benjamin Britten, whose rousing arrangement and performance of the ‘Chaconne in G minor’ is here included.
Purcell wrote so much in so many different spheres of musical activity that it is easy to forget that one of his main tasks was to be a royal composer, to provide music for the occasions of State in Westminster Abbey, just as the Gabrielis had done for the Doge at St Mark’s or Lully […]
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. […]
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 […]
