The story of the birth of Jesus more than two thousand years ago has been the source of inspiration for countless poets and musicians, as well as practitioners of other forms of art. The infant, born of a virgin in a lowly cattle shed, because there was no room in the inn; the angel of […]

Arthur Fiedler took great pride in bringing classical music to the world at large. While Leonard Bernstein was busy with his Young People’s Concerts with the New York Philharmonic, Fiedler and his Boston Pops Orchestra (most of the members drawn from the Boston Symphony) gave concerts of popular classics that became a fixture on America’s […]

The bass voice (basso, encompassing both baritone and bass in our modern terminology) occupies a special place in Bach’s sacred vocal music. As the two great Passion settings testify, it was the solo bass that represented the vox Christi or ‘voice of Christ’, following an established tradition in church music. Matthias Goerne is here at […]

This final volume in an exploration of the art of Irmgard Seefried, encompasses selections (arias and duets) from her oratorio recordings (Bach’s ‘St. Matthew Passion’, Haydn’s ‘Creation’ and Gounod’s ‘St. Cecilia Mass’) as well as the first issue on CD of her recording of Bach’s ‘Wedding’ Cantata. Seefried’s tonal purity, grace of phrase and care […]

All three works on this CD feature the flute and all feature Pierre Monteux collaborating with his son, Claude. Bach composed some music for the recorder but it is outnumbered by his works for transverse flute which he called the ‘traversiere’. In his Orchestral Suite No. 2, Bach gave the ‘traversiere’ a starring role. Although […]

George Malcolm, who died in 1997, irreverently called the harpsichord the ‘jangle box’, yet he was a master of that instrument and of several other musical domains as well. Of Scottish ancestry, he was born in London in 1917 and when he was just seven he was admitted to the Royal College of Music. He […]