With no slight intended to the other great recordings of the Missa Solemnis in the world, there's this one and then there are all the rest. Truly. Even with the 1940 Toscanini and the 1974 Böhm, this 1965 recording of Otto Klemperer and the Philharmonia Orchestra and Chorus embodies everything that's great about the Missa Solemnis. And everything that's great about late Beethoven is in the Missa Solemnis: the energy, the nobility, the strength, the vision, and -- above all -- the overwhelming sense that the numinous is imminent. Beethoven thought it was his best work and who could not agree? That's what's in Klemperer's performance. His command of the score and control of the orchestra are complete, but it is Klemperer's ability to take the musicians beyond themselves, to go beyond making music to be made music, and to incarnate Beethoven's transcendent revelation in sound that puts this recording in a class of its own. Or rather, that puts it in the same exalted class as Klemperer's German Requiem and St. Matthew Passion, the class of the sublime. EMI's stereo sound was magnificent in its day and its remastering is ideal.© TiVo

This album of Villa-Lobos' piano music contains works that may be well known in Brazil but are hardly familiar elsewhere, and for most listeners, they will be real finds. The centerpiece is the group of ten excerpts from the set Cirandas ("Round Dances"), which are almost like a Brazilian version of Bartók; they are rooted in folk music but diverge into concise little statements exploiting the motivic and harmonic possibilities they represent. Almost everything here, as the album's title suggests, is Brazilian in flavor, but never in the usual ways; New York Skyline Melody (1939) is only a possible exception. The album ends spectacularly with the Liszt-level virtuosity of Rudepoêma, whose title suggests "Savage Poem" rather than rudeness. This fascinating work is a musical portrait of Artur Rubinstein, and when that pianist pointed out the meaning of the name, Villa-Lobos responded enthusiastically, "Yes! We are both savages!" The work is an excellent addition to the virtuoso repertory, and pianist Wilhem Latchoumia handles it confidently. Throughout, he has praiseworthy control over a wide variety of material that illuminates many strands of Villa-Lobos' musical personality. The La Dolce Volta label contributes excellent sound from the Metz Arsenal on an album that may well become one of the sleeper hits of the 2023 holiday season.© James Manheim /TiVo

For his new recording of this monument to Bach, John Eliot Gardiner is limited to a light chamber orchestra (obviously the English Baroque Soloists, founded here 37 years ago by Gardiner!), a choir of reasonable size (the Monteverdi Choir, same remark...), and a meticulous - but above all, calm - conducting of the articulations, phrases and lines, almost like a kind of chamber opera. The tempos are rather upbeat, like baroque music back in its heyday - the perfect balance between respecting history and the quest for beauty of sound. Gardiner has nothing dogmatic - making this new recording a particularly welcome perspective among the ample discography(yet unsatisfactory) of this Mass en si. © SM / Qobuz

A year and a half after Kick i, Arca wraps up her series with four new albums (!) released almost simultaneously, with each one revealing an aspect of the Venezuelan producer’s work. She has become one of the most sought-after names in the music industry (with Kanye West, Björk and FKA twigs on her CV). The first, KICK ii, is perhaps the catchiest, presenting the “Arca version” of reggaeton, a very popular genre in Venezuela which has become a worldwide phenomenon in recent years. Arca revisits dembow rhythm in all senses on three quarters of the record, in epileptic style on Tiro with Boys Noize, in vapor style on Luna Llena with the German twins Cubeatz, and IDM/electronic style with Clark on Confianza. The record is finished with the pop/EDM single Born Yesterday with Zero Seven’s ex, the Australian Sia.On Kick iii, Arca takes us back to a dark and sleazy club with a throbbing sound system, beginning with Bruja, industrial hip-hop with an incredible beat that reminds us of the producer's unique talent in terms of sound design. Incendio, which was also released as a single, will be for peak time. As will be the perfectly named, Morbo, a mutant dancehall/dubstep that even the English wouldn't have dared to do, Electra Rex, with its deafening bass kick, and a very metallic Señorita, featuring Machinedrum. As always, Arca’s music is very unusual, and the fans are going to have a great time listening to Intimate Flesh and Joya at the end, relaxing in bed.On the following record, Kick iiii, Arca takes us back to a more downtempo mood, with a ton of delicate keys and cosmic passages bordering on palpable music. The languid Queer, featuring Planningtorock is in tune with the music, and there is even a synthetic ballad, Hija, that would make an android cry. While emos should find something they like with Lost Woman Found and Paw.Finally, Kick iiiii embodies the cycle of rebirth in this saga built by Arca, with a series of lullabies, including one designed especially for rave nostalgia, Amrep, which picks up the conventions of 90's techno before melting them into chaos. A record that continues almost without drums, with a monologue by Ryuichi Sakamoto, on a shamanic instrumental (Sanctuary), until the moving finale, Crown, where we find Arca's signature industrial kick, more inspired than ever. © Smaël Bouaici/Qobuz

This release by French-Canadian violinist Angèle Dubeau falls into a category that hardly existed at the turn of the century, but now has grown increasingly common: the solo recording devoted to music by minimalist composers. These have grown more common, but Dubeau and her all-female ensemble La Pietà have made it into something of a specialty, releasing albums devoted to John Adams, Arvo Pärt, Philip Glass, and Ludovico Einaudi. This one, taking up music by Max Richter, adds a sort of double wrinkle, for some of Richter's compositions are based on (or, to use his word, "recomposed") existing works, some quite familiar. Thus making a violin version is a sort of double recomposition. This said, the album is consistent with what Dubeau has done in the past. A major unsung contributor is her co-arranger François Vallières; the two neatly answer the question of how you can make a virtuoso violin album out of the generally basic, melodic material of minimalism. Dubeau's violin weaves gracefully around the ensemble, sometimes barely audible, sometimes coming more to the foreground, sometimes adding an eerie element with harmonics. What you're getting here is ambient, minimalist textures, with little variety in mood and tempo, but the effects are quite subtle within this frame. You could try this out if you've seen Dubeau's recordings notching strong sales in Canada and elsewhere, and have wondered what they're all about. © James Manheim /TiVo

In the courts of the 15th century, music was a constant companion; the chanson was a daily pleasure, it was a vehicle for poetry, expressed passions, was a remedy for pain, and sublimated the richness of amorous relationships with its mastery and the refinement of its means. The chanson was perhaps the musical form in which Dufay, despite being a man of the Church, best expressed his immense talent. His 80 chansons show great diversity, enabling us to appreciate the constant evolution of the aesthetic of the genre. Throughout this evolution, Dufay was always seen as an absolute master among his peers, owing to the perfection of his writing and its intense expressivity, and enriched the history of music with a masterly oeuvre that went far beyond the stylistic boundaries of the time. The Ensemble Gilles Binchois chose to record 20 of Dufay’s chansons in which courtly love finds its most beautiful expression and refinement. © Evidence Classics

Faced with the plethora of Beethoven recordings released in 2020, we expect more from some than from others, and this applies to this Missa Solemnis. An absolute masterpiece of Western music, it is conducted by René Jacobs, whose recent recording of Leonore (the first version of the opera Fidelio by the same Beethoven) conquered the musical world. Composed in 1824, the Missa, "a rough and uncomfortable work that leaves no room for narcissism in the singers" according to René Jacobs (and he would know what he is talking about!) is an older sister to the Ninth Symphony which shares the same faith in man over divinity. Recorded in Berlin in May 2019, this version packs as intense a gut-punch as a live concert. The understated and profound Kyrie brings shadow and meditation. Then, a surging explosive Gloria, a stirring call for peace and brotherhood, from the heart of all humanity presses this splendid performance onward. Without doubt, the RIAS Kammerchor has added one more stone to an edifice of recordings of the highest quality. In addition we are treated to an instrumental finale rarely heard and four soloists who contribute to the expressive power of the whole. All of Beethoven is here, with his idealism, his tenderness, and also his way of hammering out peace with mighty blows. As Goethe would have said “He would squash a fly with a rock”. © François Hudry/Qobuz

Modern travelers who make their pilgrimages to the cathedral at Santiago de Compostela in Galicia, Spain, think of the origins of the practice as medieval. But in fact the pilgrimage has been an unbroken tradition ever since the legend grew (even the Catholic Encyclopedia admits that there are factual problems with it) that the remains of St. James were buried there. This release from soprano and harpist Arianna Savall with the Belgian historical-instrument group La Fenice is illustrated handsomely with a map of the roads leading from various parts of France to Compostela. It's quite detailed, almost a Rand McNally road map of its time, and this in the year 1648, the year the Thirty Years' War ended. Director Jean Tubéry, who also plays the flutes in the wind-heavy arrangements, points out that he's not trying to create a historical reconstruction of music that French pilgrims of 1648 would have heard; some of it is chronologically or geographically wrong. The association is looser, with a program of music somehow connected with St. James or with stops along the way (the Rhône region, Languedoc and Gascony, Aragon and Castile, and finally the gates of Santiago). Many of the sections are introduced by church bells, but both sacred and secular pieces are included, with a few instrumental dances and plenty of the percussion that's still missing from a great many albums of music of this period. The program's place on the continuum running from historical to speculative is a bit slippery, and there's no real indication of why some of the music was included. But Savall is in fine voice; much of the music, especially the pieces in the French and Spanish regional languages, is both unfamiliar and attractive; and the sense of a musical journey comes through. Recommended, especially for listeners making any version of the France-to-Spain pilgrimage.© TiVo

Peteris Vasks (1946), Latvia's most prominent composer, was the son of a Baptist minister, and while he always felt a strong affinity for sacred music, he didn't feel free to express it through vocal music since it would never have been allowed to be performed under the Communist regime. Since the early '90s, he has turned his attention more and more to religious texts, and this CD includes three of his most significant sacred choral works, including a setting of the Mass. Vasks' style of choral writing links him to the composers who have come to be described as "holy minimalists," a group that includes Pärt, Górecki, Kancheli, and Tavener, whose music, while stylistically diverse, tends to rely on tonal and modal harmonies, is frequently harmonically static or slow-moving and is often linked to plainchant and ancient liturgical traditions. Vasks' choral music is firmly rooted in Western polyphony and is for the most part traditional-sounding; there is little in it apart from certain unconventional harmonic progressions that would make it immediately identifiable as a product of the late twentieth century. Among the other holy minimalists, the sound of his music is most closely related to that of Górecki in its harmonic textures and the somber earnestness of its moods. The three works recorded here are polyphonically and harmonically sensual, in spite of their serious tone. An exception to the sober tone is the Mass' Sanctus, which, while not exactly lighthearted, is lively; the composer imagines it "sung by happy, little angels." The Latvian Radio Choir sings with warmth and passion and with excellent control in the composer's extended, sustained vocal lines. Sigvards Klava, conducting Sinfonietta Riga, leads them in deeply felt performances. The CD should be of interest both to fans of choral music and of new trends in minimalism tinged with Romanticism.© TiVo

Inspiration, energy and freedom compose the alluring menu of La Vaghezza's very first opus. The five instrumentalists of the young Italian ensemble, recent winners of the EEEMERGING + scheme, sculpt one by one these magnificent pieces of 17th century Italy, like jewels to be (re)discovered. © Ambronay Editions