On Can't Slow Down, his second solo album, Lionel Richie ran with the sound and success of his eponymous debut, creating an album that was designed to be bigger and better. It's entirely possible that he took a cue from Michael Jackson's Thriller, which set out to win over listeners of every corner of the mainstream pop audience, because Richie does a similar thing with Can't Slow Down -- he plays to the MOR adult contemporary audience, to be sure, but he ups the ante on his dance numbers, creating grooves that are funkier, and he even adds a bit of rock with the sleek nocturnal menace of "Running With the Night," one of the best songs here. He doesn't swing for the fences like Michael did in 1982; he makes safe bets, which is more in his character. But safe bets do pay off, and with Can't Slow Down Richie reaped enormous dividends, earning not just his biggest hit, but his best album. He has less compunction about appearing as a pop singer this time around, which gives the preponderance of smooth ballads -- particularly "Penny Lover," "Hello," and the country-ish "Stuck on You" -- conviction, and the dance songs roll smooth and easy, never pushing the beats too hard and relying more on Richie's melodic hooks than the grooves, which is what helped make "All Night Long (All Night)" a massive hit. Indeed, five of these songs (all the aforementioned tunes) were huge hits, and since the record ran only eight songs, that's an astonishing ration. The short running time does suggest the record's main weakness, one that it shares with many early-'80s LPs -- the songs themselves run on a bit too long, padding out the running length of the entire album. This is only a problem on album tracks like "Love Will Find a Way," which are pleasant but a little tedious at their length, but since there are only three songs that aren't hits, it's a minor problem. All the hits showcase Lionel Richie at his best, as does Can't Slow Down as a whole.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

On his own and as part of the Commodores, by 1992 Lionel Richie amassed more than enough singles for a greatest-hits collection. Unfortunately, this is one of those compilations that, good intentions aside, falls so flat there's not much point in buying it. By trying to cover his solo material, while touching base with his Commodores fans, and adding some new cuts, no part of his career is well represented. For the record, Back to Front lacks "Oh No," "Lady You Bring Me Up," "Ballerina Girl," "You Are," "My Love," "Stuck on You," "Love Will Conquer All," "Se La," and "Dancing on the Ceiling," all Top 40 hits. If Motown had concentrated solely on solo Richie, with another collection of Commodores hits, this could have been a solid, career-topping CD. As it is, it's strong, but hearing such gems as "Still," "Truly," "Say You, Say Me," and "Running With the Night" makes you long to hear the cuts that aren't here. Of the three new songs, "Do It to Me" and "My Destiny" are classic, smooth Richie, but "Love, Oh Love" is very schmaltzy. If you're a casual Lionel Richie fan, this might suffice, but for anyone who truly enjoys pop music, this collection is not worth your money.© Bryan Buss /TiVo

On his own and as part of the Commodores, by 1992 Lionel Richie amassed more than enough singles for a greatest-hits collection. Unfortunately, this is one of those compilations that, good intentions aside, falls so flat there's not much point in buying it. By trying to cover his solo material, while touching base with his Commodores fans, and adding some new cuts, no part of his career is well represented. For the record, Back to Front lacks "Oh No," "Lady You Bring Me Up," "Ballerina Girl," "You Are," "My Love," "Stuck on You," "Love Will Conquer All," "Se La," and "Dancing on the Ceiling," all Top 40 hits. If Motown had concentrated solely on solo Richie, with another collection of Commodores hits, this could have been a solid, career-topping CD. As it is, it's strong, but hearing such gems as "Still," "Truly," "Say You, Say Me," and "Running With the Night" makes you long to hear the cuts that aren't here. Of the three new songs, "Do It to Me" and "My Destiny" are classic, smooth Richie, but "Love, Oh Love" is very schmaltzy. If you're a casual Lionel Richie fan, this might suffice, but for anyone who truly enjoys pop music, this collection is not worth your money.© Bryan Buss /TiVo

Lionel Richie's solo career began while he was still in the Commodores, as he wrote and sang (as a duet with Diana Ross) the theme to the Brooke Shields romance Endless Love, which became a bigger hit than any of the group's singles, thereby setting the stage for his departure and his 1982 self-titled solo debut. He wasn't working in unfamiliar territory, or with new musicians. The Commodores decided to work as their own band, so their producer, James Anthony Carmichael, was able to devote his energy to working on Richie's album. Using the pop-crossover ballad style of "Endless Love," "Three Times a Lady," and "Easy" as their template, the duo turned Lionel Richie into a sleek, state-of-the-art record that, at its best, provides some irresistible pop pleasures. The key to its success -- and the reason it was scorned by some Commodores fans -- is that Richie doesn't even make a pretense of funk here, leaving behind the loose, elastic grooves of his previous bands (a move that makes sense, since his voice never suited that style particularly well), choosing to concentrate on ballads and sparkly mid-tempo pop, peppered with a few stylish dance grooves. The ballads, of course, provided two big hits with "My Love" and "Truly," two numbers that illustrate that he was moving ever-closer to mainstream pop, since these are unapologetic AOR slow-dance tunes. The other big hit, "You Are," is an effervescent, wonderful pop tune that showcases Richie at his sunniest; it's one of his greatest singles. Throughout the first part of the record, the dance numbers are served up and they're very good -- "Serves You Right" has a shiny, propulsive groove, while "Tell Me" jams nicely. After "You Are," the record bogs down with a couple of ballads that are on the wrong side of adult contemporary -- too formless, too hookless to really catch hold -- but they don't hurt the first seven songs, which form a dynamic mainstream pop-soul record, one of the best the early '80s had to offer. It's the sound of Lionel Richie finding his solo voice, and, the next time out, he knew how to use it even better than he does here. [The 2003 reissue of Lionel Richie includes two bonus tracks: a solo demo of "Endless Love" which not only fits perfectly with this record, but is less cloying, and an instrumental of "You Are" whose primary worth is to hear the detail and expertise in the production Richie and Carmichael assembled.]© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

Exequien in German are funeral observances, and Heinrich Schütz's Musikalische Exequien, SWV 279, were performed in February 1636 for the funeral of Heinrich Posthumus von Reuss, a prince and diplomat who was a personal friend of the composer. Reuss planned his own funeral down to the last detail, commissioning music from Schütz, providing him with German texts roughly analogous to the Latin requiem mass, and designing his own sarcophagus, which is reproduced in full color in the booklet. Prince Heinrich Reuss XIII even gets an album credit for making it available for a photograph. Various good recordings of this work are available, from Philippe Herreweghe (captures the emotional intensity in the periodic harmonic clashes) to John Eliot Gardiner (very Bachian). Forces deployed range from one voice per part (Weser-Renaissance) to medium-sized groups (the Sixteen) to full choirs or children's choirs. This reading by Lionel Meunier and the multinational group Vox Luminis is also well worth considering. You might think of it as the authentic performance among authentic performances. Meunier deploys two voices per part and draws his soloists from this group in the work's shifting antiphonal structures; there is manuscript evidence that this is the ensemble size Schütz had in mind. The continuo is realized by a small organ and a bass viol, solutions apparently suggested by Schütz himself. The Musikalische Exequien are introduced by other funeral motets and chorales by Schütz and others, setting the stage for the impact of the funeral rite itself and echoing the order of an actual Lutheran service. And the singers get the quality of memorial warmth in the music, which lives up to the comparison in the booklet notes of the Musikalische Exequien with the Brahms German Requiem, Op. 45. There are versions with more spectacularly sharp singing, but few others that seem to fit together as convincingly as this. The performance is strengthened by the ideal acoustics of a small church in the Loire region. Strongly recommended for any Schütz collection.© TiVo

Violist Lionel Tertis and cellist Pablo Casals were both born on December 29, 1876. They were friends, and both did much to popularize and attract repertory to their respective instruments. It was a good day to be born, for both lived into their late nineties. Tertis is a familiar-enough figure among string players and aficionados of the early 20th century British scene, but he deserved the tribute that violist Timothy Ridout (who has already recorded Tertis' transcription of the Walton Cello Concerto for viola) offers here. Tertis is not well represented on recordings, so it is not really clear to what degree Ridout replicates his style. (Certainly, it does to some degree; Tertis' influence on British viola teaching was and remains deep.) Yet the program represents his activities in an engaging way. Although Arnold Bax wrote a good deal of music for Tertis, there is nothing by him here; perhaps another album is on the way, but there is a good deal of music that is not widely available elsewhere, certainly not in one place. There are attractive miniatures by Tertis himself, a variety of transcriptions he made of well-known pieces, and a genuine oddity, an obbligato part for the first movement of Beethoven's "Moonlight" Sonata. There are three more substantial works, the Viola Sonata No. 1 in C minor, Op. 18 by York Bowen; the viola version of Vaughan Williams' Six Studies in English Folk Song; and the Viola Sonata of Rebecca Clarke. The last two were not written for Tertis, but Clarke was a fine violist herself, and nothing seems out of place. The Clarke work, skillfully exploiting the viola's lower reaches, is especially nicely done. A must for violists, this is of interest to any lover of 20th century English music, and it made classical best-seller charts in early 2024.© James Manheim /TiVo

After several recordings on Ricercar and a first disc on Alpha, "Actus Tragicus", containing early Bach cantatas, ‘of staggering profundity, purity and beauty’ (ffff Télérama), Lionel Meunier and his ensemble Vox Luminis devote this new project to two showpieces by Handel and Bach. Of these two composers born in 1685, the first travelled to Italy in 1707 and made a powerful impression in Rome with the creation of his Dixit Dominus, while the second produced one of his finest compositional tours de force in the Magnificat of 1723/32-35. Two works from the core repertoire of the Belgian ensemble, here fielding combined vocal and instrumental forces, which is perfectly versed in the style and expression of Baroque rhetoric. © Alpha Classics

A two-CD set devoted to the Lutheran liturgical repertory from Martin Luther himself to Heinrich Schütz. The first disc comprises compositions specific to the Lutheran liturgy: Deutsche Messe, Deutsches Magnificat, Deutsche Passion (the first German polyphonic Passion, by Joachim von Burck) and even a reconstruction of a Deutsches Requiem drawn from polyphonic works that set the same texts as those Brahms was later to use for his Deutsches Requiem. The second disc presents a selection of motets arranged according to the liturgical calendar, from Advent to Trinity. These polyphonic pieces were written by a wide range of composers including Martin Luther, Andreas Hammerschmidt, Michael raetorius, Joachim von Burck, Christoph Bernhardt, Heinrich Schütz, Thomas Selle, Melchior Franck, Caspar Othmayr, Michael Altenburg, Samuel Scheidt, Johann Hermann Schein and Johann Walter. The organist Bart Jacobs completes the programme with a few organ pieces by seventeenth-century composers.

3 stars out of 5 -- "Breezy atmospherics abound on this latest from the boundary-breaking Benin singer/guitarist." © TiVo

After the greatest-hits collection Back to Front disappeared without a trace in 1992, Lionel Richie spent four years making Louder Than Words, his first album for Mercury Records. Although there are some slight attempts to incorporate new jack and hip-hop influences into Richie's sound, Louder Than Words relies on his trademark balladeering, which remains his forte. All of the weak moments on Louder Than Words are ill-advised forays into rap -- to put it bluntly, he can rap about as well as Snoop Dogg can sing. Although the ballads aren't as strong as his late-'70s and early-'80s standards, they are nevertheless pleasant, which makes the record a worthwhile purchase for fans.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo