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Monteverdi: Vespro della Beata Vergine

Raphaël Pichon

Masses, Passions, Requiems - Released September 1, 2023 | harmonia mundi

Hi-Res Booklet Distinctions 4F de Télérama - Gramophone: Recording of the Month
It is hard to know where to begin enumerating the beauties of this release by the Pygmalion ensemble and its director, Raphaël Pichon, who enumerates his thoughts on Monteverdi's Vespro della Beata Vergine in the interview-style booklet. There are many good recordings of this work, sometimes known as the Vespers of 1610. Right from the beginning, with the exultant blaze of unchanging harmony in the opening Invitatorium that announced, just as clearly as anything in the opera Orfeo, that the musical world had changed, the effect of this performance is exceptionally powerful, but it is not only the glittering tutti that impresses. Perhaps even more than Orfeo, the Vespers marshal all the musical resources Monteverdi had at his disposal. There are operatic arias in all but text, handled perfectly by well-chosen soloists who master the ornamentation idioms of the day. There are polychoral brass pieces that show Monteverdi's development of that style prior to his move to St. Mark's in Venice. There is old-school polyphony and straight monody. In Pichon's hands, all these styles are held in perfect balance. Harmonia Mundi's sound, from the Temple du Saint-Esprit in Paris, evokes the splendor of the ducal chapel in Mantua for which the Vespers were written. There is much more that could be said, but let it suffice to observe that even those who think they know the Vespers well will rethink that position after hearing this remarkable recording, which rightfully made classical best-seller charts in the late summer of 2023.© James Manheim /TiVo
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Pure Maria Callas - Callas Remastered

Maria Callas

Opera Extracts - Released September 22, 2014 | Warner Classics

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The Best of Maria Callas - Her Greatest Roles

Maria Callas

Opera - Released September 22, 2023 | Warner Classics

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Daser: Missa Pater noster & Other Works

Cinquecento

Classical - Released October 6, 2023 | Hyperion

Hi-Res Booklet
This recording showed up on classical best-seller charts in the autumn of 2023, and it may have been a surprise to see it there. The music is by Ludwig Daser, an almost unknown German Renaissance composer, and while Cinquecento is an esteemed vocal group specializing in the music of the period, it is not commonly a chart resident. Several factors may have drawn listeners to the recording, not least the terrific cover art featuring a painting of a Munich court jester with a lion (there is also a beautiful illustration with one of the original choirbooks). There is also the fact that Daser, the predecessor of Orlande de Lassus at the Bavarian court in Munich, is all but unknown; listeners will be glad to discover him. He did not have the wide-ranging genius of Lassus, but his music, like that of Tallis and Byrd, reflected the shifts of the age between Catholicism and Protestantism. The program here presents a good overview, with an imposing, rather conservative but ingenious Missa Pater noster (it is based on one chant, but another one is worked into the all-important Credo). There are also small, intimate motets in German and an alternatim hymn setting. The small Cinquecento group (mostly two voices per part) works quite well in these but seems underpowered in the mass; sources of the day specify at least a dozen singers, more likely 16, and up to 24 at the Sistine Chapel, which would have furnished a sound ideal. Nevertheless, the singing is clear and brings out the polyphonic details in a complex piece like Fracta diuturnis. A release of great interest to lovers of the eventful 16th century.© James Manheim /TiVo
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The Golden Renaissance: William Byrd

Stile Antico

Classical - Released January 13, 2023 | Decca Music Group Ltd.

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The 400th anniversary year of William Byrd's death gets off to a roaring start with this collection of mostly Catholic choral music from the small (mixed-gender, adult) choir Stile Antico. This justly celebrated group works without a conductor and is recognized for its flexible and sensitive treatment of texts, even in one as well-worn as that of the Catholic mass. Here, sample the "Qui propter nos homines" section from Credo of the Mass for Four Voices, which runs all the way through Christ's crucifixion and resurrection. There are many performances of this Byrd masterpiece, but few that convey so much of the sense of awe and reverence with which Byrd infused these words. The Mass is broken up, as would have occurred in Byrd's time, with motets appropriate to the various parts of the mass. None of these is particularly rare, but the clarity and warmth of Stile Antico's music-making here is consistently remarkable. There are a few Anglican English pieces, and for listeners who do not speak Latin, these will confirm the group's gifts in clear text articulation. A superb job all around on a release that could serve any listener well as an introduction to Byrd's sacred music and made classical best-seller charts in early 2023.© James Manheim /TiVo
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Byrd: Mass for Five Voices; Ave verum corpus; Lamentations & Other Works

The Gesualdo Six

Classical - Released June 2, 2023 | Hyperion

Hi-Res Booklet
One can debate the merits of one-voice-per-part performances of Renaissance sacred music, but it is doubtless most defensible when it comes to the Catholic, Latin-language music of William Byrd, intended for small recusant groups performing in secret spaces. Singers as skilled as those of the Gesualdo Six and their director/bass Owain Park really ought to be given carte blanche to perform whatever they want, however they want. These are brilliant performances. The motets are artfully sequenced so as to place the mass movements under the microscope, and these six singers, if possible, are getting even more uncannily accurate with each new outing. Sample the gorgeous initial gesture of Ave verum corpus, where the voices take on almost woodwind-like tones. The more emotionally intense texts receive special emphasis; Tristitia et anxietas both introduces the Credo of the mass and refers to the difficult situation of Byrd and his co-religionists. However, Park never loses the sense that this is sacred music; his group doesn't begin to suggest the music of its namesake here. Hyperion has, after several albums, achieved optimal results with this sextet in the environment of the church of All Hallows, Gospel Oak, in London. A moving, often breathtaking release.© James Manheim /TiVo
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Christmas from Norway

Lise Davidsen

Classical - Released November 10, 2023 | Decca Music Group Ltd.

Hi-Res Booklet
Lise Davidsen is the soprano of the moment, and Christmas from Norway might serve as a good introduction for general listeners to the wonders of her voice, from its incredible delicacy in the high register in Silent Night to the variety of sounds in a program where the dynamic level never rises above mezzo-forte. Davidsen fans, too, will find confirmation of their bias here. The program is a fresh take on a generally rather stale genre. It does indeed include some traditional Norwegian Christmas carols, as well as O Holy Night, sung in Norwegian (it is reprised at the end in English just for familiarity's sake). There is an early Sibelius religious song in Swedish and several songs in German, including Hugo Wolf's Schlafendes Jesuskind (from the Mörike-Lieder), that serve to demonstrate Davidsen's range. The program ends on well-trodden ground, with famous carols in English, at least one of which was arranged by Douglas Gamley for Luciano Pavarotti's mega-productions of yore. Some of the other arrangements are by Norwegian Radio Orchestra conductor Christian Eggen, who keeps the orchestra largely out of Davidsen's way where it belongs. The English-language carols, it must be said, have a bit of a Norwegian accent. One wonders sometimes why singers are expected to eliminate their accents in every language except English, but with a voice of this beauty, who cares?© James Manheim /TiVo
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The New Sound of Maria Callas

Maria Callas

Classical - Released November 10, 2014 | Warner Classics

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Maria Callas Remastered - The Complete Studio Recordings

Maria Callas

Opera - Released September 22, 2014 | Warner Classics

Hi-Res Booklets Distinctions Diapason d'or de l'année - Diapason d'or - Choc Classica de l'année - 5 Sterne Fono Forum Klassik
The EMI masters of Maria Callas were re-mastered for the purposes of CD and released as a physical product in 2014. We are happy to offer it now as a full digital product in supreme audio quality. More than 25 years’ worth of music has been collected here, and filter applications have been applied to cover up sound defects (and other distortions). The recordings were passed into the expert hands of sound engineers Allan Ramsey and Simon Gibson, both of Abbey Road, who have made the recordings, under the directions of the Warner Classics label, as close to the sound of the originals as possible.  The gain in terms of sound is undeniable, whether by removing harsh noise or treating distorted sounds, and the natural harmonics have not been altered. What’s more, this decision to remaster everything has resulted in the recovering of the entirety of Callas’s oeuvre – meaning that we need no longer fear the disastrous loss of copies… But who said greater definition and cleanliness of sound permitted a better perception of detail! If we discern the disc’s nuances more clearly, the dynamic adjustments, soundscapes, etc., then we discern a greater fidelity in terms of timbre. Certain defects are, importantly, still left in play. Above all, Callas’s voice sounds more dramatic, brighter, more present, and more beautiful in its phrasing; especially pleasing is that it has been revealed for the first time in all of its acidity, in all of its cracks. With the sound completely rejuvenated, recordings such as La Tosca, Madame Butterfly, Il Trovatore, the Barber of Seville, and others, are as irreplaceable as ever. (GG)
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Missa Maria zart

Cappella Pratensis

Classical - Released March 20, 2023 | Cappella Pratensis

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The Sound Of Music

Rodgers & Hammerstein

Film Soundtracks - Released December 1, 2023 | Craft Recordings

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Supernatural

Santana

Pop - Released June 15, 1999 | Columbia - Legacy

Distinctions The Qobuz Ideal Discography
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Maria Mater Meretrix

Anna Prohaska

Classical - Released April 14, 2023 | Alpha Classics

Hi-Res Booklet
By no means should you be expecting the "typical" productions we so often associate with the violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja. Together with the soprano Anna Prohaska, she has developed a highly original programme which brings violin and vocals together. In this respect, while we were delighted to find a recording of the beautiful and all too rare Maria-Triptychon, which Frank Martin wrote in 1968 for Irmgard Seefried and her violinist husband Wolfgang Schneiderhan, we wonder whether it was really necessary to dismantle this polyptych whose three movements tell the story of the mother of Christ with perfect fluidity.It must be said that the entirety of this unusual album feels rather all over the place, very much like György Kurtág who unsurprisingly features in this curious inventory of a thousand years of music, from Hildegard von Bingen to the present day.We need to look elsewhere for the main theme and, more precisely, at the questioning of the two musicians around the subject of female emancipation and “the sensitive exploration of their common experiences as women evolving in the current music industry.” This quest for content, set to music around the figure of Mary, evokes a mixture of shimmering colours created by the Camerata de Berne orchestra, and depicts a journey through the ages and arias which incorporates so many of the contradictions of human nature. We highly recommend that you immerse yourself fully, and listen to these twenty tracks from beginning to end. This way you will be better able to appreciate this strangely fascinating patchwork, which feels like a work of art in its own right. © François Hudry/Qobuz
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Supernatural (Legacy Edition)

Santana

Pop/Rock - Released June 15, 1999 | Columbia - Legacy

Distinctions The Qobuz Ideal Discography
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Buddha Bar XXV

Buddha-Bar

Electronic - Released April 21, 2023 | George V Records

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Maria Callas Live - Remastered Recordings 1949-1964

Maria Callas

Opera - Released September 15, 2017 | Warner Classics

Hi-Res Booklet Distinctions Diapason d'or / Arte
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Sacred Treasures of Venice: Motets from the Golden Age of Venetian Polyphony

London Oratory Schola Cantorum

Classical - Released February 2, 2024 | Hyperion

Hi-Res Booklet
The London Oratory Schola Cantorum has been around for several decades but came on the recording scene definitively only in the 2010s, offering a series of "Sacred Treasures of ..." albums. These are not the generic products one might guess from the title. Consider 2024's Sacred Treasures of Venice, which is not an anthology but an album focusing on a specific repertory and on one specific part of it at that. It made classical best-seller charts in early 2024. St. Mark's cathedral in Venice at the end of the 16th century and the beginning of the 17th is known for polychoral magnificence, for sacred music in which instruments played a new and groundbreaking role. Of course, more intimate music was also pursued, and even in larger pieces practice, was flexible, and they might have been sung a cappella. These pieces by Giovanni Gabrieli, his uncle Andrea Gabrieli, the young Claudio Monteverdi, and a couple of other composers are ideally suited to the all-male London Oratory Schola Cantorum, whose boy singers have some texture and heft. However, it is interesting as well to hear the St. Mark's repertory sung this way; one hears that the big dimensions of the music were not just a response to St. Mark's architecture but represented a musical evolution as well. Giovanni Gabrieli was innovative not just in using instruments but in shaping musical architectures with register and harmony, and this is apparent even where no instruments are present. The contrasts among the composers here are also intriguing; hear the limpid, almost Palestrinian pieces of Giovanni Croce at the end. Hyperion records this young choir well, not at the London Oratory School but at St. Augustine's Church, Kilbourn, London, which has a spacious enough acoustic to put this music across. These are indeed Sacred Treasures of Venice, but this is also an album from which one can learn.© James Manheim /TiVo
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Gesualdo: Sacræ Cantiones

Il Pomo D'oro

Art Songs, Mélodies & Lieder - Released March 24, 2023 | Aparté

Hi-Res Booklet
The historical performance ensemble Il Pomo d'Oro, from Switzerland, has taken on a choral component, and this release, with Giuseppe Maletto as director, is its first unaccompanied choral release. The initial impressions are very good. The group's slogan on social media is "We have the guts"; this refers to the gut strings used by the orchestra but could also apply to the sound of the choir -- an ideal 12 voices, mixed-gender and adult, from whom Maletto gets some grain. The sound matches these motets of Carlo Gesualdo beautifully. These pieces have a deeply penitential tone that has been linked in listeners' minds with the composer's murder of his wife and her lover. Maletto points out that a motet written in the 1580s, before the murders, has the same tone, but texts like that of Laboravi in gemitu meo ("I am weary of my groaning; every night wash I my bed and water my couch with my tears"), not often set by composers, do seem to have a stark, intense quality. Whatever the biographical implications, the music does have a subjective quality that is unusual in sacred music, and Maletto strikes a fine balance that catches it without making the pieces sound like madrigals. The result is an unusually satisfying recording of these works, which are less often recorded than the late Tenebrae Responsories. It is enhanced by idiomatic sound from the Chiesa della Confraternita dei Santi Rocco e Sebastiano in Cumiana, Italy, transparent enough to bring out the texture of the voices.© James Manheim /TiVo
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Arvo Pärt: Lamentate

Onute Grazinyte

Classical - Released September 4, 2020 | Accentus Music

Hi-Res Booklet Distinctions Diapason d'or / Arte
He was "tremendously" impressed, Arvo Pärt recalls of the moment he stood in front of Anish Kapoor's Marsyas for the first time at London's Tate Modern. "Suddenly I found myself in a position from where I saw my life in a different light. At that moment, I had the strong feeling that I wasn't ready to die yet," said then-67-year-old Arvo Pärt. This was the creative impulse for Lamentate. Arvo Pärt, who celebrates his 85th birthday on September 11, 2020, seems to have often been inspired to compose by external circumstances. This is demonstrated in the selection of works for or with piano, which Onute Gražinyte chose for her first recording. Für Alina is particularly important to the Lithuanian pianist. In 1976, Pärt dedicated it to a young woman who had decided to leave the Soviet Union for England. "I know Alina's mother personally and can sympathize with her indescribable pain", says Onute Gražinyte. The pianist was baffled by Pärt's simple musical notation. "First you ask yourself: What is this?" Her playing reveals: She understands". Arvo Pärt has reached the core. It's no coincidence that he dedicated many piano pieces to children and that he intended the Vater Unser to be sung by a boy soprano. It's the ideal, the purity that children are born with and the composer has found it again". © Accentus
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Carl Maria von Weber : Sonates pour pianoforte & violon - Quatuor avec piano

Isabelle Faust

Chamber Music - Released January 29, 2013 | harmonia mundi

Hi-Res Booklet Distinctions Diapason d'or - 4 étoiles Classica