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Press and Reviews | |
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CORO RecordingsBBC Music Magazine, December 2009 Dixit Dominus Performance ***** Recording ***** Agostino Steffani, born near Venice, spent much of his working life in Germany, in Munich and in Hanover. As an opera composer, he was highly sensitive to words and their emotional expression in music, evident in this Stabat mater, written as his ‘last and greatest work’ (in his own words) shortly before his death in 1728. It is for the breath-taking sonority of two violins, three violas and bass accompanying five soloists and choir. The Sixteen (expanded here to 18) with 19 strings and continuo, perform the Stabat mater with deep conviction and profound feeling. The second movement, ‘Cuius animam…’ opens with seamless choral counterpoint followed by an agonisingly beautiful trio of soloists. The Virgin Mary’s grief evokes a soaring high tenor line; the bass soloist describes Jesus ‘in torment’ in poignant simplicity, free of any affectation – and plumbing the depths of a bottom C. Such expressiveness is matched by instruments – after choir and soloist call and respond in ‘Eia Mater’, the closing string ritornello sounds almost texted. The final chorus, reflecting on one’s own death, is punctuated by dramatic silences before parts pile one on the other in sustained dissonance. Dixit Dominus is no less beautifully managed with Grace Davidson an effortless soprano in ‘Tecum principium…’, a modest tempo clarifying the fast parlando choral text of ‘Tu es sacerdos…’ and highly imaginative organ continuo opening the Gloria. The recording seemed rather distant and limp until I tweaked the volume above my normal listening level. Adjusted, it proved clean and spacious, contributing to a truly memorable disc.
The Sunday Times, October 2009 Dixit Dominus For most listeners, the surprise package here will be Agostino Steffani’s Stabat Mater. Like the younger Handel, Steffani had connections with London. Not long before his death in 1728, he became president of the Academy of Vocal Music. This work, which he probably sent to the academy, is his final masterpiece. Its flavour is sober and devout, but it’s also deeply felt, the textures rich, the writing both sonorous and sensitive. The Sixteen perform it eloquently. With a few more string players added, they also combine precision and maximum excitement in the precocious, thrilling brilliance of Handel’s Dixit Dominus, composed in Rome by a man at the opposite end of his career.
The Observer, February 2009 Coronation Anthems Does the world need another recording of the Coronation Anthems? There are dozens in the catalogue; can the Sixteen be any better than, say, King's Cambridge, the Monteverdi Choir or New College, Oxford? Well, yes, they can. Harry Christophers brings the same fire to these perfect miniatures that he brought to his triumphant Messiah last year, firmly establishing him as the Handelian of the moment. Let Thy Hand Be Strengthened, Zadok the Priest and The King Shall Rejoice all fizz and crackle but best of all is My Heart Is Inditing, sung with a rich, classy poise.
Classic FM Magazine, December 2008 Messiah ***** 5 Stars '...there are myriad nuances of tempo, phrasing and expression throughout to delight the listener..' Click here to read the 5 star review in full.
The Telegraph, August 30th, 2008 Messiah In the glowing acoustics of St Paul's, Deptford, "Hallelujah" and "Amen" thrill anew, refinement and Anglican robustness held in ideal balance. At the other end of the spectrum, "Surely, He Hath Borne Our Griefs" has a lacerating intensity, with the chorus burning into their consonants and realising the excruciating pain of Handel's dissonances. The stylish, fresh-voiced soloists, three of them alumni of The Sixteen, could hardly be bettered. Carolyn Sampson, vernal of tone, sings a truly joyous "Rejoice, Greatly" and an exquisitely tender "Come Unto Him". Inspired by scorching, spitting strings, Catherine Wyn-Rogers graphically evokes the refiner's fire and is gravely compassionate without a hint of plumminess in "He Was Despised". The men are just as good: Mark Padmore by turns lyrical and (in "Thou Shalf Break Them") vehement, Christopher Purves adding a sonorous bass extension to his incisive baritone. For a period-instrument Messiah using the standard text, this inspiriting new performance becomes a first choice.
The Times, The Knowledge, March 15th, 2008 Faure Requiem **** 4 Stars Recorded live during the Barbican's Mostly Mozart Festival last summer, this pairing of Mozart's Vespers and Fauré's Requiem has a resonant intimacy that belies its concert hall setting. The Vesperae Solennes de Confessore are beautifully phrased by the Sixteen, with the operatics of the Beatus Vir vibrant before an ethereal solo line in the Laudate Dominum from Elin Manahan Thomas. Fauré's Requiem, written “for the pleasure of it”, certainly sounds thus. Roderick Williams is on sonorous form...this is a Requiem gently sculpted as smooth and tactile as glass. As the clouds slowly lift, the sense of an ecstatic movement towards paradise is tangible.
The Times, February 9th, 2008 Treasures of Tudor England The Sixteen are in awesome voice on their latest CD, recorded in the Deptford church where the Tudor playwright Marlowe is commemorated. They have good diction over the stretched syllables and faultless intonation. Strong, bright sopranos, mellifluous basses, well-blended tenors and lithe, unstraining altos are their hallmark. The conductor Harry Christophers chooses six works by three composers, each an underappreciated masterpiece. This is less true of Parsons's Ave Maria, which has become a polyphonic hit in recent years, than it is of Robert White's five-part Lamentations, surely the equal of Tallis's, or Christopher Tye's deeply penitential Peccavimus. We have sinned.
BBC Music Magazine, December 2007 Brahms: Ein Deutsches Requiem ***** 5 Stars Performance ***** 5 Stars Sound ...the small number of singers makes one aware of every intermingled line. The fourth movement emerges as a celestial Liebeslieder Waltz; and the Bosendorfer 'in period' almost to the year, has a quality of attack and tone-colour that makes for almost diaphanous transparency... A triumph, creating the benchmark for this version.
The Times Online, February 23rd, 2007 Music from the Sistine Chapel **** 4 Stars Sixteen, Sistine: it’s a match made in heaven, as audiences should discover next month when Harry Christophers' choir starts touring the UK with vintage Vatican repertoire. The most exultant music here is by Palestrina; but Felice Anerio isn’t far behind in his lavish Stabat Mater . Allegri, of Miserere fame, is also represented. Kentish Town, the recording site, is far from Rome, but you’d never know from the textual precision and lyric flow. BBC Radio 3 – CD Review HANDEL: Heroes and Heroines Renée Fleming as Cleopatra, certainly sensual but perhaps not quite as irresistible as she thinks she is. Fleming's recital of Handel arias is out as a Super Audio CD on Decca, at full price, as well it might be - judging by the cover photos, Decca will have to shift several hundred copies just to pay Fleming's hairdresser. So it's telling that it's trumped in almost every way (bar the hairdos) by something that's very much not a major-label job. This is the new Handel recording by the British mezzo Sarah Connolly, with the Symphony of Harmony and Invention and their conductor Harry Christophers on his own Coro label. It's simply an outstanding disc from start to finish. The disc features two of Connolly's best-known trouser roles – Ruggiero in Alcina and the title role of Ariodante - with two less familiar female roles, from Solomon and Hercules. At the heart of the disc lies the long despairing aria from Act 2 of Ariodante, 'Scherza infida': Sarah Connolly as Handel's Ariodante, driven to the edge of death by his lover's perceived infidelity; 12 gloriously intense minutes of divine music. And if the strings of the Symphony of Harmony and Invention could perhaps be a little more fluid, that bassoon is spot on. Connolly's sense of line is impeccable, and on a purely musical level she's never less than a pleasure to listen to. Yet this an immensely satisfying performance dramatically as well - her diction, in English and Italian, is consistently clear and vivid, and though this disc shows her as only four characters, she really gets inside each of them. Perhaps nowhere is this better tested than in her closing number. It's not all misery and madness on this new Handel recital disc. I'll leave you with another aria from Ariodante, this time taken from towards the end of the opera, with doubts passed, the sun shining, and Connolly making it all sound joyously, brilliantly easy. BBC Music Magazine, December 2004 George Hall HANDEL: Heroes and Heroines ***** 5 Stars Performance ***** 5 Stars Sound Complete Handelian heroine Handel may form a central part of the national artistic heritage, but his outstanding vocal writing, requiring both an impregnable technique and the keenest musical instincts, still finds many British singers wanting. Not so Sarah Connolly, whose immaculate legato, remarkable breath control, even scale and wide tonal range combine to present her with the full armoury needed for the varied challenges here. The Programme is well planned with roles from four different operas or oratorios highlighted while Harry Christophers and his impeccable musicians vary the texture with orchestral extracts from the same works (their ‘Arrival of the Queen of Sheba’ is the brightest and breeziest I can recall). His sense of pacing is immaculate, and the accompaniments register as uniformly vivid in the natural, intimate acoustic. Bu the spotlight is on Connolly, who charts the emotional journeys of the alternately bold, lovelorn, then nostalgic Ruggiero (Alcina), the pensive Queen of Sheba (Solomon), the despairing then elated Ariodante, and the saddened, then maddened-by-jealousy Dejanira (Hercules) with a psychological perception scrupulously drawn from Handel’s notes. She’s in command of each and every one of them, and like all the greatest artists she makes this music her own. This is top-of-the-range Handel singing. The Observer, 30th May 2004 La Jeune France (Olivier Messiaen, André Jolivet & Jean Yves Daniel-Lesur) Olivier Messiaen, André Jolivet and Jean Yves Daniel-Lesur were the hard core of a group of composers styling themselves ‘La Jeune France’, with a mission to push French music firmly into the avant garde of the mid-to-late 20th Century music. These remarkable vocal works – which include Messiaen’s Cinq Rechants, Jolivet’s Epithalame and Daniel-Lesur’s La Cantique des Cantiques – range from the rhapsodic to the darkly brooding. They are distinctly Gallic, steeped in haunting angst and sensuous eroticism, and could not hope for more eloquent champions than The Sixteen under their founder-director Harry Christophers, who are celebrating their 25th anniversary by once again proving themselves masters of the modern as well as the baroque and earlier repertoire. Gramophone, December 2003 Beautiful music compellingly sung and in a captivating surround sound recording. This new CD hails The Sixteen’s Silver Jubilee, and was planned to be a bumper recording with its title, Music for Monarchs and Magnates. The number of singers was more than doubled for Tallis’s 40-part motet, with a further 20 instrumentalists, sackbutts and cornetts, viols and organ all playing their part. The Monarchs and Magnates were chiefly James I and his eldest son, Henry, though the time scale takes us back to Elizabethan times, and forward to the Civil War. Spem in alium introduces the programme (with top As much in evidence) and its contrafactum Sing and glorify (only up to Gs this time) brings it to a close. There is much variety in between, with Byrd’s subtle use of several verses of a Latin psalm in Deus venerunt gentes to highlight and mourn the execution in 1581 of Edmund Campion, followed by Know you not by Thomas Tomkins, a moving English verse anthem lamenting the death of Prince Henry in 1612, with parts added by Harry Christophers for sackbutts and cornetts. These splendid instruments make their appearance in several items, notably in Great King of Gods by Orlando Gibbons, sung during James I’s state progress to Edinburgh in 1617. Unfortunately, the instruments tended too often to mask the solo voices in the verse sections. My favourite piece was O God, the heathen are come, newly reconstructed by John Milsom and brilliantly sung with the better-balanced accompaniment of viols. |
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