This review first appeared in the print edition of Opera Canada.
Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra’s Beethoven cycle with conductor Bruno Weil concludes with a recording of the 9th Symphony recorded live at Koerner Hall in February 2016. It’s very much a period instruments recording. This is most noticeable in the strings where the sound is softer than a modern orchestra with less “attack” and significantly less dynamic variation. No doubt the fairly small forces used reinforce this. There are slightly more than 50 instrumentalists in total. Overall, it’s an almost Mozartian sound.
This review first appeared in the print edition of 
This review first appeared in the print edition of 
This review first appeared in the print edition of 
This review first appeared in the print edition of 
This review first appeared in the print edition of 
This review first appeared in the print edition of 
Exultet Terra is a disc of choral works (mostly) by Welsh-American composer Hilary Tann. The first half of the disc consists of shorter works for a cappella female chamber choir bookended by two pieces by Hildegard of Bingen in the latter of which the ladies are joined by the men of the choir. The second half of the disc consists of Exultet Terra; a five movement work for chamber choir, two bassoons, two oboes and cor Anglais.
It’s not often that discs of contemporary a capella choral music come my way but that’s what The Stolen Child: Choral Works of Scott Perkins is. There are three works on the disc exploring the themes of loss of innocence, nature, magic, sleep and death. The first, The Stolen Child (2006), sets texts by WB Yeats, the second, A Word Out of the Sea (2003), is a Whitman setting and the final work, The World of Dream (2016), uses texts by WH Auden and Walter de la Mare. The first is set for tenor, baritone and choir, the second for tenor and choir and the last for choir alone though the sound world Perkins’ creates is such that the solo roles are more or less blended into the overall sound.
Joyce DiDonato’s latest CD In War and Peace is a compilation of baroque arias on the theme of war and peace, apparently prompted by the terrorist attacks in Paris. The arias are divided, apparently, into the two categories and while I get that Handel’s Scenes of Sorrow, Scenes of Woe from Jeptha is “war” I’m not at all sure how Purcell’s Dido’s Lament finds itself on that side of the balance sheet. No matter there’s lots of Handel; very well done, and quite a bit of Purcell, some of it quite little known; even better, with some Leo, Jommelli and Monteverdi along the way.
operaramblings 