Ottawa Bach Choir / Lisette Canton HANDEL Dixit Dominus BACH & SCHÜTZ Motets

                                                        DIXIT DOMINUS - MOTETS

EIN ENGEL IN DER NACHT

Gentle and haunting spirits from distant spheres meet in a surging world of dreams and lullabies in 'The Girl and the Angel, a musical narrative'. This work interweaves a new story by bestselling author Cornelia Funke with expressive new compositions by Luna Pearl Woolf and familiar and popular songs by Irving Berlin, Lennon / McCartney, Jake Heggie, Engelbert Humperdinck, Gordon Getty and others. Cornelia Funke herself captures her story with rousing songs by Frederica von Stade, Daniel Taylor, Lisa Delan and Zhen Cao, accompanied by the lush cellos of Matt Haimovitz and his Uccello ensemble. Exquisite images from the award-winning creative studio Mirada visually shine the story. The Girl and the Angel was originally released in 2013 under the title Angel Heart with accompanying concerts in Los Angeles and New York's Carnegie Hall, first released internationally in 2018, and now appears in a German-language version. The New York Times described The Girl and the Angel as 'a story that penetrates directly into the imagination of young people, with the simplicity and dark pull of a fairytale.'

The Bach Choir Of Bethlehem / Greg Funfgeld J.S. BACH Cantata BWV 21

The oldest Bach choir in the United States, The Bach Choir of Bethlehem celebrates its 120th birthday in 2018. Since its founding in 1898, the now famous choir has attracted thousands of visitors from across the United States and beyond to the annual Bethlehem Bach Festival in Pennsylvania. Cantata BWV 21, Ich hatte viel Bekümmernis, was composed for various occasions between 1713 and 1714; with nearly every performance it was expanded by additional movements. It should be noted that this recording frames the Bach cantata with two exquisite arias. With Daniel Taylor, Cassandra Lemoine, Rosa Lamoreaux, Benjamin Butterfield, William Sharp & The Bach Festival Orchestra, directed by Greg Funfgeld, this production is grandiose!

Gächinger Kantorei Stuttgart / Bach-Collegium Stuttgart / Matthew Halls ALESSANDRO GRANDI Vespro della Beata Vergine

Alessandro Grandi (ca. 1586–1630) was Claudio Monteverdi’s Vice-Kapellmeister at St. Mark’s in Venice for seven years, before he was elected Kapellmeister at the Basilica Santa Maria Maggiore in Bergamo in 1627. He improved the musical conditions there in a very short time, however already in 1630 he and his entire family succumbed to the plague. The musical height of his tenure as Kapellmeister were the elaborately celebrated Marian feast days, for which the musical forces were doubled. Through their publication Grandi’s works were widely disseminated and document the fact that as a composer he proved to be a lasting influence in shaping the rapid developments and changes which took place in music at the beginning of the 17th century. The quality of his psalm settings, especially the later ones, make him, together with Monteverdi and Rovetta, one of the most important composers of his day. His Vespro della Beata Vergine (Vespers for the Blessed Virgin) is comprised of works taken from various printed collections of the master and may be regarded as a model for current practice of the early baroque in Italy. The CD is from a live recording of a concert presented during the Musikfest Stuttgart 2010 by the Gächinger Kantorei Stuttgart together with outstanding soloists, such as Deborah York and Peter Harvey under the direction of Matthew Hall.

Daniel Taylor / The Trinity Choir THE PATH TO PARADISE

The word sublime should never be used lightly, but if ever a collection of music warrants the term it's this one. In keeping with its title, this latest recording by Daniel Taylor and the Trinity Choir, their follow-up to Four Thousand Winter and the Juno-nominated The Tree of Life, offers a direct route to paradise, its figurative access achieved when the immediate space is filled with its glorious vocal performances. The set-list is dominated by choral works from the sixteenth century, the two by Arvo Pärt obvious exceptions. His pieces, as anyone familiar with the Estonian composer's output will have already guessed, sit comfortably alongside those by Thomas Tallis, William Byrd, Nicolas Gombert, and others. Though their works are set to sacred texts about the soul's lifelong struggle to achieve salvation, The Path To Paradise presents spiritually replenishing music whose rapturous beauty is capable of speaking to the faithful and non-faithful alike. (Textura.org)