Sophie Bevan reviews
JS Bach: St Matthew Passion (King's)
Various; The Choir of King's College, Cambridge/Stephen Cleobury (King's College)
Songs of Vain Glory
This beautifully programmed recital will make you want to rush out and buy as many volumes of British songs as you can. It collects – imaginatively, coherently, and to deeply moving effect – 23 songs on the theme of war.
Schubert: Swansong; On the River; The Shepherd on the Rock
John Tomlinson; with Sophie Bevan, Julian Bliss, Alec Frank-Gemmill, Christopher Glynn (Signum)
Debussy: Trois Nocturnes, etc
Upper Voices from the Hallé Choirs; Hallé Orchestra/Mark Elder, et al (Hallé)
Handel: Samson
Dunedin Consort/John Butt, et al (Linn)
The best recording of Handel’s Samson yet
‘John Butt’s deep grasp of Handel’s rhetoric and of large scale structure turns the work’s patchwork quality into a virtue’
La Nuova Musica set the bar in Gluck's Orfeo ed Eurydice
‘This is directorship at its most alert, and aiding Bates is an optimal cast’