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| 01/04/2007
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Goldberg readers and subscribers can take advantage of an exclusive offer to purchase a pack containing all the 5-star recordings reviewed in each edition of the magazine.
Take advantage of an exclusive offer to purchase 9 new 5 Star releases from only 110 Euros. |
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| 16/05/2007
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| Including this disc, Eduardo Paniagua has already recorded nine CDs of the Cantigas de Santa María by Alfonso the Wise, a great feat in its own right which we hope is not over yet. If his goal is to record all the Cantigas, the project is more or less complete. |
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| 14/05/2007
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| As we learned in the first issue of Goldberg, Eduardo Paniagua has begun to record the complete cantigas of Alfonso el Sabio. Three years ago, before any of these discs had been issued, I found that only 120 of the 400 cantigas had been recorded in complete form. |
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| 10/05/2007
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| Another enterprising and imaginatively conceived volume in Paniagua’s continuing Cantigas series. This repertory is certainly one of the most challenging of all if one considers it as a whole, and there are clearly things concerning which Paniagua has had to take overall decisions concerning performance-such as the use of declamation, for example-in order to be consistent and to keep within a reasonable time limit. |
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| 08/05/2007
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| This may be the latest disc born out of the Philip II craze, but it deserves special attention because it has been issued by people who knew quite well what they were doing. The heart of the album is a Missa pro defunctis in six voices by Jean de Richafort, which although published in 1532, may very well have been the one played during the monarch's funeral rites. |
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| 04/05/2007
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| It is always satisfying to rediscover composers, who, despite being left in the shadows of more important composers of their time, nevertheless provide us with the opportunity to enjoy small musical gems. This is the case with Giles Farnaby (c. 1563-1640). |
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| 04/05/2007
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| Unless you are a musicologist, you are probably going to be confused by the title of this disc. Brussels 5557 refers to a manuscript in the Bibliothèque Royale in Brussels that contains music by Busnois, Ockeghem, Dufay, Regis and masses by the English composers: Plummer, Cox and Frye. |
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| 03/05/2007
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| Words are often a pretext for quite surprising ambiguities. Such is the case in the Conversations Galantes et Amusantes written by Louis-Gabriel Guillemain who, as the excellent liner notes explain, was a major exponent of the galant style in eighteenth century France. |
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| 26/04/2007
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| There are two rare jewels in the crown of medieval Spanish poetry: the Cantigas de Santa María by King Alfonso X, called the Wise, of Castile and Leon, and the large corpus of Galaico-Portuguese love poetry to which the Cantigas are greatly indebted. |
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| 10/04/2007
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| Half a century ago, Grove’s Dictionary could still say of Telemann that "with all his undoubted ability he originated nothing" and accuse him of "a fatal facility naturally inclined to superficiality". |
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| 02/04/2007
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| This recording is the sort of mixed collection the early Italian baroque appreciated. It is above all a showcase of the new instrumental music attuned to feelings and affetti developing at the time throughout Italy. |
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| 28/02/2007
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| The Choir of Magdalen College, Oxford here present us with a magnificent collection of music written for the College, including some very rarely-heard works by Appleby (whose Magnificat is, I think, somewhat under-rated by David Skinner in his informative booklet notes), Preston (for organ) and (a surprise!) Jacquet of Mantua. |
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| 19/02/2007
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| Don’t be put off by the rather stiff and wordy subtitle, “Musica figurata in Wroclaw and Silesia in the 14th and 15th centuries.” Simply stated, we have here a top-notch ensemble of singers and instrumentalists performing mensural music from a number of Central European sources including, for the later works, two notable collections now residing in the Jagellonian University of Cracow and the University Library in Warsaw. |
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| 05/02/2007
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| In 1726, his third year in Leipzig, Johann Sebastian Bach interrupted his production of cantatas to perform about 18 by his distant cousin, Johann Ludwig, including the four on this disc. Leipzig’s churchgoers would not have been disappointed: the quality of these works is high, even if they would have found them a little old-fashioned in structure and musical language. |
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| 22/11/2006
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| The reviewer of CDs of organ music may at times find it hard to receive yet another ‘Bach’ recording. The catalogue of J.S. Bach CDs is indeed so enormous, there have been so many ‘complete works’ recorded on so many beautiful instruments, not to mention the constant stream of separate recordings of ‘Bach recitals’, that it is a little tiresome sometimes to listen to these time-hallowed pieces for the umpteenth time – if they are performed indifferently, that is. |
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| 26/10/2006
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| Heinrich Finck’s music has received little coverage on disc, this being (as far as I am aware) the first anthology to be devoted to him. Strange indeed that this composer, whose life-span encompasses those of all the major figures of the 'Josquin generation' (he died in 1527 at the age of 82) should have been so overlooked, particularly in view of the quality of what this vocal quartet from Munich offer us here. |
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| 20/07/2006
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| In recent years, I’ve become so enamoured with the less familiar parts of Vivaldi’s oeuvre (especially the sacred vocal music) that I’ve tended to neglect the works for violin. |
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