CD Reviews
Rachmaninov: All-night Vigil – CD Review
***** This recording of Rachmaninov’s beautiful All-Night Vigil is the third by non-Russian choirs to come my way in less than a year. It’s good to report that the latest, from the Vasari Singers under Jeremy Backhouse, is every bit as excellent as we have come to expect from that […]
Michael Hurd: Choral Music Vol.1 – CD Review
**** (4 stars) Michael Hurd’s Night Songs of Edward Thomas is the finest setting I’ve ever heard of that songful but somehow musically resistant poet. Thomas’s words call for very careful setting and singing, and the Vasaris do both composer and poet proud. There is a Missa brevis, too, which […]
CD Review: Under the Shadow of His Wing – The Guardian
Seductively lush 4 out of 5 Stars Vasari Singers launch their own label with this wide-ranging, evocative double-CD meditation on the journey from darkness to light, a reworking of the Vespers service by Jonathan Rathbone, who takes texts from the liturgies of Compline and Evensong and applies double and sometimes […]
Five fabulous reviews for Vasari’s ‘De Profundis’ CD
Gramophone The thesis of this disc isn’t a new one but it is always a welcome approach and has been originally addressed. It couples two settings of three texts – the *De Profundis*, the *Miserere* and the Requiem – in contrasting pairs. The most startling contrast, surprisingly, does not involve […]
Filsell/Briggs: Choral Music – CD Review
This lovely CD was not at all what I expected. The image I had of church music was of a genre that is conventional and safe. Neither composer represented here falls into place on either count. I suspect many a church choir would see these pieces as very challenging. The […]