The early music choir the Sixteen has achieved unprecedented success with its bright, very English sound and accessible presentations. The Sixteen Edition, the series of which this Bach cantata disc is part, finds the group designated as "The Voices of Classic FM," Britain's middle-of-the-road and widely popular classical music broadcaster; the choir shares airwaves, apparently, with Sarah Brightman and her contemporaries. It's all to the good, for anyone who hears the Sixteen will encounter top-notch performances of music ...
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The early music choir the Sixteen has achieved unprecedented success with its bright, very English sound and accessible presentations. The Sixteen Edition, the series of which this Bach cantata disc is part, finds the group designated as "The Voices of Classic FM," Britain's middle-of-the-road and widely popular classical music broadcaster; the choir shares airwaves, apparently, with Sarah Brightman and her contemporaries. It's all to the good, for anyone who hears the Sixteen will encounter top-notch performances of music from the fifteenth through the eighteenth centuries, and this Bach disc is one of the best in Coro's reissue series. Begin with the sound, which is exemplary despite the recording date of 1990; working with some of Bach's most intensely complex polyphonic choral movements, the performers and engineers produced a texture of rich, resonant clarity in the environment of St. Jude's church in London's Hampstead Garden Suburb. The opening Cantata No. 50 is just a single chorus, probably a...
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