The small British chorus called the Sixteen and director Harry Christophers have delivered consistently popular recordings of Renaissance and Baroque music, maintaining very high standards of performance. Here they couple two of the most popular Baroque works of all, Vivaldi's Gloria in D major, RV 589, and Bach's Magnificat in D major, BWV 243, and the results are handsome indeed. The tenor of the performances flows from the conceptions of each work that Christophers expresses in one of the little personal essays that ...
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The small British chorus called the Sixteen and director Harry Christophers have delivered consistently popular recordings of Renaissance and Baroque music, maintaining very high standards of performance. Here they couple two of the most popular Baroque works of all, Vivaldi's Gloria in D major, RV 589, and Bach's Magnificat in D major, BWV 243, and the results are handsome indeed. The tenor of the performances flows from the conceptions of each work that Christophers expresses in one of the little personal essays that appears at the beginning of each booklet in this series: Vivaldi, he said, is "effective," and even operates in places here "at his simplest," while Bach is "complex." Some would use other words first, for each composer -- daring or kinetic for Vivaldi, devotional or a dozen other words for Bach. There are recordings that give Vivaldi in general and the Gloria in particular more of an edge; there are recordings of Bach that seem warmer, or more rooted in the sacred texts. But here, as...
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