Despite the cheesy cover design, this is a compilation that starts out with a big advantage: it offers a consistent musical point of view. The various singers, choirs, and orchestras are conducted by Michel Corboz, a veteran Swiss-born musician who has been active in Lausanne and in Lisbon, Portugal, and whose choruses have spawned an impressive number of European vocal careers. The reason is that Corboz forges a rich yet precise blend in all the vocal music he conducts. In some of the earlier music on the program here, his ...
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Despite the cheesy cover design, this is a compilation that starts out with a big advantage: it offers a consistent musical point of view. The various singers, choirs, and orchestras are conducted by Michel Corboz, a veteran Swiss-born musician who has been active in Lausanne and in Lisbon, Portugal, and whose choruses have spawned an impressive number of European vocal careers. The reason is that Corboz forges a rich yet precise blend in all the vocal music he conducts. In some of the earlier music on the program here, his style sounds almost luxuriant; with the later music, such as the selections by Fauré, it seems calm and detached. But his recordings are of consistently high quality, and these (save perhaps for the overdone "Laudamus te" from the Bach Mass in B minor from a young Sandrine Piau) are no exception. The program is unusual, with many pieces setting texts from the Catholic mass and the last part of the program devoted mostly to the Requiem mass. There is a certain somberness to the...
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