CD-Charts Position 181
Average Rating:

Music for Organ, Brass & Percussion

CD-Charts > Music > Sacred and Religious
from: Telarc

Release Date February 23, 1990
If you enjoy pomp and circumstance type music, you must have this CD.

CD-Charts Position 182
Average Rating:

Vivaldi: Gloria in D (RV589), Dixit Dominus in D (RV594), and Magnificat in G Minor (RV610)

CD-Charts > Music > Sacred and Religious
by: Deborah Norman, James Gilchrist, Jonathan Lemalu, Stephen Cleobury, Choir of King's College - Cambridge, The Academy of Ancient Music

Release Date May 07, 2002
Nothing beats authentic instruments for Baroque music. The ensemble here plays wonderfully well. Nice, crisp sound to help keep it light. I also thought the soprano sang beautifully. Normally, a boys' choir mixed with men's voices, soprano solo, and light orchestra (as in Duruflé's Requiem, chamber orchestral version) sounds terrific.

Here, however, the boys serve as a distraction. They are constantly slurring up to the note, as if they had been instructed to sing in that manner. I stomached it for as long as I could. I think that perhaps, for these Baroque pieces, I would prefer to hear a men's and women's chorus, as in Handel's Messiah. Luckily, these works of Vivaldi are quite popular, so I'll just have to be diligent ... Read More:

CD-Charts Position 183
Average Rating:

How Sweet the Sound: Spirituals & Traditional Gospel Music

CD-Charts > Music > Sacred and Religious
by: Chanticleer

Release Date September 14, 2004
On this standard red book 16-bit CD we are offered that rare and special invitation: Come now, pilgrim - take yet another good step forward in gospel praise or supplication. How can we progress in our individual and collective spiritual journeys towards whatever transcendent glories ground us, revive us, and lead us on despite life's challenges, unless we sing?. Are you having set backs? This CD is good medicine, and it is both a worthy addition to the gospel music shelf and perhaps just the sort of musical medicine that turns out to be good for you, on more than one level of body, mind, and soul. Not a bitter root aftertaste, nor a nagging fishy oil payback in any of this welcome elixir. I guess that is why we call it, Good News.

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CD-Charts Position 184
Average Rating:

Purcell: Complete Chamber Music

CD-Charts > Music > Sacred and Religious
from: Brilliant Classics

Release Date April 01, 2008
I have an enormous amount of affection for this anthlogy. The music is quintessential Purcell- ingeneous, straight-forward, the show tune king of his day. This is a seven disc set. The first four discs are performed by Musica Antiphon, one of several European H.I.P. ensembles who seem to draw personnel from the same pool. This particular group empressed me earlier with a performance of the Telemann Tafelmusik which was far more spirited and fun than the benchmark perfomance by Musica Antiqua Koln. That same sense of fun is present here as well. The final three discs are harpsichord (and a little organ) pieces played by Pieter-Jan Belder. His performances are pleasant and musical as well. It is nice to hear music in these discs (instead of a prissy ... Read More:

CD-Charts Position 185
Average Rating:

King's Singers Christmas

CD-Charts > Music > Sacred and Religious
from: Signum UK

Release Date October 21, 2003
The King's Singers bring their mastery of blend and tone together for their latest Christmas album. It's difficult to comprehend how 6 men can produce such an amazing sound, but they do. They sing traditional Christmas music, such as Coventry Carol, Lullay my Liking, and Stille Nacht. This is the King's Singers at their best- exquisite acapella music that is contemplative and will lift up one's spirits. In particular, I recommend listening to their rendition of Bogoroditsye dyevo. If you still have time, I would recommend downloading the MP3s and listening to it for Christmas. If not, this can be listened to at any time of year.

CD-Charts Position 186
Average Rating:

Medieval Christmas

CD-Charts > Music > Sacred and Religious
from: Nonesuch

Release Date September 13, 1991
We're bombarded with modern Christmas music at work ALL...DAY...LONG. Or at the mall or at the grocery store. Why would anyone want to bring the same music home with them that only reminds them of work? And yet people do this every year. Get back to the basics. Put on the kettle, light the fireplace, use those flicker flame lights on your tree, turn off all those modern white house lights and then put on this cd and just sit on your couch. You'll be in the 13th century in no time. Leave the Bob Hope specials and Lawrence Welk Christmases to the idiots.

CD-Charts Position 187
Average Rating:

Schubert: Masses Nos. 2 & 6

CD-Charts > Music > Sacred and Religious
from: Telarc

Release Date May 07, 1990
Schubert: Masses Nos. 2 & 6 Absolute choral purity and diction make this another of Robert Shaw's exquisite recordings. Perfect in every way.

CD-Charts Position 188
Average Rating:

Brahms: Ein Deutsches Requiem

CD-Charts > Music > Sacred and Religious
from: EMI Classics

Release Date April 03, 2007
It pains me to have to spend time to give another bad review to Rattle, BPO and (mostly) EMI. Having heard many (and much cheaper) Requiems, why would any bother with this?
1) Rattle's conducting? Boring, no contrasts, no emotion, no anger! The last movement is too rushed, the pause between the overwhelming 5th movement and the 6th is too short.
2) The choral singing? Incredibly lame.
3) The digital recording: Terrible! Blurred, blended, no depth, no range.
5) Production? EMI has hardly done anything good in the last ten years. Seems to me is merely there for the money, not the vision or the art anymore.
4) Soloists? Well, OK ... but, what's left? A total waste of my money. Rattle and EMI seem to deserve each other fully.
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CD-Charts Position 189
Average Rating:

Hallelujah Junction

CD-Charts > Music > Sacred and Religious
from: Nonesuch

Release Date October 07, 2008
One of the reasons that John Adams is a mster of minimlaism is that repetitive music based on simple chords is easy to write. He also has a knack for eye-catching titles -- it's hard not to listen to something called 'Hoodoo Zephyr' -- but after a while that knack runs the risk of being glib. Much of his early music was glib, simplistic applications of the vocabulary developed to commercial perfection by Philip Glass. Adams arguably has more book smarts than Glass, but for all his literary cleverness, can he match Glass's best works, such as 'Einstein on the Beach,' 'Satyagraha,' the Violin concerto, and several film socres, such as 'Beauty and the Beast'?

This 2-CD sampler from Nonesuch, which covers Adams's twenty years with the label, gives us a chance ... Read More:

CD-Charts Position 190
Average Rating:

Camille Saint-Saëns: Christmas Oratorio

CD-Charts > Music > Sacred and Religious
from: Profil - G Haenssler

Release Date October 18, 2005
I can't get enough of this music. I'm listening to the album every other day, sometimes several times a day, since I got it 4 months ago. I am fond of all the pieces but especially no 2 and 7 (tecum pricipio, has a harp accompaniment). There are parts that are quite simple ( such as just an organ or a harp accompanying a single voice) alternating with parts that are more intense ( many instruments and voices). I don't find it ever overwhelming (I don't like shouting choirs). The whole is extremely melocic. And the recording is superb with the most beautiful male and female voices you could dream of. Music that makes my soul rejoice. But then, I am partial, I love Saint Saens, a lot of what he composed. This and the cello compositions are my favorite.