★★★★★
Summary for the Busy Executive: The King's College Choir with music, in some cases, made especially for them. All three composers - Thomas Weelkes, Orlando Gibbons, and Thomas Tomkins - belong to the Tudor-Stuart era of British composition. In a sense, all are extremely conservative, particularly when you consider that Monteverdi and his Italian contemporaries are busy creating the Baroque style in the same period...
- www.classical.net
2011-06-20
★★★★★
From its first CD recordings nearly 20 years ago (actually, I believe the first was titled "Heart's Ease", on Virgin Classics in 1988), the viol consort known as Fretwork set a formidable standard for technical acuity and stylistic integrity--but the group also recognized the vital importance of sound, of timbre, as a defining quality of its performances...
- www.classicstoday.com
2009-06-06
★★★★★
Obsidian is a volcanic substance. It was believed to be a magical stone - not least because its black, polished surface can reflect whomever is looking at it. Light from the dark. This thinking is behind the naming of an enterprising new British label... Obsidian. it will concentrate initially on releases of music by major composers from between the C14th and the death of Bach...
- www.classical.net
2009-06-06
★★★★★
Fretwork's decidedly retro approach to Bach's much-arranged and incessantly fiddled-with unfinished "last" opus is among the simplest and therefore most effective renditions on disc. This renowned ensemble takes on Bach's somewhat ambiguously scored and variously configured collection of fugues (contrapuncti) and canons and performs them on combinations of viols (six in all)...
- www.classicstoday.com
2009-06-06
★★★★★
Ottaviano Petrucci (1466-1539) was not a composer but a music printer, the first to print part-music, using a three-impression process that he developed. He's best known for publishing the huge three-volume collection of polyphonic chansons known as Harmonice Musices Odhecaton. The viol consort Fretwork performs a selection of 32 of these sophisticated pieces, which vary in texture and complexity but always maintain an easily discernable connection to their roots in song...
- www.classicstoday.com
2009-06-06
Loading...
