CD Reviews

AAM: Handel Serse

~ Andrew Benson-Wilson

Handel: Serse
Academy of Ancient Music, Lawrence Cummings
Barbican Hall, 19 June 2026

Perhaps one day somebody will compose an opera about a magalomaniac world leader wreaking havoc on the state of Persia (aka Iran), while constructing vast self-promotional construction projects at home. If so, that might trump the storyline of Handel’s Serse, an opera based on the antics of Xerxes I, the successor of Darius the Great of the Achaemenid Empire, first performed in London in April 1738. Xerxes was depicted in Aeschylus’ play The Persians, first performed in 472 BCE, shortly after Xerxes ill-fated invasion of Greece. The play presents him as an effeminate figure whose “hubristic effort to bring both Asia and Europe under his control leads to the ruin of both himself and his kingdom”. Later commentators describe him as “a power-crazed despot, inept, ridiculous, self-serving, self-loving, narcissistic ruler of the free world, with claims to be a god-king”.

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Mozart Requiem: The Portuguese Historical Score

~ Andrew Benson-Wilson

Mozart Requiem: The Portuguese Historical Score
Americantiga Ensemble, Ricardo Bernardes
Americantiga AAE2601. 45′

As the 2020 Covid lockdowns started, I reviewed a livestreamed concert from Portugal that a cellist friend of mine was playing in. You can read that review here, That concert, given by the Americantiga Ensemble under the local Covid restrictions of the time (which allowed a maximum of 10 people and no audience), included the première of an anonymous early 19th-century version of Mozart’s Requiem based on a manuscript found in the Cathedral of Évora. That included the vocal text of Mozart’s original, but required just four singers and a completely different chamber-style accompaniment based on basso continuo instruments (cello, two bassoons, double bass, and organ) – the cello part (played by Pedro Massarrão) is particularly prominent. They have now realised a world premiere recording of that Requiem, as part of the 30th anniversary of the Americantiga Ensemble.

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Vivanco – Missa pro defunctis

~ Andrew Benson-Wilson

Sebastián de Vivanco – Missa pro defunctis, Motets
The Renaissance Singers, David Allinson
Toccata Classics, TOCC0770. 66’01


Sebastián de Vivanco’s Missa pro defunctis, a setting of the Office for the Dead, was not published and survives only in two incomplete and differing manuscript versions found in two Spanish cities many decades after Vivanco’s death in 1622. These have now been reconstructed in a critical edition by Jorge Martín. The Renaissance Singers, directed by David Allinson, are the first choir to record this magnificent work, alongside related motets by Vicanco and Cristóbal de Morales, Bernardino de Ribera, Juan Gutiérrez de Padilla, and Melchor Robledo. They formally launch the CD on March 28th 2026, during the Masters of Ávila: Vivanco, Victoria, Ribera concert in St Mary’s, Bourne Street, London. Shortly after that concert, the Renaissance Singers will sing in Ávila Cathedral, where Vivanco had his musical training and where one of the two manscripts survive. They will perform the Missa pro defunctis along with music by Tomás Luis de Victoria, Vivanco’s near-contemporary, and music by Bernardino de Ribera, the teacher of both composers when they were choirboys at Ávila Cathedral.

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Krebs: Keyboard Works Volume 6

~ Andrew Benson-Wilson

Johann Ludwig Krebs (1713-1780)
Keyboard Works, Volume 6
Steven Devine, harpsichord
Resonus Classics RES10376 (70’50)


Sechs Preambulis (Vier Pieces, Part 1, 1740)
Suite No. 5 in F Major, (Clavier-Übung, Part IV, 1746) Krebs-WV 811
Suite in A Minor ‘nach dem heutigen Gusto’ (Vier Pieces, Part 2, 1741) Krebs-WV 819

The twice-extended series of recordings of the complete harpsichord works of Johann Ludwig Krebs (Bach’s ‘favourite pupil’) has reached what now seems to be its conclusion with the release of the sixth and (we are, perhaps rashly, promised) the final volume. This disc focuses on the first two parts of the Krebs collection ‘Vier Pieces’, dating from 1740/41. Krebs had left the Leipzig Bach circle in 1737 to become organist at the Marienkirche in Zwickau. The organ was in poor condition, and Krebs’ efforts to commission a new Silbermann failed. He stayed until 1744 by which time he had married and had his first child. He also wrote a lot of music during that time, including the Vier Pieces.

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Solomon’s Knot: George Jeffreys

~ Andrew Benson-Wilson

Solomon’s Knot
George Jeffreys & the Birth of the English Baroque
Jonathan Sells, William Whitehead, Federay Holmes
Wigmore Hall, 24 February 2026

George Jeffreys: Lost Majesty – Sacred Songs & Anthems
Prospero Classical. PROSP0086. 2CDs, 46’53 & 39’08

George Jeffreys (c1610-1685) was, in 1643, very briefly organist to Charles I during his time at Oxford during England’s Civil War, presumably based in Christ Church where Charles was living. That, as far as the public record of this mysterious composer is concerned, would seem to be the pinnacle of his musical career. Other records of his life only refer to his time as steward to the Hattons of Kirby, with responsibility for running the Kirby Hall estate while Christopher Hatton (Lord Hatton) was busy acting as comptroller of the royal household to Charles I before moving to France during the Commonwealth and, after the Restoration, becoming a rather unsuccesfull governor of Guernsey, as was his son, Viscount Hatton. In the meantime, George Jeffreys combined his estate management duties at Kirby with absorbing and copying what was then the largest collection of Italian music in the country, helpfully housed in Hatton’s library at Kirby.

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The Mozartists:Mozart Birthday Concert

~ Andrew Benson-Wilson

Mozart Birthday Concert
The Mozartists, Ian Page
Zheng Jiang, Alexander Semple
Cadogan Hall. 27 Januarys 2026


Mozart: Entr’acte from Incidental Music to Thamos, König in Ägypten, K.345
Mozart Concert Aria, “Ombra felice… Io ti lascio”, K.255
Haydn: Symphony No. 69 in C major, ‘Laudon’
Mozart: Two Entr’actes from Incidental Music to Thamos, König in Ägypten, K.345
Haydn: Three arias from Die Feuersbrunst
Mozart: Symphony from Serenade in D major, K.250, ‘Haffner’

The Mozartists‘ continued their ambitious MOZART 250 project, now entering its 12th year, with a 270th birthday concert featuring music composed during 1776. On his 20th birthday, Mozart was in Salzburg, as he would be for the whole of 1776, for the first time since he was five. By his standards, it was to prove a relatively quiet year, although it is worth remembering that he had by then already composed more than thirty symphonies, around half of his operas and all of his violin concertos! It does seem as though 1776 represented a valuable stage in his artistic development, with one writer commenting (in reference to the Haffner serenade that concluded this concert), “1776 sees the full blossoming of his rarest gifts of music and poetry.”

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Bach: Christmas Oratorio

~ Andrew Benson-Wilson

Bach Christmas Oratorio
The Hanover Band and Chorus, Andrew Arthur
Philippa Hyde, Tim Morgan, Bradley Smith, Edward Grint
Kings Place, 22 December 2025

Bach’s Christmas Oratorio (Weihnachtsoratorium, BWV 248) is a collection of six cantatas performed in Leipzig on six separate occasions over the 1734 Christmas period. Each cantata was performed twice, in the Thomaskirche and the Nikolaikirche. They were performed on December 25th, 26th, and 27th, New Year’s Day, the first Sunday in the New Year, and finally Epiphany (6 January), covering the complete Lutheran Christmas season. Despite the separate nature of the performance schedule, it seems clear from the autograph title page that Bach saw the six cantatas as a unified whole. There is a logical sequence of keys, moving from D major, G, D, F, A and back to D, and the first and last cantatas are connected by Bach reuse of the chorale melody of Part I’s Wie soll ich dich empfangen for the last chorus of Part VI, Nun seid ihr wohl gerochen. That choral melody is the same as the Passion Choral in the St Matthew Passion. The different instrumentation would have made it difficult for Bach to have performed them all as a continuous whole, as is usually done nowadays in concert performances. On this occasion, as is usually the case, the 4th cantata, for New Year’s Day (the circumcision and naming of Jesus), was omitted.

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Claire M Singer: Gleann Ciùin

~ Andrew Benson-Wilson

Gleann Ciùin
Claire M Singer, LCO
Queen Elizabeth Hall, 7 December 2025

Solas; Ode to Saor;
56.9500° N, 3.2667° W; Maps; 57.0908° N, 3.6939° W;
Forrig; Gleann Ciùin.

Claire M Singer is a Scottish composer, cellist and performer of acoustic and electronic music who “draws inspiration from the dramatic landscape of her native Scotland, exploring rich harmonic textures and complex overtones that create ever-shifting melodic and rhythmic patterns disappearing almost as soon as they emerge”. Although she had previously composed some pieces for organists, her own introduction to the organ world came in her imaginative appointment in 2012 as music director at the Union Chapel, an enormous Congregational church and events venue in Islington, and home to a famous 1877 ‘Father’ Willis organ. She has since managed a major restoration of the organ and an impressive series of organ-related events, not least curating the annual Organ Reframed festival, focused on encouraging experimental music based on the organ. This event at the Queen Elizabeth Hall featured music from three of her five CDs (Solas, Saor and Gleann Ciùin), played on the Queen Elizabeth Hall organ with added electronics and orchestrations played by members of the London Contemporary Orchestra.

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Ricordanze: a record of Love

~ Andrew Benson-Wilson

Ricordanze: a record of Love
Music of the Biffoli-Sostegni manuscript
Musica Secreta, Laurie Stras
Lucky Music Ltd. LCKY005. 2CDs 50’28 + 51’20

This recording from Musica Secreta is the result of serious musicological research combined with a labour of love – a fulfilling combination. Ricordanze: a record of Love is an audible culmination of a decade or more of research by Musica Secreta’s director, Laurie Stras (Emeritus Professor of Music at the University of Southampton), into the Biffoli-Sostegni manuscript (Bibliothèque du Conservatoire royal de Bruxelles, MS 27766). It dates from 1560, and is the only surviving manuscript of polyphony from a sixteenth-century convent. The title comes from the names of two nuns embossed on its binding. It belonged to San Matteo in Arcetri, a small convent community in the hills just south of Florence. It was where Suor Maria Celeste Galilei, the eldest daughter of Galileo Galilei, spent her life. Through the “haunting and extraordinary music of sixteenth-century nuns who sang their community through siege, plague, and deprivation”, the recording narrates the convent’s history, from the 1530 Siege of Florence to the final letters written by Suor Maria Celeste Galilei (a later convent choirmistress) to her father in 1634. The San Matteo is depicted in the left foreground (the red building) in Vasari’s painting of the 1530 Siege of Florence.

Vasari: Siege of Florence.

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I Fagiolini: Monteverdi Vespers

~ Andrew Benson-Wilson

Monteverdi Vespers of 1610
I Fagiolini, English Cornett & Sackbut Ensemble
Robert Hollingworth
St Martin in the Fields, 26 September 2025

The Monteverdi Vespers of 1610 is one of those enigmatic pieces with a complicated back story and fascinating performance quandaries, not unlike the Bach B minor Mass. Under the title of Vespers for the Blessed Virgin, it is part of a larger publication, Mass for the Most Holy Virgin for six voices, and Vespers for several voices with some sacred songs, suitable for chapels and ducal chambers. It combines music for a Mass and the Vespers together with “a few sacred songs” and a largely instrumental Sonata. It does not fit into either a traditional Mass or Vespers ritual. At the time, Monteverdi was maestro di capella to the Gonzaga Dukes of Mantua, but the score was personally dedicated and presented to the Borghese Pope Paul V in Rome, suggesting that it was a not-so-subtle calling card for preferment, representing as it does the wide scope of his compositional powers. Despite that, within three years, he was appointed maestro di capella at St Mark’s in Venice. It is unlikely that it was ever heard the Vespers in the form that we know it today. Indeed, it might never have been intended to be heard in that form.

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Fugue State Films & RCO Cinema: Bach – The Great Toccata

~ Andrew Benson-Wilson

The Great Toccata
Daniel Moult
Fugue State Films & RCO Cinema

I have reviewed several of the excellent films produced by Will Fraser’s award-winning Fugue State Films (see here). Their latest offering heralds a new and welcome collaboration with the Royal College of Organists in a new RCO initiative, RCO Cinema, which aims to bring “high-quality films about the organ and its music available to the widest possible audience around the world” Fugue State films on RCO Cinema will be available to watch, free, for around six to eight weeks. Future films will include pairs of films on the organ music of Olivier Messiaen and César Franck, giants of the 20th and 19th centuries. In the meantime, the first film to be offered on RCO Cinema is Fugue State Films’ The Great Toccata, featuring the distinguished English organist and teacher, Daniel Moult, Head of Organ Studies at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire and an RCO Trustee. The film can be viewed on RCO Cinema here until the end of August 2025. If you are too late reading this to view it on RCO Cinema, streaming and box-set purchase and options are available here.

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AAM: Beethoven’s 5th

~ Andrew Benson-Wilson

Beethoven’s 5th
Academy of Ancient Music
Laurence Cummings, David Blackadder, trumpet
Academy of Ancient Music
Barbican Hall. 27 June 2025


Maria Theresia Ahlefeldt: Telemachus on Calypso’s Isle
Haydn: Trumpet Concerto
Beethoven: Symphony No. 5

In what was billed as “struggles, seduction and sparkling wit”, Laurence Cummings and the Academy of Ancient Music (AAM) gave another of their enterprising concerts, this time in the Barbican Hall. They opened with music from Maria Theresia Ahlefeldt, a composer little known today whose nationality seems to confuse many people. She was born in 1755 in Regensburg (then the permanent seat of the Imperial Diet of the Holy Roman Empire) as Princess Maria Theresia of Thurn and Taxis, the princely house that, since 1812, has had its seat in Regensburg’s Schloss Thurn und Taxis. After an ‘interesting’ early life of royal culture, privilege and intrigue, she eventually married a Danish Count against the wishes of her family (a criminal offence at the time for a royal), leading to her flight to Ansbach, part of the Brandenburg domains. In 1792, her husband later became director of the Royal Danish Theatre, where the ballet-opera Telemachus on Calypso’s Isle was first performed later the same year.

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Bach: The Art of Fugue

~ Andrew Benson-Wilson

Bach: The Art of Fugue
on Bach’s Original Instruments
Collegium Musicum ’23
OUTHERE/RAMEE RAM2406. 82’41


Bach left many unanswered questions with his monumental Art of Fugue, one of which was which instruments they were intended to be played on – if, indeed, they were intended to be played at all. It was presented in open score, with a separate line for each line of music. This was common practice for many decades for music intended for scholarly or didactic purposes, particularly for organists. Samual Scheidt, for example, used the same format in his 1624 Tabulatura Nova, asking organists to copy the music into their own preferred format for performance. The instruments chosen for this interpretation by Collegium Musicum ’23 are very special: two 1729 violins and a viola by Johann Christian Hoffmann from the Leipzig Thomaskirche’s own collection of instruments of Bach’s time. The anonymous cello is from 18th-century Central Germany from the same collection. They are all usually displayed behind glass in the side room of the church.

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OAE: Elgar

~ Andrew Benson-Wilson

Elgar
Orchestra of the Age of the Enlightenment
Dinis Sousa, Frances Gregory
The Anvil, Basingstoke. 6 June 2025

In the South (Alassio)
Sea Pictures
Enigma Variations

The Orchestra of the Age of the Enlightenment has long since expanded their musical interests well beyond the bounds of the historical (18th-century Age of Enlightenment, not least into the music of the last 150 years or so, on this occasion focusing on the music of Edward Elgar from the years around 1900. Their conductor, the Portuguese Dinis Sousa, was making his debut with the orchestra. This must be a terrifying experience for any conductor, given the extraordinary musical knowledge of the OAE musicians and their willingness, in true Enlightenment manner, to question percived musical wisdom. It was also possibly his debut conducting an all-Elgar concert. Both experiences proved to be memorable for him; his rapport with the OAE players was obvious, as was his refreshing take on Elgar, notably his most famous piece, the Enigma Variations.

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The Edward Lewis viol of 1703

~ Andrew Benson-Wilson

The Edward Lewis viol of 1703
Henrik Persson
Barn Cottage Recordings BCR028. 72’44

Hely Suite in A minor; Suite in A major
Brown Three Ayres
Telemann Fantasia no. 6 in G major; Fantasia no. 7 in G minor
Sumarte Prelude and Daphne, Monsieur’s Almain, Lachryme; Fortune my Foe
Anon Dances from the Williamsburg Musick Song Book
Anon Suite in D major from the Brünner MS
Hume Good Againe

A companion recording to Newe Vialles Old Viols, reviewed here, focuses on the 1703 Edward Lewis bass viol, played by Henrick Persson. The music is by Benjamin Hely, Thomas Brown, Telemann, Richard Sumarte and Tobias Hume, together with dances from the Williamsburg Musick Song Book of 1738 (the only known compositions for viola da gamba from an 18th-century American source) and traces the development of solo viol music from Hume up to the time of Telemann. There are 14 bass viols by Edward Lewis known to have survived to the present day, of which only seven are in performance condition. The one used on this recording is the only playable one in the UK, owned by the viol maker, Jane Julier, who loaned the instrument. The sound is absolutely gorgeous, with rich and resonant harmonics, here helped by a generous acoustic.

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Newe Vialles Old Viols

~ Andrew Benson-Wilson

Newe Vialles Old Viols
Newe Vialles
Barn Cottage Recordings BCR027. 65’26

Benjamin Hely (d.1699): Sonatas in G minor and B flat major
Christopher Simpson (c.1604-1669): Divisions in C major and F major
John Jenkins (1592-1678): Dances and Divisions in G minor
William Young (d.1662): Duos for two bass viols
Daniel Norcombe (c.1576-1655): Tregian’s Ground
Nicola Matteis (c.1650-after 1714): Pieces for guitar and continuo
and arrangements of tunes from Playford and Sumarte

The possibly confusing title of this recording needs some explanation. As I understand it, Newe Vialles is the group’s name and Old Viols the title of the recording. Newe Vialles was founded in 2015 by Henrik Persson and Caroline Ritchie, the name coming from the “Newe Vialles” of Henry VIII’s court which replaced the “old vialles” (rebecs or fiddles), starting a long tradition of English viol-playing. My previous reviews of Newe Vialles can be found here. For this recording, they are in their consort format, with Henrik Persson and Caroline Ritchie joined by Lynda Sayce (theobo and lute) and James Akers (baroque guitar). Their programme is music for two division viols, played on two original English viols by John Pitts (1675) and Edward Lewis (1703). The concept for the recording is stated as … “If the original owners of these viols had met, what music might they have played? The programme encompasses repertoire from the latest sonatas by Benjamin Hely (who himself owned a viol by Pitts) to divisions by Christopher Simpson and John Jenkins, duos by William Young, and arrangements of popular tunes and grounds from the time. An imaginary glimpse into a private music meeting in the early years of the 18th century.”

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Lyrebird Music appeal

~ Andrew Benson-Wilson

Readers will know of the excellent Lyrebird Music editions of early keyboard music, many of which I have reviewed positively on this site. This small publisher is now under a legal threat which could affect its future. Please read the story and donate to help preserve this important early keyboard music publisher.

https://www.gofundme.com/f/lyrebird-music-please-help-save-this-music-publisher?fbclid=IwY2xjawHPqrNleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHTCPyq3ZuAK4i040pFHhZ7G3fqoBWgiEM47n1GbRAXmrmYSbrCWYdguewQ_aem_PcUPgCtOLN7B5lDRbx_bFg

Matthias Weckmann: Complete Organ Works

~ Andrew Benson-Wilson

Matthias Weckmann: Complete Organ Works
Léon Berben
1637 Stellwagen organ, St. Jakobi, Lübeck
1624 Hans Scherer organ, St. Stephanus, Tangermünde
Aeolus. AE-11431. 2CDs 72’27+78’29


Matthias Weckmann (c1616-1674) is one of the most interesting and influential of the North German pre-Buxtehude organist composers. Unlike most of the other organists in Hamburg, he was not a pupil of Sweelinck but was clearly influenced by those who were, not least his teacher for three years, Jacob Praetorius, organist of the Hamburg Petrikirche and Heinrich Scheidemann organist of the Catharinenkirche. His own organ playing was said to have combined elements of the style of both Praetorius and Scheidemann. His earlier musical training had been in Dresden when he was a chorister at the Saxon Court under the court composer Heinrich Schütz, a pupil of Giovanni Gabrieli. After his Hamburg years and a short period with Schütz in Denmark, he became the Electoral Court Organist in Dresden where he met and befriended the much-travelled Froberger, a pupil of Frescobaldi. The pair engaged in a famous keyboard competition arranged by the Saxon Elector. In 1655 he returned to Hamburg as organist of the Jakobkirche after a well-documented audition, records of which gave valuable information about the expectations of a Hamburg organist and practical information about, for example, registration practice at the time. He founded the Hamburg Collegium Musicum.

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Krebs: Keyboard Works Volume 3 & 4

~ Andrew Benson-Wilson

Johann Ludwig Krebs (1713 – 1780)
Keyboard Works Volume 3 & 4
Steven Devine, harpsichord
Resonus Classics RES10329 (77’30) & RES10344 (63’50)


Steven Devine continues his crustation-inspired (Krebs = crayfish or crab) series of recordings of Krebs’ keyboard works with Volumes 3 and 4. They follow the two earlier recordings reviewed here (Volume 1) and here (Volume 2). I understand there will now be two further CDs after the originally planned series of four, an essential and welcome addition needed to cover Krebs’ known harpsichord works. I should repeat the warning I gave in earlier reviews of this series that it only represents a part of Krebs’ keyboard music. The programme note essay gives the far more accurate ’Works for Harpsichord’ title. The works for organ fill another 7 full-sized CDs. Many of Krebs’ organ compositions show a direct Bach influence, often to a specific piece that Krebs then expands, often to enormous length and complexity. That is far less apparent in the harpsichord works on this recording, although the Bach-inspired moments are fairly easy to spot.

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National Early Music Association

~ Andrew Benson-Wilson

National Early Music Association UK
Move to a subscription-free and open access model

The National Early Music Association UK (NEMA) was founded in 1981 as a coordinating body for the various strands of early musical activity in the UK and to promote the appreciation and performance of early music by amateurs and professionals. It is a Registered Charity (No. 297300). NEMA works alongside regional Early Music Fora (who run practical workshops and courses), and other early music organisations in the UK and worldwide. Over the years, it has produced numerous publications and organises regular academic conferences and other events. The current publications are Early Music Performance and Research and the NEMA Newsletter, both published twice yearly.

After more than forty years as a subscription-based membership organization, NEMA has now moved to a subscription-free and open-access model. Membership is now open to all, international as well as UK, with no subscription fee. A website has been set up at https://nema3.webnode.co.uk/ pending the redesign and relaunch of the main website. The most recent issues of the current two journals and newsletters are downloadable from the website, as is an 80-page index to all the past publications. The NEMA website will eventually include the complete back catalogue of publications going back 35 years, a record of previous conferences and events, together with links and other useful information.

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Ymaginacions

~ Andrew Benson-Wilson

Ymaginacions
Ludford: Mass Upon John Dunstable’s Square
La Quintana, Jérémie Couleau
Paraty 1123291. 61’15


Following on from their Heavenly Songes recording, reviewed here, the four strong enseble La Quintana returns to Nicholas Ludford for another of his mass settings, the Missa Feria II based, as the title reveals, on “John Dunstable’s Square”. The Square is a complex bit of Renaissance musicology that is helpfully explained in the CD notes. The recording is based on music that might have been heard in the medieval Royal Chapel of St Stephen’s, the undercroft of which still exists in the bowels of the Houses of Parliament in Westminster.

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Royal Festival Hall: Organ at 70

~ Andrew Benson-Wilson

Organ at 70
Ourania Gassiou & Eleni Keventsidou
Royal Festival Hall, 28 June 2024


Bach: Allegro from Brandenburg Concerto 2. arr. Reger for keyboard (4 hands)
Franck: Choral No.2 in B minor
Cochereau: Scherzo symphonique (from 12 Pieces)
Liszt: Funérailles from Harmonies poétiques et religieuses, S.173 arr. Nicolas Kynaston for organ
Reger: Rhapsodie in C sharp minor, Op.65 No.1; Toccata in E minor, Op.65 No.11
Leighton: Martyrs – dialogues on a Scottish psalm tune for organ duet, Op.73

As a continuation of the Royal Festival Hall’s “Organ at 70” celebrations of the influential concert hall organ (see an earlier event review here, and an organ history here), the two Greek organists Ourania Gassiou & Eleni Keventsidou, described in the publicity as the “Greek goddesses of the organ world”, presented an unusual concert of music that included pieces composed or arranged for two players. Each player had solo moments, with Ourania Gassiou pairing Franck’s second Choral with Cochereau’s ebullient Scherzo symphonique and Eleni Keventsidou contrasting Liszt’s elegiac Funérailles with two of Reger’s most dramatic and virtuosic works from his Op.65. They concluded with a performance of Kenneth Leighton’s 1976 duet, Martyrs.

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Georg Muffat: Missa in Labore Requies a 24

~ Andrew Benson-Wilson

Georg Muffat: Missa in Labore Requies a 24
Le Banquet Céleste, La Guilde des Mercenaires, Damien Guillon
Château de Versailles Spectacles CVS106. 58’53


If you like your music loud and dramatic, with moments of calm, you will love this recording by Le Banquet Céleste and La Guilde des Mercenaires of Georg Muffat’s c1690 Missa in Labore Requies a 24. Muffat (1653-1704) is one of the most interesting composers of the high Baroque period, not least because of his ability to combine musical genres from many different countries. Born in Savoy, he studied during his early teens with Lully in Paris. After a period as organist at Strasbourg Cathedral, he studied law in Ingolstadt, before moving to Vienna, Prague and then Salzburg, where he worked for about 10 years (with Biber) in the court of the Prince-Archbishop. After further study in Rome, where he studied organ with Pasquini and met Corelli. he moved to Passau as Kapellmeister to the Bishosh of Passau. It was in Passau that we find the first mention of the monumental Missa in Labore Requies, Muffat’s only surviving sacred work. The score came into Haydn’s hands, passing on his death into the Esterházy archives and finally to the Budapest National Library.

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Weelkes: What Joy so True

~ Andrew Benson-Wilson

Weelkes: What Joy so True
Anthems, Canticles and Consort music by Thomas Weelkes
The Choir of Chichester Cathedral, The Rose Consort of Viols, John Bryan, Charles Harrison
Regent Records. REGCD571. 77’12


The 400th anniversaries in 2023 of the death of Thomas Weelkes (1576-1623) and William Byrd (c1540-1623) threw into sharp focus the contrast between the fates and subsequent reputations of these two English composers. Not surprisingly, Byrd had the well-deserved lion’s share of the attention during their 2023 anniversary year. This enterprising recording gave a chance for Weelkes to have his say. It comes from Chichester Cathedral, where he was Organist and Master of the Choristers (informator choristarum) from his mid-20s, following four years as organist of Winchester College, where most of his madrigals seem to have been composed. He just about managed to retain the Chichester post until his death, despite frequent accusations of drunkenness and for being a “notorious swearer & blasphemer” which led to occasional periods of expulsion.

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Bojan Čičić. Bach: Partitas & Sonatas

~ Andrew Benson-Wilson

Bach: Partitas & Sonatas
Bojan Čičić, violin
Delphian DCD34300. 78’46+67’14, 2CDs


Many of Bojan Čičić‘s recordings have focussed on lesser-known composers, their music brought to life with inspiring performances. He now turns his attention to Bach with this recording of the Partitas & Sonatas (Sei solo à violin senza basso accompagnato), BWV 1001-1006. Unusually, the Partitas are on the first CD with the Sonatas on the second, rather than in the order that Bach seems to have intended with the two genres alternating. This allows us to concentrate on how Bach deals with the sequences of dance movements in the Partitas and the more formal Corelli-inspired four-movement structure of the Sonatas.

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Byrd 1589: Songs of sundrie natures

~ Andrew Benson-Wilson

Byrd 1589: Songs of sundrie natures
Alamire, Fretwork, David Skinner
Inventa INV1011. 2 CDs. 53’18+69’19=122’37


Following their 2021 recording of Byrd’s first song collection, the 1588 Psalmes, Sonets & Songs of sadnes and pietie (reviewed here), Alamire and Fretwork turn to what Byrd described as the result of his being “encouraged thereby, to take further paines therein, and to make the pertaker thereof, because I would shew my selfe gratefull to thee for thy loue, and desirous to delight thee with varietie, whereof (in my opinion) no Science is more plentifully adorned then Musicke“. The ensuing 1589 collection “Songs of sundrie natures” was intended “to serue for all companies and voyces: whereof some are easie and plaine to sing, [while] other more hard and dificult“. It is divided into songs of 3, 4, 5 and 6 parts and offers a wide choice of music for a wide range of musical abilities – a sensible financial arrangement, no doubt.

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Irlandiani: Smock Alley

~ Andrew Benson-Wilson

Irlandiani: Smock Alley
CD launch concert: Sands Music Room, Rotherhithe, Thursday 14 September 2023
Carina Drury & Poppy Walshaw, cellos, John-Henry Baker, violone, percussion
CD: First Hand Records, FHR144
plus Nathaniel Mander, harpsichord, Eimear McGeown, Irish flute


Following her earlier CD, Irlandiani (reviewed here) comes this latest recording from cellist Carina Drury and her collective group, also called Irlandiani. It is based on the musical life in and around the Smock Alley Theatre in 18th century Dublin. It features cello duos in the Galant style by the Neapolitan composer Tomasso Giordani who moved to Dublin in 1763 as musical director at the Smock Alley Theatre. As well as arrangements of 18th-century Irish melodies by musicians linked with the Smock Alley Theatre and its surrounds, the launch concert and recording also features music by Roseingrave, Scarlatti and Geminiani and a new piece by Carina Drury based on the Irish air Caoineadh Na Dtri Muire. If you are quick and live close enough, you can even catch the third of the laun

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Handel’s Attick: Music For Solo Clavichord

~ Andrew Benson-Wilson

Handel’s Attick: Music for Solo Clavichord
Julian Perkins, clavichords
Music by Arne, Ebner, Froberger, Handel, Kerll, D Scarlatti, Weckmann and Zachow
Deux-Elles DXL 1191. 75’33


This excellent recording from Julian Perkins is based on a story from Handel’s childhood, as told by John Mainwaring in his 1760 Memoirs of the Life of Handel. His father, suspicious of his musical interests, tried to stop him from playing any musical instruments at home. This led to Handel smuggling a tiny clavichord into the attic of their house so that he could practice at night, having “found means to get a little clavichord privately convey’d to a room at the top of the house“.

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Bach: Harpsichord Concertos

~ Andrew Benson-Wilson

J S Bach: Harpsichord Concertos
BWV 1052, 1054, 1055 & 1059
Steven Devine, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment
Resonus RES 10318. 63’30

This very welcome addition to the world of Bach recordings features three well-known harpsichord concertos plus what is, in effect, an entirely new concerto. Steven Devine’s programme essay sets out the often complicated history of the music played. The manuscript of these concertos is in Bach’s own hand. It contains seven concertos and nine bars of a D minor concerto, BWV 1059. There is strong evidence that only the first six concertos were intended as a set, with Bach’s traditional sign-off (Finis. S. D. Gl.) appearing at the end of the sixth concerto. The following BWV 1058 seems to have been an unsuccessful attempt at converting a violin concerto into a harpsichord concerto. The few bars of a D minor concerto (given the BWV number of 1059 despite its brevity) are of particular interest in this recording.

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