Resonus Classics | Andrew Benson-Wilson : Early Music Reviews +

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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See, See, the Word is incarnate
Choral & Instrumental music by Gibbons, Tomkins & Weelkes
The Chapel Choir of Trinity Hall, Cambridge,
Newe Vialles, Orpheus Britannicus Vocal Consort, Andrew Arthur
Resonus Classics RES10295. 70’51

The Chapel Choir of Trinity Hall, Cambridge, under the College’s Director of Music, Andrew Arthur, follow their previous recording of Buxtehude (reviewed here) with this exploration of some of the best-known music from the early decades of the 17th-century. This was the period when James I was on the throne of the two kingdoms of Scotland and England. Gibbons and Weelkes were both dead by the end of his reign (in 1625), but Tomkins (the first-born of the three) lived on until 1656 to witness, at considerable personal loss, the collapse of the Stuart dynasty and the Commonwealth.

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