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5 Stars
On Good Friday at London’s St John’s Smith Square, Stephen Layton will conduct Polyphony and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment in Bach’s St John Passion. These Polyphony performances of the masterworks marking the church’s major festivals have become a key constituent of the concert calendar, but this is the first time that the choir has committed an extended Bach work to disc. It...
Conductor Stephen Layton, top soloists, the expert choir of Polyphony and the incomparable Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment perform the St John Passion annually at St John’s Smith Square. It’s always a sell-out. Bach revised the work several times. Layton has honed his preferred version, but only aficionados will notice or mind. Concentrate instead on the purity of sound, the emotionally...
I seem to spend a lot of time in these newsletters enthusing about new discoveries, revived rarities or fresh perspectives on well-known repertoire but today I’m going to evangelise (pun intended) about a very straightforward recording of a very familiar work. This new St John Passion from the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and Polyphony doesn’t use a new or unfamiliar version of the score...
A fascinating collection of choral works by composers from Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, centring on a Mass setting by setting by Latvian Uģis Prauliņš (b1957), Gabriel Jackson’s excellent insert-notes observe that Prauliņš’s intention was to compose a work in the spirit of the great Renaissance Masses and the Missa Rigensis certainly opens in the grand manner of such a festal Mass, though the...
Layton delves into Baltic melting pot
A regular visitor since the lifting of the iron curtain, Stephen Latyon is witnessing a rich stylistic ferment.
Baltic Exchange, the title of the latest Hyperion release from Stephen Layton and the Choir of Trinity College, Cambridge, is much more than a pun on the name of a historic maritime trading organisation.
For the conductor, it sums up the shift in...
Messiahs of all kinds multiply at this time of year: the meek and the threadbare as well as the proud and polished. On the Sunday before Christmas, it was hard to choose between two potential archangels who could hardly fail given their respective pedigrees. It may have initially come down to a choice between single star soloists, soprano of the year Sophie Bevan at the Wigmore or flawless...