This two-CD set, released to coincide with the 2001 Classical Brit Awards, features some of the year's biggest-selling classical artists: Bond, Charlotte Church, Vanessa Mae, Andrea Bocelli and Russell Watson to name but five. There is plenty of room for much else besides and the extracts from a huge variety of Brits nominees' albums make for a varied and generally pleasant listen. Bryn Terfel's ...
Phalanxes of woodwinds, organs, and voices pulse through Philip Glass's most famous opera like nothing so much as a migratory flock engaged in acrobatics overhead. There is no centre to the kinetic activity; the down beat might shift, in split-second hindsight, to the up beat, and the synthesiser might suddenly upstage the libretto of nonsense syllables. The exuberant cacophony of overlapping ...
Is it a two-CD set with a particularly thick booklet, or a 562-page book with a compilation album attached? Whichever, the unpretentious text by Keith Anderson offers a basic introduction to the lives and works of dozens of composers, together with recommended recordings from the Naxos and Marco Polo catalogues. Anderson also includes a useful 59-page glossary of musical terms and an extensive ...