Collegium Musicum 90

“CM90, as usual, are gently bright and stylish. The orchestral sound is not the full-bodied one of continental Telemann-frequenters such as the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra or the Akademie fur Alte Musik Berlin but is blessed with an airy, sunny clarity of its own, joined to alert and agile ensemble playing, especially from the strings.” Gramophone Magazine, July 2012

“With performances and recordings which seem unimpeachable, this ongoing Chandos project can only enhance the Telemann cause; this CD is well worth sampling even if you're unfamiliar with this music...Fine playing and recorded sound, with erudite booklet notes and visual presentation of the highest quality, impart further lustre to an already widely acclaimed series.” International Record Review, June 2012

“Late works by an elderly gent these may be, but they show a close affinity with the fashionable French style demanded by his patron, and Telemann’s typical refinement and liveliness is ever-present...Collegium Musicum 90’s performances are spirited and beautifully crafted.” MusicWeb International, June 2012

“Both versions of this evergreen vocal masterpiece are stylish and deeply felt. Common to both is the affecting singing of contralto Sara Mingardo; her 'Domine Deus Agnus Dei' is poignantly declaimed.” BBC Music Magazine, Christmas 2009 ****

“Rinaldo Alessandrini's 1997 recording of Vivaldi's most famous Gloria, RV589 (6/98) was wildly acclaimed in some quarters… This new performance… still sets off at a brisker pace than most but it is no longer wilfully madcap: the articulate playing of Concerto Italiano permits enough room for the details to emerge, and Alessandrini nowadays seems to have enough confidence in his musicians (and in Vivaldi) to let the muscular expression of rhythms function without impatient snapping at the musical fabric. Another notable improvement from 1997 in his plangent choir. "Laudamus te" crackles with energy... Concerto Italiano also delivers a zesty performance of Vivaldi's less famous Gloria setting (RV588). ...Mingardo is at her best in the heartfelt "Qui sedes", and Alessandrini's spirited direction is irresistible.” Gramophone Magazine, February 2010

“...the performance is an even and expressive one – it runs at a cracking pace, too – and worth listening to alone for solos by Sara Mingardo, whose rich yet light voice is perfect for this music...a performance that celebrates the rich drama and excitement of Vivaldi while maintaining a lightness of touch throughout.” Katie Greening, bbc.co.uk, 22nd October 2009

“This is period-instrument performance at its best” American Record Guide

“A mix of instrumental and vocal items adds particular attraction to Christmas Concertos and Cantatas. …Susan Gritton dispatches the wide intervals of her final aria with delectable nimbleness and athleticism.” BBC Music Magazine, December 2008 ****

“Few period bands have tackled this late, great work, and it comes up gleaming in the care of Collegium Musicum 90 under Richard Hickox's direction. Hickox's soloists are superb, too.” BBC Music Magazine, May 2008 ****

“Long the Cinderella work of Schubert's miraculous final year, the E flat Mass is now acknowledged as a powerful masterpiece that mingles liturgical grandeur with the composer's own subjective Romanticism. The apocalyptic Sanctus, with its daring harmonic shifts and heavenstorming crescendi, is a musical counterpart to Turner's molten canvases, while the Agnus Dei has a violent, contorted anguish unmatched in a setting of this text. The least personal, and most problematic, sections of the Mass are the monumental set-piece fugues at the end of the Gloria and Credo, where Schubert ostentatiously displays his contrapuntal credentials, probably with an eye on an official church appointment. At the worthy tempi prevalent 20 and more years ago, these could seem interminable, and were often cut.
Hickox chooses broad tempi, balancing dignity and vitality, and building thrillingly to the climaxes.
In the Kyrie, at a mobile tempo, he combines gravitas with a Schubertian lyrical ease, and later he manages the tempo fluctuations far more naturally. You hear how this heavenly music should sound, with the three soloists (Mark Padmore, James Gilchrist – an ideally matched tenor pairing – and soprano Susan Gritton) singing with pure tone and wondering tenderness.
Hickox scores over most rivals with his extra choral firepower at climaxes, and the wonderfully pungent sonorities of Collegium Musicum 90, whether in the dry, fearful rattle of period timpani in the Credo, the lovely 'woody' oboe and clarinet in the 'Et incarnatus est' or the steely, scything trumpets in the Agnus Dei.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010

“Turn to Hickox and you'll hear how this heavenly music should sound, with the three soloists (Mark Padmore, James Gilchrist - an ideally matched tenor pairing - and soprano Susan Gritton) singing with pure tone and wondering tenderness.” Gramophone Magazine, May 2008

“Richard Hickox directs his crack period forces in a strong, sympathetic performance, glowingly recorded. Among rival conductors, Nikolaus Harnoncourt (Elatus) uncovers more disquiet in, say, the Kyrie. But Hickox's pacing and shaping are always convincing, not least in the monumental - and potentially interminable - fugues of the Gloria and Credo. The chorus blaze with white-hot intensity in Schubert's many fff climaxes, while the soloists sing with tenderness and grace in the Benedictus and the ravishing "Et incarnatus est".” The Telegraph, 19th April 2008

‘This is another enlightening disc that Baroque enthusiasts will welcome.’ (Gramophone)

“Simon Standage and Catherine Weiss are well-matched in the double concertos, from hair-raising momentum to lovely slow-movement dialogue. In the solo concertos, Standage sometimes sacrifices impulsion to expressive gesture in fast movements but elsewhere he's dazzling, and he growls away on lower strings with tremendous energy in the final track on the disc.” BBC Music Magazine, May 2005 ****

“The performances are stylistically sensible and musically unfussy, with a bright airiness of tone aided by the deliberate (and authentic) omission of double basses from the string texture.” Gramophone Magazine, May 2006

“The second in Richard Hickox's Hummel Mass edition concentrates on works written soon after Hummel was appointed Konzertmeister to Prince Esterházy in 1804. Hummel was keen – the Mass was completed four months before the September deadline. In his booklet-note David Wyn Jones suggests the composer may have been trying to pre-empt his potential rival, Johann Fuchs, who was nominally in charge of church music for the prince. The result has a winning freshness. As in the first disc, Hickox captures the joy of Hummel's inspiration, with clean attack and fine diction from chorus and soloists.
That clarity extends to the superb setting of the Te Deum, written at high speed to celebrate peace with Napoleon in 1805. Each section of the elaborate text is strikingly characterised without holding up the urgency established in the opening fanfares. The graduale Quod quod inurbe is another fine, neglected work. The Blackheath Concert Hall recording is full and clear: this is shaping up to be an outstanding series.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010

“When the glories of Haydn's late Masses have been widely appreciated, it's sad that Hummel's have been so neglected.
They are for chorus and orchestra alone, without soloists, which may have deterred potential performers.
However, while they can't quite match late Haydn or Beethoven in originality, they're lively, beautifully written, and full of striking ideas, inspiring Hickox and his team to performances here just as electrifying as those they have given of Haydn, and just as vividly recorded.
Hummel follows Haydn in both Masses in his fondness for fugues. Similarly, he follows Haydn in offering joyfully energetic settings of 'Dona nobis pacem', only unlike Haydn he doesn't end either Mass on a fortissimo cadence, instead fading down the final phrases, maybe for liturgical reasons in the context of a church performance. Hummel, like Haydn and Beethoven before him, fully brings out the drama of the liturgy, though in both settings of 'Et resurrexit' he begins not with a sudden fortissimo but with a rising crescendo, as though a crowd of bystanders are gradually appreciating the wonder of it.
Another symbolic point is that the Mass in B flat, dating from 1810, the year before Hummel left the Esterházy court, includes a setting of the Credo with distinctive unison and octave passages for the chorus, as though to emphasise unity of belief. In both masses the settings of the Sanctus are surprisingly brief, even perfunctory, yet the musical ideas could not be more striking, with a gently flowing 6/8 setting in the D major work and a bold setting in the B flat Mass which crams into the shortest span surprisingly varied ideas.
Thanks to the imagination of Richard Hickox, we're finally able to discover the joys of Hummel's Masses. An extremely fine disc.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010

“Few other conductors on disc convey so happily the drama, symphonic power and spiritual exhilaration of these glorious works than Richard Hickox. He's fully alive to the ominous unease that permeates the great Mass in Time ofWar, but while others strive for maximum dramatic and rhetorical effect, he directs the Mass with a natural, unforced sense of phrase and pace. The playing of Collegium Musicum 90, led by Simon Standage, is polished and athletic, with detail sharply etched, while the chorus sings with fresh tone and incisive attack. The four soloists are well matched in the anxious C minor Benedictus; elsewhere Nancy Argenta brings a pure, slender tone, and a graceful sense of phrase to the Kyrie, while in the 'Qui tollis' Stephen Varcoe deploys his mellow baritone with real sensitivity.
The fill-ups are imaginatively chosen. The two Te Deum settings epitomise the immense distance Haydn travelled during his career, the rococo exuberance and strict species counterpoint of the little-known early work contrasting with the grandeur and massive, rough-hewn energy of the 1799 setting.
The two numbers of incidental music Haydn completed for the play King Alfred in 1796, shortly before embarking on the Mass, are a real collectors' item. Argenta sings the first hymnlike E flat aria with chaste elegance, while choir and orchestra palpably enjoy themselves in the following number, a rollicking, brassy celebration of the Danes' victory over the Anglo- Saxons. Invigorating performances and firstclass recorded sound, with an ideally judged balance between chorus and orchestra.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010