EMA Recording & Book Reviews

While very fast tempi have become fashionable in recent years for some Baroque performers, Jory Vinikour isn’t part of that crowd. His pacing doesn’t lack energy or point, but above all he lets the music breathe.

In the second edition of Robert Green’s book, the author has set out to share “new insights” and information about the hurdy-gurdy and its music to bring what has been considered an obscure instrument into the realm of practical historical performance, as well as to underscore its value in the contemporary world of folk music and jazz.

Scottish guitarist James Akers and British pianist Gary Branch present an inviting program of music that might have been heard in Viennese salons in the first half of the 19th century.

Stanley Ritchie’s new volume, perhaps best described as a memoir of his lifelong engagement as both performer and pedagogue with these core works, offers his preferences for fingerings, bowings, dynamics, articulations, tempos, and much more.

It took an enlightened Pope Francis to give the go-ahead for Deutsche Grammophon to make the first recordings in the Sistine Chapel with what is the Pope’s choir.

The ensemble's latest release, "Mi Palpita il Cor: Baroque Passions," with soprano Dominique Labelle, gives us three cantatas set off by two instrumental interludes. The program celebrates the European Union spirit of those times (not necessarily ours) when composers traveled widely and borrowed freely from the various national styles.

The American Bach Society, which sponsored "Exploring the World of Bach: A Traveler’s Guide," could not have chosen a better authorial team: Robert Marshall, whose numerous writings about Bach are infused with a rare passion, clarity, and eloquence, and Traute Marshall, a highly accomplished editor, writer, and translator.

This rich package is the latest in a series from Jordi Savall and Alia Vox that has focused on the Borgia dynasty, the Balkans, Christopher Columbus, Don Quixote, war and peace, and other subjects.

These Handel and Haydn Society live concert performances of three key Haydn works from Symphony Hall in Boston in January 2015 are so comprehensively thought out, expertly put together, and commandingly played, it's as if the Boston Symphony had been reborn playing on 18th-century instruments and modern copies.

Listening to Bruce Dickey play the cornetto, one could be forgiven for wondering how the instrument ever went out of fashion. His artistry is in full flight on his newest recording, "Breathtaking," the culmination of a project to celebrate the affinity of the cornetto with the human voice based on tonal quality and articulation.