EMA Recording & Book Reviews

The goal of "A Critical Companion to Medieval Motets" is to define the motet genre as pluralistic and multifaceted in style, giving space to both French- and English-language motets.

American countertenor Bejun Mehta and the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin perform eight full-length cantatas and excerpts that depict pastoral love, deep piety, and bitter jealousy while also demonstrating the flexibility of this popular Baroque form.

Whether in reduced or expanded form, the texture of the vocal ensemble, The Gentlemen of HM Chapel Royal at Hampton Court Palace under the direction of London-born Carl Jackson, sounds ideal. Were the ghosts of earlier Chapel Royal musicians guiding the singers?

Daniel R. Melamed's book packs quite a wallop. In fewer than 150 pages, it provides enlightening insights along with provocative, even unsettling, commentary regarding two of the most celebrated — and challenging — compositions to issue from the pen of Johann Sebastian Bach.

Spanish violinist Lina Tur Bonet brings abundant flair to Vivaldi's demanding 'Il Grosso Mogul' concerto, as well as other works by the Italian composer and an excerpt from a concerto by his pupil Johann Georg Pisendel, edited by the master himself.

Yi-heng Yang and Kate Bennett Wadsworth are not the first modern musicians to record Brahms’ Cello Sonatas on period instruments — in this case an 1875 Streicher piano and a gut-strung cello played without endpin. But they are the first to do so while attempting to revive late 19th-century performance practice.

Joan Benson has had a formidable career as a recording artist, teacher, pedagogue, and published author. Now, at 93, her prolific performing career is once again visible to the masses through this collection: a two-CDd set of works culled from her live performances and studio albums spanning 40 years.

Rather than simply playing jazz on period instruments or Baroque interpretations of popular music, Les Délices' new recording, "Songs Without Words," is an inventive and warm performance of what Duke Ellington astutely called “good music.”

Alejandro Planchart’s monumental study of Du Fay is bound to have a long and fruitful reception, and stands as a testament to not one but two extraordinary sets of lives and works: its subject’s and its author’s.

Only four of the nine sonatas for violin and continuo on this recording by the Brook Street Band can be definitively attributed to the master through an extant autograph score. Authorship aside, all of these sonatas are at the very least charming, often clever, and always beautiful.