Classics in the News
- Handel’s Sumptuous Organ Banquet February 2, 2026Since Handel wrote relatively little solo organ music, David Yearsley has decided to make amends by brilliantly and stylishly appropriating selections from the composer’s vocal and chamber output for the organ. The result is Handel’s Organ Banquet, a well-balanced and varied program that not only showcases the colorful Cornell Baroque Organ but also Yearsley’s brilliant […]
- Stupendous Handel From Franco Fagioli February 1, 2026I have finally figured out that like anchovies, you can’t convince people to like the countertenor voice if they don’t “get” it. Their infantile squeamishness no longer interests me; nor do their excuses–“it just doesn’t sound natural.” Birgit Nilsson sounds “natural”? Joan Sutherland sounds “natural”? Even the great tenors–Pavarotti, for example, singing an octave above […]
- Haydn and Mozart by Handel and Haydn February 1, 2026In his booklet note for this release. Harry Christophers spouts the usual nonsense about “stripping away the cobwebs” from this music using period instruments, blah, blah, blah, and frankly I couldn’t be more sick of it. The music has never needed “stripping,” to make is sound “anew,” and to equate “difference” with “newness” is just […]