Featured Discs -
When new discs are released we highlight them here
HAVPCD340
Commotio - Night
(14 Tracks/0 MP3s)
HAVPCD339
Richard Pantcheff
(31 Tracks/0 MP3s)
HAVPCD338
Organ Works by Buxtehude & Jackson
(11 Tracks/0 MP3s)
HAVPCD337
EDWARDIAN SPLENDOUR
(12 Tracks/0 MP3s)
HAVPCD334
Alive to God • Poems by John Bradburne
(33 Tracks/0 MP3s)
HAVPCD206
Songs of Church & Childhood
(16 Tracks/0 MP3s)
HAVPCD172
Chants for St Benedict
(40 Tracks/0 MP3s)
|
The Cambridge Taverner Choir -
The Cambridge Taverner Choir, founded in 1986, belongs to a new
generation of exciting young early music chamber choirs which, like
The Tallis Scholars and The Sixteen, have emerged from the Oxford
and Cambridge choral tradition.
As well as regular concert series and festival appearances in
Cambridge, the choir has performed in many parts of the U.K., and
undertaken highly successful tours of Portugal in 1991 and
Switzerland and Italy in 1996; it has also broadcast on Radio
3, and has been featured on Radio 4.
The choir has released three recordings; all have been acclaimed by the
critics, and Music from Renaissance Portugal was short-listed
for the Gramophone Early Music Award in 1994.
HAVP155 - Music From Renaissance Portugal.
The choir specialises in the performance of sacred polyphony in illuminating
thematic, liturgical and physical contexts, aiming to recreate the grandeur
and excitement of the European Renaissance, and especially the Tudor
age in England and the Iberian ‘Golden Age’. The choir also performs
baroque and contemporary works. The 1995/6 season celebrated the music
of John Taverner on the 450th anniversary of his death, and included a
prestigious commission from the contemporary composer, John Tavener, while
the 1996/7 season explored the music of five great European cities
at the turn of the seventeenth century.
The Cambridge Taverner Choir
Owen Rees -
Owen Rees is both scholar and performer; his work as a scholar has consistently
informed his work as a performer. Through his activities as director of the Cambridge
Taverner Choir and A Capella Portuguesa, for example, he has brought to the concert
hall and recording studio substantial repertories of magnificent and previously
unknown music from Renaissance Portugal and Spain - the fruits of his research
in such cities as Coimbra, Lisbon, Oporto, and Ávila.
His interpretations of these repertories have been acclaimed as ‘rare
examples of scholarship and musicianship combining to result in
performances that are both impressive and immediately attractive to
the listener’, and he has been described as ‘one of the most energetic
and persuasive voices’ in this field.
As well as his pioneering work in the music of Renaissance Portugal, Rees has
also specialised in the music of Renaissance England and Spain. Over the thirteen
years of its existence, he has directed the Cambridge Taverner Choir in a wide
survey of Renaissance music not only from these countries, but also from Italy,
Germany, and the Netherlands.
As director of the Cambridge Taverner Choir and other groups, he has performed
Renaissance, baroque, and contemporary choral music; he has conducted at
festivals in the UK, Portugal, Spain, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, France,
and the Netherlands; and he has broadcast on BBC Radio 3 and 4, and on
Portuguese and Spanish National Radio.
He has released CD recordings on the Herald, Hyperion, and Unicorn Kanchana
labels, to consistently high critical acclaim.
|
HAVP187 - What is our life? - Renaissance
Laments and Elegies
|
HAVP277 - Music from Renaissance
Portugal II
|
Owen Rees began his academic and conducting career as Organ Scholar at
St Catharine’s College, Cambridge, studying with Peter le Huray and Iain
Fenlon. After a spell as College Lecturer in Music at St Peter’s College
and St Edmund Hall, Oxford, he joined the Music Department at the University
of Surrey, where he was promoted to the post of Reader.
In 1997 he returned to Oxford, where he holds the posts of Fellow in Music
and Organistat the Queen’s College, Lecturer at Somerville College, and
Lecturer in the Faculty of Music. He directs the Chapel Choir at the
Queen’s College, and among his musical activities at Somerville College
he has directed a performance featuring Emma Kirkby.
His numerous published studies include work on the music of, for example,
William Byrd and Francisco Guerrero, and on musical sources and repertories
from Coimbra (Portugal) and Tarazona (Spain).
|
|