Monday, August 06, 2007

My Last Amazon.co.uk Purchase

This morning's post brought the new CD, Eternal Light, from the young Welsh soprano Elin Manahan Thomas, featuring pieces by Handel, Vivaldi, Bach, Dowland and others. Elin Manahan Thomas is the soprano who provided the ethereal high Cs in Allegri's Miserere with The Sixteen at Tewkesbury Abbey back in March. The CD, on the Heliodor label (available only as n expensive import in the USA), begins with a short unaccompanied piece by Hildegard von Bingen that shows off Thomas's ravishingly pure and lovely voice. She's joined on the rest of the CD by The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, conducted by The Sixteen's Harry Christophers. The last of the sixteen selections on the CD—"Pur Ti Miro" from Monteverdi's L'Incoronazione di Poppaea, with countertenor Robin Blaze—is absolutely breathtaking, and leaves me gasping for more. You can hear excerpts from the CD at the soprano's website.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Whenever I think about, or listen to 'Miserere' it reminds me of the Merchant Ivory (1987) film version of E M Forster's 'Maurice'. It is such a beautiful piece, but it's message is not.