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Mendelssohn: Elijah

 

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Mendelssohn: Elijah, Op. 70

Rosemary Joshua (soprano), Sarah Connolly (mezzo-soprano), Robert Murray (tenor,) & Simon Keenlyside (bass)

Wroclaw Philharmonic Choir, Gabrieli Young Singers' Scheme & Gabrieli Consort & Players, Paul McCreesh

This recording sees over 440 musicians taking part, including 92 string players and over 300 singers.

CD, amazon.co.uk, release date 27 August 2012

CD, amazon.de, release date 1 September 2012

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MP3, amazon.com, release date 27 August 2012

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Short review, Nicholas Kenyon, The Observer, guardian.co.uk

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"Keenlyside sings Elijah beautifully and intelligently with a very fine sense of line and lovely feeling for the words. His delivery of It is enough is one of the most moving that I have heard. And he does not eschew singing very quietly, his phrase to the Widow Give me thy son is stunning. But, at the big moments, he can’t disguise that his voice lacks the bigness, the amplitude that would be ideal in this role and, quite simply, there are one or two moments when it goes lower than his comfort zone. His singing of the arias Is not His word like a fire is wonderfully vivid and vigorous, but he doesn’t quite fill the vocal line the way I want. One small point, Keenlyside does not seem to be able to settle on one particular pronunciation of the word Israel.

"But his interpretation is well aligned to McCreesh's interpretation, though this performance is dramatic, it is not particularly operatic. Here McCreesh’s experience conducting earlier oratorios comes to the fore and we experience Mendelssohn as the heir of Handel, Haydn and Bach, rather than as opera composer manqué."--Planet Hugill

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"The sound is tremendous in big choruses such as Yet doth the Lord see it not, Baal we cry to thee and Be not afraid, but, as in the recording of the Grande Messe des Morts, one of the striking aspects of the performance is the way that Paul McCreesh so naturally places the great set pieces within the context of a multifaceted expressive whole. In defining the lyrical strands that run through Elijah he is fortunate in having soloists of the calibre of Simon Keenlyside to sing Lord God of Abraham, tenor Robert Murray in If with all your hearts, Rosemary Joshua in Hear ye, Israel and Sarah Connolly in Oh rest in the Lord."--Geoffrey Norris, telegraph.co.uk

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Simon Keenlyside:

CD and DVD

Some upcoming engagements

aStore amazon.co.uk

aStore amazon.com

aStore amazon.de

aStore amazon.fr

Yahoo! group: Fans of Simon Keenlyside