Reference Recordings is proud to present a very special new release! Entitled Le Dolce Sirene to represent the all-women force of Bach Aria Soloists, this exciting new album includes works by Monteverdi, Handel, Mendelssohn and Bach, alongside a new transcription by BAS of Cecilia McDowall’s song cycle Four Shakespeare Songs. Hailed for producing “the most surprising and brilliantly innovative collaborations in Kansas City,” Bach Aria Soloists delivers each year their acclaimed concert series presenting the genius and relevance of Johann Sebastian Bach, his contemporaries, and those he inspired.

REVIEWS:

The Kansas City-based Bach Aria Soloists make their recording debut on Reference Recordings with a lovely album of Monteverdi, Bach, Handel and Mendelssohn, complemented by Cecilia McDowall and concluding with their own improvisation on La folia. Recorded with the label’s trademark sweet and clear perfection, ‘Le dolce sirene’ achieves that audiophile miracle, sounding even better on speakers than on headphones.

Most of the music is rich in conventional beauty, from Sarah Tannehill Anderson, luscious in Monteverdi and resplendent in Handel’s ‘Rejoice greatly’, to Elizabeth Suh Lane and her continuo mates illuminating Bach’s G major Violin Sonata from 1734. By contrast McDowall’s Four Shakespeare Songs use intriguingly skewed, modern notions of romantic beauty and sudden sweeps of song perfectly timed, voiced and sung to explore different aspects of love. ‘First Rehearse’ on its own, Titania’s blessing of the lovers, is a magical tour de force.

As Steven Ledbetter’s notes explain, the performers adopted the same practice for their La folia as those from about 1700, ornamenting and elaborating a basic framework that ‘appears constantly renewed’. According to founding artistic director Lane, the group’s name is a nod to the famed Bach Aria Group and in fact, she assured me, the Group’s last violinist Daniel Phillips gave ‘his full blessing, really excited that we were starting such an organisation!’

The album was recorded at Village Presbyterian Church in a suburb of Kansas City, where Elisa Williams Bickers proved with the Allegro con brio from Mendelssohn’s Fourth Organ Sonata how powerfully and inspirationally the Richards, Fowkes & Co three-manual mechanical action instrument installed in 2016 could speak.

-- Gramophone