Oxford Archive
Audio News for December 27, 2016
Alexa Control4 Home Automation Setup – Control4 is smart-home-as-a-service company which specializes in custom-installed connected entertainment setups. Fairly high end, the master receivers start at $600 and go as high as $2000, and to that must be added costs of your smart home gear. But it offers seamless, dealer-installed integration of all home AV needs, along with the lighting, climate and security gadgets. In one test, Alexa replaced a two-switch control setup for the gas fireplace with a single switch that controlled the lights, ceiling fans, fireplace, and even toggled pre-programmed scenes. It includes stuff that most people never thought of automating. Epson Powerlite Home Cinema 3700 – at $1499, gives the wonderful feeling when the lights go down and movie starts in your home theater. It is the mid-level projector of three models in the Home Cinema line, and does not lack for brightness or sharpness. It also makes 3D look good, and can be easily connected to better speakers than those built into the unit. The image is very adjustable, and the projector need not be placed directly in line with the screen. It can project a 100” image just ten feet away from the screen. Biggest Works […]
TAVERNER: Dum transisset; Dum transisset Sabbatum II; Missa Corona Spinea – The Tallis Scholars/ Peter Phillips – Gimell
An astoundingly innovative and virtuoso setting of the mass. TAVERNER: Dum transisset Sabbatum I; Dum transisset Sabbatum II; Missa Corona Spinea – The Tallis Scholars/ Peter Phillips – Gimell CDGIM 046, 62:07 [Distr. by Harmonia mundi] ****: Written for the new Cardinal College at Oxford, and probably premiered before Henry VIII himself, Taverner’s Missa Corona spinea is one of the greatest of all Renaissance choral pieces, often sounding like a concerto for treble voices. Taverner extended the range to amazingly high voices, and the two sopranos that tackle the piece for Peter Phillips are sumptuous and marvelously adept at their art. The sonorities that Taverner achieves are nothing less than thrilling, and the high wire act that stretches to B-flats for a long period of time are unlike anything you will ever hear in this most prodigious and creative of periods. The accompanying Dum transisset Sabbatum I & II, while worthy in and of themselves and make for decent filler, in no way compare to the mass setting. No matter, as these performances have to be ranked among the best in the catalog, another star in the Tallis firmament. —Steven Ritter
SIR HUBERT PARRY: I was Glad & other choral works – Westminster Abbey Choir / Onyx Brass / Daniel Cook (organ) / James O’Donnell – Hyperion (CD or hi-res download)
English Cathedral choral and organ music from Westminster Abbey in very fine hi-res sound.
WALTON String Quartets = String Quartet (1919-22); String Quartet in A minor – Doric String Quartet – Chandos
The premiere recording of the original version of Walton’s early string quartet is given a stimulating performance in this well-recorded CD.
Stereotypes Audio
Cembal d’amour
Pure Pleasure / Speakers Corner
Cedille
