Snowflake Christmas: Handel "Messiah" Highlights CD - Import

2008Local Artists on CD Arriving in a DVD-sized package is a two-CD set from tenor Stanley Cornett called Make Someone Happy (self-produced, available at select local retailers). Cornett, a longtime Peabody faculty member, has put together a remarkably diverse souvenir of his live performances from the 1980's and '90's, made in various locations and with varying recording quality (occasionally with annoying fade-outs). There is some highly accomplished singing here -- a chilling portrait of the malevolent Quint in Benjamin Britten's The Turn of the Screw and a poignant account of the Agnus Dei from that composer's War Requiem; a sweetly phrased Adelaide by Beethoven and vivid interpretations of art songs by Schubert and Turina; impeccably stylish arias from Handel's Messiah, Bach's St. Matthew Passion ...