"The soloists were excellent. Powell, who sang Miller in the May Festival's ‘Luisa Miller,' was richly communicative in his solos such as ‘In Taberna' (In the Tavern). But he stole the show in the role of the drunken abbot, as he stumbled and hiccupped through the humorous words. It may be hard to ever hear this performed ‘straight' again."

This new CD, Boston Baroque's sixteenth for Telarc, couples two of the Baroque era's most popular shorter choral works - both of them in D Major! They are nicely contrasted. Vivaldi's Gloria is characterized by its Italian warmth, fluidity, and bouncy personality, while the Bach is more formal, architectural, and more emotionally and texturally varied. The Magnificat contains one of the era's most common musical puns: at the end of the work, when the chorus sings "Sicut erat in principio," ("As...