Classical music for your journey

Beginning with a haunting motet by James MacMillan (and featuring an incredible solo treble), tonight’s mixtape continues with perhaps the most tragic prelude in all opera: Verdi’s La Traviata. A sublime, wordless aria from the French Baroque come courtesy of Elisabeth-Claude Jacquet de La Guerre, followed by sung aria from the same period, as bass-baritone Christopher Purves demonstrates his extraordinary vocal range in music by Handel. We finish in the twentieth century with a pair of contemporary composers who followed very different paths: a prelude by Rachmaninov, and the gentle conclusion of Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht (Transfigured Night).