For better of worse, Pachelbel's Canon in D has become a staple of wedding ceremonies. It's a nice, if somewhat overplayed, piece of music. Except that wedding planners have conspired to have the life sucked out of nearly every recording of the song I've ever listened to. The Canon in D is not a funeral march or the overture for a depressing operetta. It's meant to be played with life and energy at a moderate tempo. I shouldn't feel like the musicians playing it are still recovering from night of Ambien-induced sleep.

But I have recently come across two excellent recordings of the song played by musicians who do not take orders from the cabal of musically ignorant wedding planners. One is from Daniel Hope's excellent album "Air: A Baroque Journey." (For whatever reasons that album is only available in the US via the Deutsche Grammophon online store.) The other is from Reinhard Goebel's recording of Pachelbel, Bach, Handel and Vivaldi.