Wedding Classics is a selection of seventeen classical pieces (sixteen in the download version) arranged and performed for solo piano by Randi Rokke. This is Rokke’s third CD to date, following Joy, a Christmas collection, and Tell the Story, a collection of hymns, both released in 2009. A longtime music educator, church musician, and the wife and daughter of Lutheran pastors, Ms Rokke brings a lifetime of musical experience to her recordings. She has played the piano for many, many weddings over the years, and this collection is made up of favorites that she has used as preludes, postludes, processionals, and recessionals. Several of the pieces are very standard wedding faire - Wagner’s “Bridal Chorus” (often referred to as “Here Comes the Bride”), Mendelssohn’s “Wedding March,” and the venerable Pachelbel’s “Canon in D,” but there is also an assortment of other wedding-appropriate classical music that isn’t nearly as commonly heard. Along with being a very warm and pleasant CD to listen to, Wedding Classics provides brides and wedding planners a one-stop sampler of music to choose from for that special day. The liner notes of the CD also give a brief but informative history of each piece and its composer. The CD contains a bonus track, “Prelude In a Classic Style” by Gordon Young, a contemporary composer who passed away in 1998. Several of these pieces were originally composed for organ or for orchestra, and Ms Rokke has arranged those for piano solo. The composers represented are Henry Purcell, George F. Handel (2), JS Bach (5), Charles Gounod, Richard Wagner, Claude Debussy (2), Gordon Young, Felix Mendelssohn, Johann Pachelbel, Cesar Franck, Jeremiah Clarke, and Edvard Grieg. My own favorites include Handel’s “Thanks Be To Thee,” Bach’s “Cello Suite #1,” Debussy’s “Reverie,” Young’s “Prelude In Classic Style,” Bach’s “Arioso,” Franck’s “Panis Angelicus,” and Grieg’s “Wedding Day At Troldhaugen.”

This album makes for very pleasant listening and is a handy tool for selecting music for a wedding. It is available from randirokke.com, Amazon, iTunes and CD Baby.