Beside the famous master of Baroque Music – Johann Sebastian Bach – this 2CD set, Baroque Christmas Rarities includes nearly unknown but no less atmospheric treasures of baroque Christmas music by Bach’s talented sons, Telemann, Buxtehude, and others. Most of them were commissioned works for the feast and includes very different styles: from festive cantatas, moody motets to chamber musically solo songs. A “must” for all lovers of Baroque Music as well for listeners that would like to find some extraordinary music for the upcoming feast.

REVIEW:

Seasonal motets and cantatas by Christian Geist, Pal Esterhazy, Buxtehude, and Giuseppe Maria Po del Finale, with a tranch of contributions from Bach family members. Thoroughly engaging.

-- BBC Music Magazine

Includes cantata(s) by Johann Sebastian Bach. Ensembles: English Baroque Soloists, Monteverdi Choir. Conductor: John Eliot Gardiner. Soloists: Katherine Fuge, Gillian Keith, Robin Tyson, Nathalie Stutzmann, Christoph Genz, Jonathan Brown, Peter Harvey.

Despite only living until the age of 36 Purcell is undoubtedly one of the most remarkable musical geniuses of all time. The Sixteen continues its exploration of his music written for royalty illuminating two more of Purcell's Welcome Songs - Swifter, Isis, swifter flow and The summer's absence unconcerned we bear. In his music for Nathaniel Lee's tragedy Theodosius we witness the young Purcell displaying his playhouse wares in strokes of astonishing versatility some ten years before he made a serious impact as a master of music for the stage.

Our most recent Telemann album is a special highlight for the Christmas season! It brings together three Christmas oratorios from Telemann’s Oratorischer Jahrgang for the church year 1730/31 and a cantata from the annual cycle Musicalisches Lob Gottes printed in score form in Nuremberg in 1744. The oratorios are new discoveries and premiere recordings. Even if the works concerned are of cantata length, the term “Oratorio” is in this case perfectly justified. Not only the soprano, alto, and other vocal parts sing but also personified allegories such as Faith, Hope, and Love. Telemann’s musical realization of the poetic sources of the writer and musician Albrecht Jacob Zell is distinguished by great imagination and subtle artistry. The affections and emotions contained in the texts penned by Zell and the Biblical texts inserted by him in the arias and choruses are developed logically and with great feeling: here Telemann employs and combines the whole spectrum of compositional techniques at his command. Telemann’s opulent settings were made to order for the rich resources of Hamburg’s church music, for which he had available eight vocalists as well as some twenty instrumentalists.

The set of six sonatas and partitas for solo violin is widely regarded as one of the summits of Bach’s output as a composer, and of the entire repertoire for the violin. With this new album the Brodsky Quartet give us the opportunity to hear some of this legendary music in an entirely new way, in these world-première recordings of Paul Cassidy’s arrangements for string quartet of the three solo sonatas. Writing about this project, Paul notes: ‘My daily practice invariably involves spending some time with Bach’s ‘Six Solos for Violin without Bass Accompaniment’ (Sei Solo â Violino senza Basso accompagnato). I am a devout being and these are my bible. As in the case of all ‘holy’ books, the six ‘solos’ open themselves to an infinite variety of interpretations, but whatever your approach, these miraculous pieces are endlessly cleansing and enriching for the body and soul, a balm for the spirit. Their challenging pages abound with multi-faceted characters whose succinct purity is a wonder to behold. They can move imperceptibly from being uplifting and euphoric one minute to heart-breaking and tragic the next.’

REVIEW:

As you might expect, recording quality is impeccable on this release, the church acoustic perfectly integrated into a detailed but nicely balanced sound. The Brodsky Quartet is of course excellent, providing committed performances that can stand up to repeated listening and increasing appreciation. Let’s hope the Partitas can be given the same treatment some time soon.

– MusicWeb International

Telemann's twelve Fantasias, TWV 40:2-13 hold endless fascination, not only for flutists, but for a variety of instrumentalists. These works represent a unique, thorough, and systematic exploration of writing for unaccompanied flute. Leonard Garrison brings these great works fully to life. Leonard Garrison is University Distinuished Professor of Flute and Associate Director of the Lionel Hampton School of Music at the University of Idaho, flutist in The Northwest Wind Quintet and The Scott\/Garrison Duo, and Principal Flutist of the Walla Walla Symphony. A recipient of an Idaho Commission on the Arts Fellowship, a Presidents Mid\-Career Award at the University of Idaho, and 2016 prizes as Instrumental Soloist and in Chamber Music from The American Prize, he is faculty at Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp in Michigan. He has recorded eleven critically acclaimed albums for Albany Records, Capstone Records, and Centaur Records and been a soloist on National Public Radios Performance Today, winner of the 2003 Byron Hester Competition, concerto soloist on both flute and piccolo, and a frequent performer at National Flute Association conventions.

REVIEW:

So, the debate over how many singers and players to a part in Bach's cantatas lives on. This time, it's another vote for the Joshua Rifkin theory, a one-voice-per-part configuration primarily based on circumstantial evidence and informed deduction from surviving part books. It's an intriguing if porous theory that nevertheless satisfies curiosities and fancies of legitimate and well-intentioned musicologists and performers. Whenever this subject comes up, I only have to wonder what an investigator, with little other direct evidence, would determine to be my own performing forces if, 300 years from now he or she were to discover the contents of one of my church choir libraries! I prefer to look at the single voice to a part idea as just another way to perform music that by its nature stands up to almost any configuration of voices and/or instruments you want to throw at it. Of course you can perform Bach badly, but whether you use four voices or 40, if you sing it well, it still works.

There's no getting around the fact that many of the cantatas--as is true for the three on this disc--are dominated by solos, with only perhaps an opening chorus and closing chorale. So for these works, we're not so aware of the size of the vocal forces, and the key to performance becomes finding sensitive and competent instrumentalists and some very good solo singers. Luckily for us, we get rather formidable doses of both on this recording from the Toronto-based Aradia ensemble, a relatively new group with some personnel ties to Tafelmusik and who specialize in period instrument performance of Baroque works. In fact, the main reason to hear this recording is for the exceptional solo singing--and I do mean exceptional, especially from tenor John Tessier, countertenor Matthew White (listen to the recitative in BWV 132), and, after a slightly shaky start, soprano Teri Dunn. Dunn's aria in BWV 36, with one of those sublime violin obbligatos that only Bach could have conceived, and a melody with one of the best "hooks" ever to work its irresistible, unforgettable way into a listener's heart, is a shining example of what happens when performer and music perfectly match. It would be easy to go on about all the felicities of the singing and how much really wonderful music is packed into these three relatively short works. But you should also know that where the ensemble joins in the choruses, the balances are not exactly clean and detailed--we hear too much soprano and lots of reverberation from the spacious church of St. Mary Magdalene--one of Toronto's most famous choral venues.

The instrumental playing is first rate and is well recorded, but balances tend to work against the soloists in the full-group sections. There's also some confusion concerning the version of BWV 36 that's performed here. The liner notes say it's the Advent cantata written for performance in 1731, but that one was an expanded version of the five-movement work that appears here--and was performed a year earlier. For the performance of BWV 61, the familiar Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland, conductor/violinist Kevin Mallon augments his solo forces with eight additional singers, essentially forming a ripieno chorus that is joined by the soloists in the tutti passages.

--David Vernier , ClassicsToday.com

Armide, premiered in 1686, was the last joint work of Lully and the poet Philippe Quinault. It immediately became a pillar of the Opéra’s repertory, which it finally left only in 1766, when it was removed to make room for a new wave of composers, Philidor, Grétry, Gossec and soon Gluck. A few attempts to restore former tastes still allowed audiences to hear such works as Persée, revived in 1770 (and recorded in that version by Hervé Niquet, ALPHA967). But these operas were profoundly modified in order to increase the role of the orchestra and tailor the vocal numbers to the singers of the day. This was the context for the fascinating and unpublished version of Armide that has lain dormant in the Bibliothèque Nationale for more than two centuries. The revisions to the original are by Louis-Joseph Francœur, nephew of the celebrated François Francœur, one of Louis XV’s court musicians. This recording of the 1778 version of Armide, made at the Opéra Royal du Château de Versailles in collaboration with the Centre de Musique Baroque de Versailles, is not merely the first modern performance but the work’s world premiere, since none of its music was ever actually played at the time. It enables us to grasp the evolution of the ideas and practices of French music over a whole century.

Could Bach’s Suites be most representative of his French identity? Composed in Germany around 1720 at the Court of Köthen, like the Brandenburg Concertos, for a Francophile and gambist, they find in Myriam Rignol’s vision and vibrant embodiment an unmistakable French flavor, transcended by the viola da gamba! When an exceptional talent meets the instrument that makes Bach resound in Versailles, lending it the rhythm of the dances so dear to Louis, in a polyphony like no other, Johann-Sebastian dazzles in the Palace of the Sun King…

Master of 18th century French opera, Rameau wrote for the stage for three decades (1733-1764). His thirty or so operatic works give considerable space to the haute-contre voice, the quintessence of most of the title roles: Platée, Dardanus, Hippolyte, Pygmalion… Mathias Vidal, a brilliant representative of this haute-contre tessitura, is one of its foremost specialists. Having sung the majority of Rameau’s operas on stage, he is an obvious paradigm of their characters. Together with Gaétan Jarry, he has conceived a programme of the most dazzling and expressive arias, to which have been added scenes accompanied by a chorus. This anthology brings to the fore the radiant voice of this pillar of the Royal Opera of Versailles. For this passionate singer of the French repertory, to record a recital dedicated to Pierre de Jelyotte, Rameau’s haute-contre, makes the theatricality of his music resound to a thrilling climax!