John Butt directs Dunedin Consort in this collection of three of Bach’s finest cantatas. Together, they explore the timely themes of consolation and salvation. Having previously received exceptional critical acclaim for recordings of Bach’s Mass in B minor (which was named a Benchmark Recording by BBC Music Magazine) and St. John Passion (nominated for both a 2014 ICMA and a 2013 Gramophone Award), Dunedin Consort now cements its impressive Bachian credentials with these three cantatas.

Bass Matthew Brook takes centre stage in the melancholic yet optimistic Ich habe genug, with soprano Joanne Lunn joining him to portray the searching dialogue of Jesus and the Soul in the profoundly beautiful Liebster Jesu, mein Verlangen. Known as ‘Actus Tragicus’, the early cantata Gottes Zeit ist die allerbeste Zeit is an altogether grander affair. Likely intended for a funeral, it stands out in Bach’s output both for its sublime choruses and its unusual instrumentation – notably the two oscillating recorders in the introduction, which set the tone for one of Bach’s most heartfelt and quietly uplifting cantatas.

1711 saw the publication of what was to become one of the most important musical collections of the first half of the 18th century: Antonio Vivaldi’s L’estro armonico (‘The Harmonic Fancy’). Scored for one, two, or four violin soloists, the twelve concertos in the set fuelled a burgeoning fashion for new Italian music in northern Europe, and were soon being avidly performed and enjoyed in major musical centres, inspiring younger composers including Bach, Handel and Telemann. Vivaldi’s set – represented here by the Concerto in B minor, RV 580 and Violin Concerto in A minor, RV 356 – established a vogue for a virtuosic and brilliant type of writing, with fast movements characterized as much by their propulsive basses as by conventional melodiousness and with central slow movements often exuding a mesmeric, almost ghostly calm. Fourteen years later another collection of concertos – Il cimento dell’armonia e dell’inventione (‘The Contest of Harmony and Invention’) – would secure Vivaldi’s reputation for eternity. The first four concertos of this collection form what has become one of the most widely spread classical compositions in the history of music: Le Quattro Stagioni. Countless violinists have recorded Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, not to mention the many arrangements of the pieces for other instruments. Now Richard Tognetti and the Australian Chamber Orchestra, a team internationally recognized for its virtuosity, energy and individuality, has recorded their take on Vivaldi’s springtime birdsong, summer thunderstorm, autumn hunting and chattering teeth of icy winter. The programme also includes two typically Vivaldian slow movements, a Largo and a Grave, as well as a Sinfonia for strings originally intended as the overture of the opera La verità in cimento (‘Truth in contention’).

The Swedish recorder virtuoso Dan Laurin has demonstrated his remarkable versatility on some thirty recordings for BIS, ranging from a nine-disc set with 17th-century composer Jacob van Eyck's complete Der Fluyten Lust-hof to the recent Rock that Flute, with music for recorder and strings written in 2013 by the Dutch composer Chiel Meijering. During a recording career that stretches over almost 30 years, Laurin keeps returning to one particular set of works, however: the concertos by Antonio Vivaldi. Three of the works (the Concertos RV 441, 443 and 444) included on his latest release he has recorded more than once before, with ensembles such as the Drottningholm Baroque Ensemble, Bach Collegium Japan and Arte dei Suonatori. For his latest 'take' on these favourites Laurin has joined forces with the young and vibrant Norwegian string ensemble 1B1 (shorthand for Ensemble Bjergsted 1). As he explains in his own liner notes for the present disc, he was inspired by his work on transcribing and performing Vivaldi’s Four Seasons: ‘A close reading of RV441 and RV443–445 reveals great similarities between these works and The Four Seasons: sudden changes of moods, turbulent emotions, burlesque whims mixed with sublime beauty and elegance… My aim here is to explore the recorder concertos with the same freedom and spontaneity that characterize the modern-day approach to the Seasons.’ Laurin’s recording of the Seasons has been called ‘undoubtedly the best transcription to date’ (Diapason) and ‘never hackneyed, but instead invigoratingly fresh and vibrant’ (Clarino), verdicts which can only fuel the expectations concerning this his latest version of the recorder concertos.

The Brook Street Band has easily earned its reputation as “the smartest new baroque band around” (The Times, London). Among today’s most notable Handel specialists, the group’s founder, cellist Tatty Theo, and harpsichordist, Carolyn Gibley, turn their attention for only the second time to the music of J.S. Bach as well as his son Carl Philip Emmanuel. Like father, like son, each wrote three Sonatas for viola da gamba and harpsichord. These works have long been a valued part of the cello repertoire, but this recording is the first to make use of a regular four-string baroque cello.

On Nostalghia, his second PENTATONE album, pianist Francesco Piemontesi presents original works of Bach, alongside Bach transcriptions and works inspired by Bach from Ferruccio Busoni, Wilhelm Kempff and Maximilian Schnaus. Whereas many modern-day musicians aim to revive the instruments used in Bach’s own time, Piemontesi explores the tradition of Bach transcriptions for piano. This tradition started in the nineteenth-century, found its most prominent exponent in Busoni, and is still alive today, as Schnaus’s transcription of Kommst du nun, Jesu, vom Himmel herunter demonstrates. Despite using an instrument not yet existing in the composer’s time, Busoni and others sought to interpret Bach’s music with utmost reverence and study, expanding our notions of authenticity and Werktreue. For Piemontesi, playing Bach through the eyes of Busoni, Kempff and Schnaus incites a sense of nostalgia, re-establishing the ties to a rich pianistic tradition. The album title refers to Andrei Tarkovsky’s Nostalghia, a 1983 film about nostalgia and the untranslatability of art and culture. Francesco Piemontesi is among the most-cherished pianists of our age, and presents the second fruit of his exclusive collaboration with PENTATONE, having released the acclaimed Schubert - Last Piano Sonatas in 2019.

Biber’s ‘Rosary Sonatas’ for violin and basso continuo stand alone in the violin literature and in music history, offering a unique combination of programmatic material and the use of scordatura (tuning a string instrument differently than the standard tuning). Consisting of fifteen sonatas for violin and basso continuo, and a closing Passacaglia for solo violin, the cycle was presented by Biber to his employer, the Prince-Archbishop of Salzburg, in a handsome manuscript sometime before 1687. Through the copper engravings inserted at the head of each sonata in the manuscript depicting key moments in the lives of Christ and the Virgin Mary, the music has become associated with the Catholic Mysteries of the Rosary. As the manuscript is missing its title page, the collection has become known under a variety of names: the Rosary, Mystery, Biblical or even Copper-Engraving Sonatas. The moods and emotions of this highly expressive music range from Mary's wonderment at the Annunciation to the agony of Christ in the garden of Gethsemane, the crucifixion and the subsequent resurrection, celebrated in a fantasy on the hymn Surrexit Christus hodie. Through the use of fifteen different tunings of the violin – one for each of the fifteen sonatas before the return to standard tuning in the closing Passacaglia – Biber achieves a variety of timbres, which combined with his highly imaginative treatment of the violin makes for absorbing listening. Appearing for the first time on BIS, the Greek-American violinist Ariadne Daskalakis has made a number of previous recordings, on baroque as well as modern violin. She is here supported by her fellow members in Ensemble Vintage Köln, a Cologne-based group of musicians specialized in baroque music. As a coupling to Biber's Rosary Sonatas – with a duration of almost 120 minutes – the ensemble has chosen to include the only extant violin sonata by George Muffat, Biber's colleague in the service of the Prince-Archbishop of Salzburg.