This creative program comes to us from German soprano Anna Prohaska. In this endeavor, Anna follows the queens of Egypt and Carthage, (Dido and Cleopatra), across first century Europe. The works featured on this release come from the biggest names in Baroque names, like Cavalli, Handel, Purcell, and Hasse, as well as lesser known composers such as Graupner and Castrovillari. These opera arias are all virtuosic and passionate, and Prohaska delivers them with a fervor that has solidified her reputation in the world of opera. This is the first in a series of releases that will be recorded by Anna Prohaska. For this release, she is joined by Il Giardino Armonico - one of today’s most accomplished Baroque ensembles. The ensemble is directed by Giovanni Antonini, who is also heard as a recorder soloist in some of these arias. Anna Prohaska is a leading star in her native Germany. She has sung on the world’s finest opera stages, including La Scala and Covent Garden.

Germany’s oldest Mozart festival celebrates its 100th anniversary in 2021. The present jubilee boxed set presents previously unpublished treasures from the archive of the Bavarian Broadcasting. All live recordings from the Baroque Imperial Hall at Würzburg Residence are digital remasters.

The fourth volume of the Haydn2032 project thrusts into the limelight one of the most important stock characters in the theatre of sounds and words, the Kapellmeister, and explores some glamorous and (in)glorious moments in the career of Maestro Haydn. It features three symphonies by the ‘Shakespeare of Music’ – one of which is even associated with an actual play. This bears the title ‘Sinfonia in C. per la commedia intitolata Il distratto’ (the name of the play soon became the symphony’s nickname) and consists of an overture, four entr’actes, and a finale to be played at the end of the performance. Also on this disc is a large-scale buffo scene by his colleague Cimarosa. Il maestro di cappella is a witty and ironic parody, in which a member of the ‘old school’ of musicians tries to improve the ensemble playing of his orchestra. To his chagrin, the players do react, but in extremely undisciplined fashion: they are distracted, make false entries and disagree musically...

This ninth volume of the Haydn2032 series focuses on the composer’s psychological subtlety in its focus on a central work: his Symphony no.45, known as the ‘Abschieds-Symphonie’ (‘Farewell’ Symphony), composed in 1772. It is said to have got its nickname from a symbolic message Haydn conveyed to Prince Esterházy when he and his orchestra were required to stay longer than planned in the Prince’s summer residence. On the occasion of the symphony’s first performance, Haydn had arranged for the musicians to leave their places one by one during the final Adagio. The day after the concert, all the musicians were able to return to their families and bid farewell to the Prince, who had obviously taken the point of this poetic request for ‘liberation’ expressed in music. The programme is completed by Symphonies nos. 15 and 35 and a cantata sung by Sandrine Piau, the heart-rending ‘Berenice, che fai?’ on a text by Metastasio that was a real ‘hit’ of the eighteenth century, set by some forty composers.

For its eighth volume, Haydn2032 invites us on a musical journey that takes the Balkan route. Of all the ‘Viennese Classical School’, Joseph Haydn is certainly the composer closest to folk music, first because he spent his early years in the countryside and also because, unlike his colleagues who worked in the urban centers of the Habsburg monarchy, Haydn was in contact with Croats, Roma and Hungarians throughout his life. These influences were omnipresent in his music, to the delight of Prince Nikolaus I Esterházy and his guests, but by some accounts were not to the taste of many music theorists in Germany. Haydn gave his Symphony no.63 in C major the title of ‘La Roxolana’, from the famous sixteenth-century sultana who was the wife of Suleiman the Magnificent after having been his slave. As usual, Giovanni Antonini, who is reunited here with Il Giardino Armonico, juxtaposes Haydn’s music with that of another composer. The natural choice here was Béla Bartók, who is represented by his Romanian Folk Dances, composed in 1917.

Ghena Dimitrova and Giuseppe Giacomini one splendid evening at the opera in Genoa nearly thirty years ago. Two powerful voices which could stir the emotions like few others: on this particular evening in Genoa Ghena and Giuseppe were in good shape and immediately made that audience connection which makes an evening special, as the often-crazed applause proves. In the treble, their notes rang out with clarity, power and a lightning-fast attack; their phrasing was as imposing as it was tireless; their emotional tension sent shivers down the audience's collective spine; and, most importantly of all, they phrased their notes and articulated their words with a severity and intensity which makes the difference between a fine evening of operatic thrills and an interpretation deserving to be recorded for the benefit of those who were not lucky enough to be there on the night.

The fifteenth volume of the Haydn2032 cycle is entitled ‘La Reine’. One might think that this nickname refers to Empress Maria Theresa of Austria, queen of numerous territories, but in fact the monarch honoured by the popular title of Symphony no.85 is her daughter, Marie Antoinette. It was said to be the favourite of ‘La Reine de France’, which is the full nickname of the work. The new volume also includes Symphony no.50, which delighted the Empress’s ears when she visited Prince Nicolaus Esterházy at his ‘Hungarian Versailles’ in 1773. Symphony no.62, which dates from 1780, the fortieth anniversary of Maria Theresa’s accession to the throne and also the last year of a life as eventful as it was glorious, rounds off this latest instalment of the complete recording of the symphonies conducted by Giovanni Antonini, here at the helm of the Basel Chamber Orchestra.

The fourteenth volume of the Haydn 2032 edition is entitled L'Imperiale, after the nickname given to Symphony no.53 in the nineteenth century. This was perhaps Haydn's most famous symphony during his lifetime. Premiered in the theatre at Eszterháza Palace in 1778, it was published in London around 1781, and its melodious Andante was arranged more than thirty times for various instruments between 1783 and 1820. It made a decisive contribution to Haydn’s success, opening the way for him to perform in England. Symphony no.54, whose entertaining, theatrical style is a perfectly match for the atmosphere of the legendary court festivities given at Eszterháza around 1775, completes this programme along with no.33, one of his first festive works with trumpets, composed c.1761. In his introductory text, Giovanni Antonini revels in the ‘capricious’, whimsical character of certain passages in the last movement of Symphony No. 53; he also offers an alternative finale of the work at the end of the album.