Once established in London, Handel devised a new kind of music drama that won over the English audience and modernized the operatic stage: the oratorio. Revolutionizing English traditions, he imported the drama and color of Italy, and the voices of it's greatest operatic castrati. Carlo Vistoli now presents this heritage, reviving some of the greatest Handel arias first sung in London by his illustrious compatriots.

These two albums, originally released in 2015 and 2016, are among the finest of the benchmark recordings that Brad Lubman and his Ensemble Signal have devoted to Steve Reich. They reveal in their inexorable pulse and clarity of texture all the profundity of this music. Far beyond brilliant precision, here is a gripping sense of radiant vitality - a welcome return to the catalog to celebrate the 90 years of this Grand Old Man of the music of our time.

As an admirer of Cherubini, an attentive follower of Spontini's dramatic daring, and a critical but deeply fascinated witness of Rossini's public success, Beethoven was shaping his language in a musical landscape in which the symphony was in constant dialogue with the opera. This fertile state of tension has been newly uncovered by Enrico Onofri and the Munchener Kammerorchester: heard alongside Italian overtures of the time, Beethoven's great symphonies appear newly charged with a theatrical urgency, dramatic impulse and unparalleled intensity.

For his debut recording, Paul-Antoine Benos-Djian and his friends from Le Consort invite us to rediscover a 17th-century repertoire for which they have a particular love, drawn from the Golden Age of English music. Half a century after Alfred Deller's legendary revivals, they have placed their art entirely at the service of the sense of wonder they continually experience when confronted by these sublime works.

Following in the footsteps of Bach and Handel, Felix Mendelssohn and his sister Fanny Hensel wrote some of the most sumptuous choral works of the first half of the nineteenth century. The testamentary Christus, left unfinished at Felix's death, though often overshadowed by Paulus and Elias, forms a veritable trilogy with them. Fanny's early cantata Lobgesang, composed for her son Sebastian's first birthday, offers a joyous, festive contrast to her brother's music.

After stopping off in Cothen, Benjamin Alard continues his musical journey through the works of J.S. Bach. Here he focuses on the composer's early years in Leipzig, with the six Trio Sonatas, which he performs on harpsichord and clavichord. The famous 'little keyboard book' of Anna Magdalena takes us into the more intimate world of the Kantor's household.

In this superb program structured around major pieces composed in the last ten years of Mozart's life, Anna Prohaska and Riccardo Minasi sweep away the image of the well-mannered figure that tradition has tended to impose. They paint a bracingly complex portrait of the Salzburger after his move to Vienna, subtly blending the maestro's historical expertize with the vigor and freshness of Resonanz, here in electrifying form.

It was love at first sight when Mathilde Vialle and Thibaut Roussel first encountered the English bass viol and Venetian archlute preserved at Paris's Museum of Music. Both instruments are heard in this program of English music from the second half of the seventeenth century, much of it never recorded before. The exceptional sonorities of their two period instruments are complemented by the virginal of Ronan Khalil and the tenor voice of Zachary Wilder for an album as subtle as it is sublime.

The Trio Wanderer pays tribute to Dvorak and his last two trios. Alongside the somber interiority and fiery intensity of the Trio No.3 in F minor, this program presents a new version of the famous Dumky Trio, to which the Wanderers owe their first great success on record. Passionate and melancholy by turns, it is also the most innovative and the freest of Dvorak's trios. A fine symbol for the Trio Wanderer, which has just reached it's thirtieth year of existence without ever ceasing to surprise and touch us.

London, 1760. Handel had just died and George III acceded to the throne. During the reign of this monarch and his queen Charlotte, both discerning musicians, musical life in the British capital was to enjoy an exceptional revival. Virtuosos and composers from all over Europe flocked there, vying with each other in originality and modernity. La Reveuse offers us a chance to sample the heady climate of the age.

Seven years after their album, Debussy et le jazz, the artists of the Quatuor Debussy have conceived the idea of celebrating Ravel in three quite different ways. They have recorded a transcription by Alain Brunier of the French composer's famous Quartet, Ma mere l'Oye (the Mother Goose suite), as well as inviting vibraphone virtuoso Franck Tortiller to join in the fun by combining the original score of Le Tombeau de Couperin with jazz improvisations - an approach that Ravel, from all we know of him, would have greatly relished.

A visionary composer, Domenico Scarlatti pushed beyond the frontiers of keyboard writing, fusing radiant melodies with spirited rhythms and daring technical feats. In this compendium of his most attractive sonatas, Javier Perianes employs his consummate virtuosity with audible enjoyment, revealing all the richness and inventiveness of his adoptive compatriot's musical language.

For their very first album with harmonia mundi, Robin Pharo and his ensemble Pres de votre oreille explore the highly poetical and personal world of William Lawes, the brilliant heir to Byrd and Gibbons. The gifted Lawes carried the instrumental arts and vocal music to an incredible height of perfection. This is a rediscovery to make the heart rejoice.

Forbidden love, the extremes of passion, and a soaring lyricism are all on display in Piramo e Tisbe. One of Hasse's very last operas, he broke the rules of opera seria and created a masterpiece. With a prestigious team of soloists, the Akademie fur Alte Musik Berlin restores it to life in all it's vivid colors, this work of astonishing modernity that was greatly admired by Mozart.

From the moving gentleness of a farewell to the world of childhood (Ma mere l'Oye) to the savage power of rituals from pre-Christian Russia (The Rite of Spring), Ravel and Stravinsky explore musical horizons of incredible modernity. The Kolesnikov-Tsoy duo offer a powerful yet poetic interpretation of these two masterpieces.

For their first harmonic mundi album, Florent Albrecht and his Ensemble L'Encyclopedie explore the mischievous world of the Mozarts, father and son. Whether in the well-known Toy Symphony, the tinkling bells of Leopold's A Musical Sleigh Ride or the 'How to compose all wrong' tutorial of Wolfgang's A Musical Joke, joy and fantasy are mixed with a portion of subtle wit - qualities shared by the polished stylistic approach of the performers.

Completely contrary to the usual image of J.S. Bach as a recluse in his ivory tower, Amandine Beyer and Gli Incogniti reveal his lively admiration for the Italian music of his time, particularly that of Vivaldi and the brothers Marcello. Here Bach discovered sunlight and luminous colours that never ceased to nourish and inspire his musical imagination.

Two German Romanticism enthusiasts, Raphael Severe and Adam Laloum, have planned a trip for us on the wings of song. Transcribing for clarinet and piano some of the most beautiful lieder of Schumann, Wagner, and Brahms, without the help of words they have unveiled all their poetry and their indescribable colors.

A world removed from the grand and awesome visions of the Last Judgement that so often characterize settings of the Mass for the Dead, Brahms conceived a work of 'consolation for those who are suffering'. Having spent more than ten years absorbing this German 'humanist' requiem, this album's performers have meticulously shaped every bar of this compact work, achieving a form of polyphonic transparency that confounds the senses and transcends the universality of it's message.

Ultra-sensitive poet of the keyboard Adam Laloum immerses us in the kaleidoscopic world of Schumann: the famous Kreisleriana and their outbursts of passion and reverie heard alongside the rather rarer Novelletten, a theatre of the intimate and fantastic. Everywhere Laloum revels in the emotional riches of a piano indwelt by the inner voice of romanticism.