In it's fascination with Italy, nurtured by all that was best in Florence, Rome and Venice, 17th-century France saw the blossoming of a new national art. Though Lully in his pomp might seem to have subdued the musical world of his time, the ensemble La Palatine has helped us to restore it in a quite different constellation - one that is far more diverse, overflowing with imaginative riches.

30 years ago, a young German countertenor recorded his first disc for harmonia mundi. Since then, Andreas Scholl has been unfailingly successful. To celebrate this outstanding artist, a box set combining six of his iconic recitals retraces the main points of his career to date. From Dowland to Handel, here is the glorious testimony of a singer at the summit of his art.

This fourth and last volume devoted to Mozart's Violin and Piano Sonatas is a virtual journey of initiation, from his light-filled Palatine Sonatas to the later, more intense and complex Viennese masterworks, with Mozart completely revitalizing the genre and opening up new aesthetic horizons.

To inaugurate their collaboration with harmonia mundi, Vasily Petrenko and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra have recorded a program as subtle as it is unexpected, with two seldom-heard masterpieces of 1913. From the bitingly ironical Shakespearian portrait of an ageing knight (Falstaff), to an existential meditation inspired by Poe (The Bells), both these 'literary' scores dramatically prolong the enchantments of a dying romanticism.

From the youthful sonic ecstasy of George Enescu's Octet to the touching late composition Lachrymae by Benjamin Britten, Ensemble Resonanz and Tabea Zimmermann invite us to rediscover two profound, world-embracing works - full of inner motion, poised between reflection, melancholy, and transcendence.

John Rutter is one of the most iconic figures of English choral music today, a symbol of it's vitality and high standards. Graham Ross brings together the Choir of Clare College, Cambridge (the celebrated choral institution that the composer himself directed in the mid-1970s) and The Dmitri Ensemble to pay homage to this great gentleman of modern musical history with a wide range of his works, some of them recorded here for the very first time.

With more than 125 concertos to his credit, Telemann was one of the pioneers of this genre that had flowered in Italy. Combining daring, humor and emotion, he particularly delighted in exploring the virtuosity of the violin and it's gift for imitation and it's lyricism. Alongside other works of his where the violin also takes centre stage, Isabelle Faust and the Academie fur Alte Musik Berlin showcase several jewels from his output of unimagined opulence.

Morton Feldman's cycle, The Viola in My Life, is four individual compositions that utilize various instrumental combinations with the viola. The works is a beautiful succession of delicate sounds during which Feldman, through the interplay of sound and silence, alters and transforms time. "This work has accompanied me like a secret, an almost silent meditation on what the viola means in my life. Through it I have experienced how much this instrument connects me to listening, to patience, to inwardness. Here Morton Feldman is not composing in order to shine, but so as to make us hear the infinitesimal, the unspeakable - that is what has touched me profoundly, and I want to share it with the listeners." (Antoine Tamestit)

To celebrate their 20th anniversary in style, Les Siecles and Francois-Xavier Roth have chosen to dazzle us with the distinctive colors of late nineteenth and early twentieth century Paris. This concert, recorded in the legendary surroundings of the Theatre des Champs-Elysees, explores shimmering orchestral works by Debussy, Lalo, Dukas and Roussel.

The Harmoniemesse, Haydn's last major sacred work, combines liturgical solemnity with dazzling orchestral writing empowered by his masterly use of the winds. In contrast, the intimate, luminous Missa brevis 'St John of God', reveals a more contemplative faith. Directing Les Arts Florissants, William Christie illuminates these two sides of the composer with authority and poetic sensitivity, well served by a top-flight quartet of soloists.

The year 2022 marks the 400th Anniversary of the birth of one of French literature’s greatest geniuses: Molière.

His admirers thought they knew everything about his art, but they long remained deaf to an essential element in his output: the music.

In 1990, William Christie finally provided the opportunity to discover this domain, with Marc- Antoine Charpentier’s settings giving new depth to and shedding new light on the well-known text of Le Malade imaginaire.

This major recording opened up unexpected perspectives on an unjustly forgotten heritage. Experience it anew on this reissued double-album edition!

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.

Pierre Gallon's new program portrays a night of music, hovering between fantasies and poetic dreams of the English Renaissance. His keyboards - harpsichords, a virginal and a toy piano - create a mosaic of nocturnal visions, interspersed with the fantastic and unexpected. As a contemporary counterpoint, Bernard Foccroulle's Night (2023) reveals the light of a new dawn.

Gustavo Gimeno and the Toronto Symphony Orchestra ascend the heights of two of Bartok's musical peaks: his dazzling Concerto for Orchestra and infamous Miraculous Mandarin, here presented in it's complete version. As a pendant, the sediments by Canadian composer Emilie Cecilia LeBel, commissioned by the Orchestra, is a fascinating meditation on nature, it's stratas, and the collective memory it holds within.

From the Fantasie Op. 17 - a pinnacle of lyricism and virtuosity - to the irresistible Carnival Scenes from Vienna, via the Humoreske that bubbles over with invention, Nikolai Lugansky explores three of Schumann's iconic masterpieces for piano: a compelling panorama of an intensely personal musical world, mingling passionate outbursts with ironic daydreams and poetic depths.

Newly arrived in Paris, where he meets again his ex-pupil Marie-Antoinette, Gluck decides to court the Parisian public by revising one of his great Viennese successes: Orfeo ed Euridice. More than a simple adaptation to the French language and taste, his Orphee et Eurydice proves to be an out-and-out aesthetic revolution. This operatic wind of change has been recaptured for us to rediscover by Paul Agnew, Les Arts Florissants and three exceptional soloists.

The Rhine hymned by women's voices A major source of inspiration for writers and painters (Hugo, Nerval, Heine, Eichendorff, Turner) and above all composers throughout Romantic Europe, the legends of the Rhine still enthral our imaginations even today. The Ensemble Pygmalion and Raphael Pichon invite us on a fantastic voyage through famous works (including Wagner) and others, much more rarely recorded, that are absolute gems of the repertory for female voices.

When Leopold of Anhalt-Cothen died in 1728, his former Kapellmeister had not forgotten the five brilliant years he had spent in the prince's service. He dedicated to his memory a mourning cantata almost entirely based on the music of two major works of the mid-1720s, the Trauer-Ode and the St Matthew Passion. Although the score is lost, the wordbook and other sources of information have now made it possible to reconstruct the work. Raphael Pichon's first recording for harmonia mundi was voted recording of the year at the 2015 Victoires de la Musique Classique awards.

In this double album, Emmanuelle Bertrand, Pascal Amoyel and the Quatuor Parisii explore the musical world of late Schubert in all it's nuanced light and shade. Here with the well-known Arpeggione Sonata, the stupendous String Quintet, and selected songs arranged for cello and piano, the album becomes a poignant journey during which we see beauty yield to the inevitability of fate.