Winner of the 2024 York Early Music International Young Artists Competition, the trio Ayres Extemporae make it's recording debut on Linn Records with a programme that explores various colours and textures made available by the group's unusual combination of violin, five-string cello and cello. Erbarme dich! Represents a spiritual journey from torment to redemption built around the instrumental transcriptions of arias and sonatas by J. S. Bach, interwoven with the expressive depth of works by Biber and Locke. It is a profound reflection on these universal themes, tracing the full spectrum of human emotion from anger, guilt or remorse to acceptance and, ultimately, peace. The aria from the cantata BWV 55 lends it's name to this programme: a plea for mercy of touching vulnerability, signalling the beginning of the journey towards absolution.

This new recording celebrates the Arp Schnitger Organ in the Martinikerk in Groningen, The Netherlands, one of the most famous Baroque organs in Europe. Built by master organ builder Arp Schnitger between 1691 and 1692, it showcases his characteristic North German style, known for it's brilliant, articulate sound and richly layered pipework. Over the centuries, the instrument has been expanded and restored, yet it's original tonal structure remains remarkably intact. Today, it features an impressive array of stops, three manuals, and a powerful pedal division. It's majestic sound and historical significance continue to attract musicians, scholars, and visitors from around the world. The program presents works by Johann Sebastian Bach, in connection with Bach's predecessors, composers who influenced and inspired him: Girolamo Frescobaldi (Capriccio XI), Nicholaus Bruhns (Praeludium in E minor), Dietrich Buxtehude (Ciacona in E minor), and Georg Bohm (Choralvorpsiel, Preludium in C major). A beautifully compiled program, offering a journey over the musical path which ultimately led to the towering genius of Johann Sebastian Bach! Organist, composer, and conductor, Nicola Dolci has an active international concert career, both as a soloist and as an organist, conductor, and continuo player with various European ensembles. He is professor of Organ at the Pontifical Institute of Sacred Music in Rome and at the "Scuola Diocesana di musica Santa Cecilia" in Brescia. Among his various national and international awards are the Second Prize at the prestigious International Martini Organ Competition 2022 in Groningen.

A quartet of German Baroque masters at their most daring and outlandish, exploring the harmonic quirks of mean-tone temperament on the organ. Manuel Tomadin has assembled an impressive library of Baroque-era albums on Brilliant Classics, including critically acclaimed surveys of Bach and comprehensive documents of the surviving output of lesser-known names such as Christian Erbach and Vincent Lubeck. 'A very attractively conceived and well-executed Bach organ recital disc,' noted Fanfare of Manuel Tomadin's diverse recital (95786): 'All recital discs should be this thoughtfully conceived and well done; cordially recommended.' In the same vein, this new recording leads the listener through both unfamiliar and well-known names and works, drawing out the original meaning of the term Baroque as 'the broken pearl' - something strange and exquisite. At a time before the 'even-tempered' system of tuning homogenised the spaces between different intervals - some of them being narrower or wider than others in what is known as 'mean-tone' temperament - composers such as Buxtehude might exploit those idiosyncrasies to produce harmonies which were deliberately awkward or dissonant. Manuel Tomadin has chosen the Praeludium in E BuxWV141, the Praeludium in F sharp minor BuxWV146 and a chorale prelude, Nun bitten wir den heiligen Geist BuxWV208, to illustrate this point. The most unfamiliar name here is Johann Heinrich Buttstett (1666-1727) - Capellmeister in the central-German town of Erfurt - who defended conservative theories of musical evolution as a writer and teacher, but also produced works which sound quite radical for their time, such as an extensive Praeludium and Canzona in D minor. JS Bach is represented here by a pair of organ preludes and fugues (BWV534 in F minor and BEV547 in C major) from his Weimar period - relatively early in his career, but no less experimental for that. The search for harmonic extremes was continued by the most radically inventive of his sons, Carl Philipp Emanuel, and Manuel Tomadin demonstrates this continuity with the chorale prelude 'Ich ruf zu dir'. A fascinating and unique collection, performed on the authentic and historically significant Hinsz organ of 1738 at the Broederkerk in the Dutch town of Kampen.

Under the title "Bach Organ Landscapes", a new complete recording of Bach's organ works will be released over the next few years. It is based on ten historical organ builders who were relevant to Johann Sebastian Bach. With no other instrument like the organ are space and sound so closely linked. The further we look back into the history of music, the more regional developments play a role. Traveling has been part of the world of organists from the very beginning.

Schone Welt, wo bist du? These words by Friedrich Schiller are the first of this new project, an exploration of existence, wandering and mourning. Coline Dutilleul has conceived a programme in which keyboard works by Johann Sebastian Bach and Lieder by Franz Schubert echo themes of melancholy and death: inner states that music makes perceptible through tempo, texture and harmony. These works trace a journey marked by absence and resilience in which agitation, renunciation and appeasement follow one another like the stages of mourning.

Dora Deliyska's programs are frequently dedicated to a specific theme that links the individual pieces together. At first glance, this does not appear to be the case with the present CD. Yet it would not be Dora Deliyska if there were not, in fact, a-perhaps mysterious-connection between the pieces performed. - Christian Kuhn

Although we know of at least five concertos J.S. Bach wrote for solo organ we have no surviving Bach organ concertos with orchestral accompaniment. Contrast this with the 200+ cantatas: of these, 18 feature organ obbligato, which Bach uses as a solo instrument in arias, choral sections and sinfonias. The most obviously conspicuous date to 1726. In May to November of that year, Bach composed six cantatas which assign a prominent solo role to the organ. Most of these are reworkings of movements of lost violin and oboe concertos written in Bach's time at Weimar and Köthen. Why Bach wrote such a number of obbligato organ cantatas in such a short period remains unknown. One possible explanation may lie in Dresden, where Bach had given a concert on the new Silbermann organ in the Sophienkirche in 1725. Some scholars think that, in addition to other organ works, he also performed organ concertos, or at least a few earlier versions of the sinfonias, with obbligato organ and strings in order to show off the organ. From the cantatas mentioned above, along with the related violin and harpsichord concertos, it is perfectly possible to reconstruct a number of three-movement organ concertos of this type. By using this method, we hope to bring some of the music which Bach may have performed in Dresden in 1725 back to life on this release.

By the time Bach relocated to Leipzig, he had already composed a number of masterpiece works. During his pivotal years at Köthen, he composed his Inventions and Sinfonias. These pieces, although typically overshadowed by his larger works such as The Well-Tempered Clavier, show Bach’s maturity as they serve as a fundamental tool for learning the piano.On this album, recorded in Leipzig, pianist Zhu Xiao-Mei does an extraordinary job of bringing out the musical density in these pieces.

It was "the great meanings of the ancients" that drove Goethe to Italy and Mendelssohn to Scotland. Literati and musicians are united by a preoccupation with the past, searching for themselves in the foreign and distant. This is more than mere intellectual curiosity; to receive fresh stimuli for one's own work from the ancients is like an act of self-assurance through questioning those masters who form the canon of knowledge and to whom new voices must be gallantly added. By showing personal reverence through artistic references, artists have always created new forms of expression in the footsteps of the past. Bringing such interactions to light is the goal of this album. The collected works show examples of how pioneering this attitude is. It was Mendelssohn who was the impetus for the Bach renaissance in the mid-nineteenth century. It directly affected Clara and Robert Schumann as well as Franz Liszt, whose piano transcriptions of Bach's organ works open the recording. Like many composers, Liszt was drawn to Italy, whose cultural heritage, including Renaissance paintings and poems by Dante Alighieri and Francesco Petrarch, captivated him. Petrarch in particular appealed to Liszt and Schumann. The latter read his poems and translated them; Liszt set them to music. Dante's "Divine Comedy" was also omnipresent. Liszt's resounding Dante reading concludes the series of selected works that push us back, as it were, into the future.

For this programme, Duo Diversitas has selected or created sophisticated arrangements that embody virtuosity and musical expression. In focusing on great composers of the 18th and 19th centuries, Marisa Minder and Evgeniya Spalinger explore the artistic refinement, lyrical grace and technical sophistication of the guitar and flute. The one original work for this combination is Hans Haug's Capriccio, a modern classic that alludes to Baroque procedure but within the context of exciting contemporary harmonies.

Johann Sebastian Bach today has a reputation as the Godfather of Western European music, as a fountainhead of classical music theory and the creator of some of the greatest works the world has ever produced. Better known as a keyboard virtuoso, Bach was not regarded as a genius in his day, so how did this headstrong and belligerent but ambitious young musician become so extraordinarily productive? What were his influences? How did he end up in jail and what did he get up to in Café Zimmerman? Discover all of this and more in musicologist Davinia Caddy's fascinating biography of a composer who, to Max Reger, represented ‘the beginning and the end of all music’. The narrative, presented by actor Leighton Pugh, is illustrated with musical excerpts including the Brandenburg Concertos, Concerto for Two Violins in D minor, Harpsichord Concerto in D minor, The Art of Fugue, St Matthew Passion and the Mass in B minor among many others.

With performances by...

Nils Thilo Krämer | Christian Benda | Petra Morath-Pusinelli | Alexander Jablokov | Robert Hill | Kölner Kammerorchester | Takako Nishizaki | Ariane Pfister | Capella Istropolitana | Andrés Gabetta | Helmut Müller-Brühl | Wolfgang Rübsam | Sebastian Benda | Ralf Otto | Swiss Baroque Soloists | Slovak Philharmonic Chorus | Christian Brembeck | Julia Brown | Luc Beauséjour | Gerhild Romberger | Bachorchester Mainz | Jan Cižmár | Oliver von Dohnányi

The Secret Life of Carols brings together a mixture of the earliest medieval English carols and traditional carols from across Europe. The title is inspired by the fact that many carols have intertwined roots, dating back centuries, often to the Middle Ages, with melodies being adapted and reinvented, and new sets of words written. In the Middle Ages the term "carol" didn't have the same meaning as today. It was merely an indication of the form of the piece which would start and end with a chorus (named a burden) and would be interspersed with verses which told the story. The word carol is derived from the Old French word carole, a circle dance accompanied by singers. Several medieval carols including The Coventry Carol and There is No Rose are also still sung in modern arrangements at Christmas carol concerts and church services across the country. And indeed these early English carols are very much "for the people". The programme on this album includes a selection of traditional carols from across Europe. Many, like the Burgundian carol Patapan, have roots going back centuries, some as far back as the Middle Ages. There is also a personal dimension to the choice of carols, drawing on three of the roots of the performers on the album- Finnish, German and Irish roots to include several carols which are not well known in the UK.

After his studies at the Conservatorio C. Pollini in Padua, Francesco Galligioni specialized in playing the baroque cello and the viola da gamba. He is one of the founding members of the Venice Baroque Orchestra, with which he has toured and recorded numerous times. He has worked with conductors and soloists such as John Eliot Gardiner, Andrea Marcon, Gustav Leonhardt, Sara Mingardo, Christopher Hogwood and Magdalena Kozena. With the ensemble gambe di legno, Galligioni dedicates himself to previously undiscovered works from the Renaissance and Baroque periods. More recently, Francesco Galligioni has devoted himself increasingly to the baroque solo repertoire for violoncello. His great passion is the suites of Johann Sebastian Bach. After studying these mythical gems for a long time, Francesco will perform these works for the first time in concert over the next three years and he also record them for this album.

This new release is the soundtrack from the motion picture, Bach in Brazil. The story is inspired by true events, and follows retired German music teacher Marten Brueckling as he travels to Brazil to collect a sheet of original Bach manuscript, but ends up teaching music to children in a juvenile detention center. The tracks on this release are enchanting arrangements of Bach’s best loved melodies, mixed with Brazilian flair. “Our aim in Bach in Brazil is to bring Bach’s melodies to life with Brazilian rhythms and instrumentations, rather like Marten Brueckling in the film gaining a new perspective on his life from the children and the Brazilian feeling for life.”

Discover Bach includes some of this great Baroque composer’s best known works, such as Ave Maria, Air, Brandenburg Concerto, Cello Suites, Goldberg Variations, and many more.; The Discover Series from Berlin Classic aims to make classics popular, firing people up about the music presented, regardless of musical taste.; Rather than focusing on complete works, this series focuses on individual pieces that have rewritten our musical history.

As the predecessors of Sony Classical, CBS Masterworks had not a catalogue of "authenticity-minded" recordings (the pioneering efforts of Raymond Leppard and Jean-Claude Malgoire notwithstanding), Sony made a distinctive new start and engaged indubitably one of the most experienced producers in the field of early music, Wolf Erichson. If the successes secured by such musicians as Gustav Leonhardt, Nikolaus Harnoncourt and Frans Brüggen in the 1960s were the most visible signs to a wider audience of thorough-going change in the interpretation of music from medieval to baroque times, there was no doubt in assigning a part of the general success to the work of the production teams behind the recordings. Wolf Erichson was involved in producing recordings for many artists through his work for Das Alte Werk series. Success followed him since the early 1970s, when he founded the SEON production company. Later, Sony Classical’s SEON line brought the pioneers of period intruments and vocal performances such as Frans Brüggen, Amer Bylsma, the Kuijkens, Gustav Leonhardt, and Konrad Ruhland on the international market at a budget price. Recordings made on SEON enjoyed both popular and critical acclaim. Later, producer Wolf Erichson, supervised Sony's VIVARTE label, which was a label devoted solely to producing historical music using modern recording technologies. Music critic Tom Manoff said these digital recordings of the VIVARTE series are among the best he has ever heard. The upcoming VIVARTE collector’s boxed sets feature attractive repertoire selection out of the legendary catalogue of ancient music. The CDs appear in their original coupling and cover at a special price. Some VIVARTE sets also include selected recordings from the SEON catalogue to round up the collections of selected titles.

Internationally renowned flutist Ulla Miilmann is the recipient of numerous awards and prizes including the prestigious “Flute-Talk” competition in Chicago and the Gold Medal at the Danish All Music Competition, among others. Flutist Ulla Miilmann was born in 1972 in Denmark. She received her Bachelor of Music at North Carolina School of the Arts in 1992. During her college years, Ms Miilmann was already selected as representative of Denmark in the European Broadcasting Union "Concerts for Young Soloist". Currently she is the principal flutist of the Danish National Symphony Orchestra. Ms. Miilmann was nominated for the GRAMMY award for her performance of Ole Schmidt's Concerto for flute and string orchestra. Together with the elite instrumentalists of Denmark: Søren Johannsen on harpsichord and Kjeld Lybecker Steffensen on Baroque cello, Ms Miilmann interprets the complete flute works by J. S. Bach including the Partita in A minor for solo flute.