Baroque Music - BACH, J.S. / CIMAROSA, D. / HANDEL, G.F. / L

Handel, G.F.: Semele [Oratorio] (Sung in German)

Handel, G.F.: Israel in Agypten

SONG OF JOY:DIE SCHÖNSTEN CHÖR

Handel, G.F.: Organ Concertos Nos. 1-4

Classical Music

The latest instalment in this popular series turns to the life and times of George Frideric Handel. Written by Davinia Caddy, narrated by Nicholas Boulton and featuring excerpts from Handel's most popular works culled from the Naxos label and it's affiliates.

HANDEL: Un'alma innamorata / Chi rapi la pace al core / La L

Turkish pianist KCS is the Grand Prize winner of the 2022 Alexis Gregory Vendome Prize, where he was also awarded the Recording Prize.   has performed in concert halls such as the Morgan Library & Museum’s Gilder Lehrman Hall in New York, Wiener Saal in Salzburg, Verbrugghen Hall in Sydney and in other venues in cities such as Paris, Nice, Brussels, Cleveland, Verona and Istanbul. He has appeared in festivals such as the Gümüşlük Classical Music Festival, Antalya Piano Festival and Bellapais Music Festival. This season, he will appear at the 2024 Sydney Festival as the winner of The Rex Hobcroft People’s Choice Prize at the Sydney International Piano Competition, as well as in concerts with the Borusan Istanbul Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by James Judd and New Manhattan Sinfonietta conducted by Gürer Aykal.

Born in 1999 in Ankara, he began his musical education with Gamze Kırtıl at the Bilkent University’s Music and Ballet Primary School at the age of seven. After studying with Antonio Pompa-Baldi and Sergei Babayan at the Cleveland Institute of Music, he received his bachelor’s degree from The Juilliard School, where he was a recipient of the Ahmet Ertegün Memorial Scholarship and the Susan W. Rose Piano Fellowship twice. In 2018, he was accepted as a scholar of “Young Musicians on World Stages” (YMWS), led by Güher-Süher Pekinel. During his studies, he has had the chance to work with musicians such as Jacques Rouvier, Pavel Gililov, Boris Berman, Ilya Itin, Michel Beroff, Jean-Francois Heisser, Gabriela Montero and Emanuel Ax. He is currently pursuing graduate studies at the Cleveland Institute of Music under the direction of Maestro Babayan.

Dutch recorder player Erik Bosgraaf is one of a group of Young Turks taking a fresh look at the Baroque recorder repertory, with often spectacular results. Here Bosgraaf turns to Handel’s sonatas for recorder and harpsichord. The keyboard realizations here are unusually vigorous and ornate, and the instrument is almost an equal partner with the recorder. This album represents an excellent imaginative reconstruction of what these sonatas might actually have sounded like in Handel’s time, based on the contexts in which they might have been used.

Classical Music

Manfred Huss and the period orchestra Haydn Sinfonietta Wien are internationally acclaimed for their rousing performances of music by Haydn and Schubert. They now bring their indomitable enthusiasm and collective expertise to one of Handel's most famous and popular works, rounding off the disc with the composer's far less well-known, but equally resplendent Ouverture from the Occasional Oratorio.

An audiophile LP transfer for a superbly engineered modern recording of Handel's Oboe Concertos. - The Latvian oboist Andrius Puskunigis has built a catalogue of critically acclaimed albums on Brilliant Classics. Fanfare welcomed his 2016 recording of Mozart and contemporaries in glowing terms: 'Puskunigis and company provide a little over an hour of unalloyed pleasure, as they did in their lovely recording of reconstructions of J.S. Bach oboe concertos a year ago... Brilliant Classics... offers this in excellent sound... Classical Oboe Concertos would be a most welcome release at full price. At Brilliant's bargain pricing it should be absolutely irresistible to anyone remotely interested in fine oboe playing or Classical-period concertos.' - From 2020, this album of oboe concertos by Handel includes a number of first recordings and reconstructions. There is ample justification for such imaginative licence, given that Handel himself remarked that the oboe was his favourite instrument, and given the freedom with which he adapted and transcribed his own music as the occasion demanded. - Thus, alongside the canonic three oboe concertos, Puskingis presents two more, one for the oboe and the other for the oboe d'amore, transcribed from arias originally written for castrato roles in his operas. A C major Concerto thus includes the famous aria 'Lascia ch'io pianga' from Rinaldo, while the expressive heart of the D major concerto for oboe d'amore features 'Ombra mai fu' from Serse. - A similarly inventive approach has been taken to ornamentation and decoration, inserting liberal opportunities for Andrius Puskunigis to display his virtuosity with cadenza passages. Accompanied by the neatly contoured modern-instrument Klaipeda Chamber Orchestra, and recorded in the acoustically optimal modern concert hall of Klaipeda, the album has a focused resonance which makes it highly suitable for this transfer to 180gm vinyl.

The marvelously affecting Italian Duets have long remained favorites among Handel's oeuvre distinct markers of the influences of the young Saxon's early trips to Rome and studies of the chamber duet master Agostino Steffani. The grand Hamonices Mundi is joined here by rising stars of Baroque singing Gemma Bertagnolli and Susanne Ryden.

While Handel was in Italy, the country’s vocal traditions influenced him greatly. He wrote a substantial amount of Italian cantatas and mini operas. They are based on secular texts, many of which deal with Arcadian tales and myths, usually about unrequited love. The three cantatas on this release are for tenor solo, and are sung by young Spanish tenor Jorge Juan Morata. Performing on period instruments, the Ensemble Recondita Armonia beautifully performs the two Sonatas which serve as an instrumental entr’acte between the cantatas. The ensemble has already recorded for Brilliant Classics to much critical acclaim.