REVIEW:

In the early 1730s Bach revised his E flat major Magnificat of 1723, transposing it to D major and omitting the interpolations peculiar to Christmas performances in Leipzig. (Recent research suggests such richly scored Latin Magnificats could be performed in Lutheran churches at some 15 annual festivals, not just the three – Xmas, Easter, Ascension – previously supposed.) The D major was apparently Bach’s preferred version and is the one commonly played today, as on this latest instalment of Masaaki Suzuki’s acclaimed survey of Bach’s sacred vocal music. Suzuki’s Magnificat, like his earlier Bach recordings, is sharply focused and performed with engaging conviction. My benchmark disc, by Philippe Herreweghe, grips with its palpable air of excitement. Suzuki’s reading is cooler, more nuanced and has a clearer acoustic; yet Herreweghe’s soloists retain a slight edge – few could match Barbara Schlick and oboist Marcel Penseele in rapt duet on ‘Quia respexit’. Herreweghe’s coupling is the splendid Cantata, BWV 80; Suzuki offers a trio of fascinating rareties. The Magnificat by Kuhnau, Bach’s predecessor at Leipzig, resembles Bach’s in instrumentation and division of text: it’s a lively, attractive piece, trumpets ringing out boldly in the bright opening chorus. Two shorter Magnificats by Bach’s Dresden-based contemporary Zelenka represent a very different and highly individual approach, the C major’s tripartite structure creating an almost concerto-like framework for soprano soloist. Suzuki’s excellent, scrupulous performances should provoke greater interest in Kuhnau’s and Zelenka’s church music – the latter’s Missa Dei Filii, by Tafelmusik/Frieder Bernius (DHM), is also highly recommended. Performance: 5 (out of 5), Sound: 5 (out of 5)

-- Graham Lock, BBC Music Magazine

The first of its kind, this duet album is a musical journey that draws back the curtain which has obscured gay love-stories for centuries. In the 17th century, Venice offered a liberal safe haven of sorts to the gay community of greater Europe. There are accounts of outed artists escaping to Venice to live and work amongst its more permissive culture. Almost 400 years later, we reconnect with this uncommonly tolerant place and time to share a history that is yet untold. The album includes vivid and charming duets from Monteverdi’s 7th book of madrigals as well as his touching musical love letters (lettere amorose). Additionally, there are four modern-day premieres of works by the little-known composers Boretti, Melani, and Castrovillari; including a moving duet for the lovers Hercules and Theseus as they exit the underworld hand-in-hand. Solo arias by Cavalli and Stradella depict the yearning of hidden love, and the recording culminates with one of the most beautiful duets of all time, ‘Pur ti miro’ from Monteverdi’s L’incoronazione di Poppea. This album is a recognition and celebration of gay love that spans the centuries.

For the last four years, IGOR LEVIT’s name has been the first to be mentioned whenever there has been talk of the most exciting of the younger generation of pianists. What is so surprising about Levit is not only the maturity of his interpretations, but his boundless appetite for new repertoire of works as difficult and demanding as possible. Following his landmark recording, Beethoven – The Late Piano Sonatas, for which he has won international acclaim, Levit is again tackling another complex and difficult major work, J.S. Bach’s six partitas. Written between 1726 and 1730, the partitas BWV 825-830 are considered one of Bach’s masterpieces and are among the most difficult and challenging works for piano. Igor has studied Bach’s work extensively and has reached a deep understanding of the partitas allowing him to play them with such emotionality and musical “thirst” that this recording will be a benchmark for all other pianists.

Igor Levit has received international acclaim since he appeared as the youngest artist ever at the Arthur Rubinstein International Piano Master Competition in 2005, where he won four awards. Born in Russia, Levit moved to Germany with his family at the age of eight. He is a graduate of the Hochschule fur Musik in Hannover, where he achieved the highest grades in the academy’s history.

This is the first recording not only of Ave Maris stella and Laudate pueri but also the original D-major version of Bononcini's Te Deum. The work has been newly edited here from it's English eighteenth-century sources. These works were written during Bononcini's time in London, and a few months after his arrival the country was ravaged by a smallpox epidemic, which also saw the first introduction of inoculation against disease in England. It's fitting therefore that this recording was made in the early summer of 2021, six months after the COVID-19 vaccination programme began in the UK. Despite the challenges that this caused, director Owen Rees says "it was heart-lifting to be able to bring this project to fruition after many months during which singing was silenced".

Arcadian Dreams: the title conjures pastoral perfection, an idyllic vision rooted in Greek mythology. Equally, it references the Arcadian Academy established in Rome in 1690, a vibrant hub of intellectual and artistic creativity whose influence quickly spread across Europe. Arcadian Dreams assembles an exquisite group of composers-both esteemed and inspired-including the French luminaries Thomas-Louis Bourgeois, Louis Antoine Lefebvre, and Jean-Philippe Rameau; the Neapolitan maestro Domenico Scarlatti, who lived his last 35 years in Spain; and the German-born George Frideric Handel, whose early Italian career left an indelible mark on his masterpieces. The enchanting realm of Arcadian Dreams abounds with gods and goddesses, shepherds and nymphs, and bucolic dreamscapes, creating an aural tapestry of pictorial, secular cantatas intertwined with entrancing instrumental numbers. The fearless young soprano Hannah de Priest, making her recording debut, vividly captures the essence of these beguiling works, alongside the entrepreneurial early music ensemble Les Délices, whose members bring long-forgotten music alive for contemporary audiences. "[De Priest] sings with radiant tonal beauty ... always with compelling expressiveness. Her coloratura is both fluent and effortlessly produced... her colleagues in Les Délices ... help create vocal chamber music of the highest order. Together, their embrace of a variety of colors and subtle flexibility of phrasing add immeasurably to the quality of this recital... A most welcome release.” --Early Music America (Ken Meltzer) "I’m thrilled that more audiences will learn what we already know in Chicago: Hannah De Priest is a star... on an upward trajectory as a leading interpreter of 17th and 18th century repertoire, [she] caps a breakout season... with her debut solo album. Referencing both Greek mythology and the Arcadian Academy in 17th century Rome, Arcadian Dreams features secular Baroque cantatas by Rameau, Handel, Thomas Louis Bourgeois, and Louis Lefebvre with Les Délices, an early music ensemble founded by baroque oboist Debra Nagy. De Priest’s rise as a Baroque specialist is linked with Les Délices and their breakout debut at the 2023 Boston Early Music Festival... The album also includes Albinoni’s Oboe Sonata in C major and a keyboard sonata by Domenico Scarlatti, showcasing Nagy and harpsichordist Mark Edwards." --WFMT Classical (Oliver Camacho)

A MusicWeb International Recording of the Month!

This is a marvellous new B Minor Mass and it is, without a doubt, the most French-sounding version of the piece to have yet come my way.

That might sound like a lazy stereotype. After all, it’s performed by that most renowned Francophile among musicians, William Christie, who has dedicated his life to rehabilitating the French Baroque and whose efforts have meant that names such as Lully, Rameau, Charpentier and Marais have been not only rescued from their specialist niche but have been given an uncontested place among the concert programmes of the Anglo-Saxons. With his ensemble Les Arts Florissants he has become one of the greatest champions of that music, so it’s hardly surprising that some of the interpretative dust of the French Baroque should rub off onto his Bach.

It’s not just a trope to describe his Bach as Gallic, however. It’s there right from the start. The opening Kyrie is the most mellifluous and honeyed I have heard since the advent of historical performance practice. The two great fugues proceed with cultured smoothness that sounds as though they have one eyebrow perpetually raised. It’s a sound of which, I suspect, Lutheran Bach would have profoundly disapproved. I rather liked it, however, and as a change from what has become the norm of period practice I found it very effective.

That’s only one example of one of the performance’s wider traits. Throughout, it has an elegance, an élan, a nonchalance, almost, that would make them seem entirely at home if performed in the court of ancien regime Versailles. The solos with their instrumental obligatti, for example, sound refined and polished in a manner that is a hundred miles away from the church and more from the realm of the theatre. There’s nothing wrong with that, though, and it’s in keeping with Christie’s vision. My favourites included Katherine Watson in the Laudamus te, with a wonderfully dusky violin, and André Morsch’s playful combat with the horn in the Quoniam. Tim Mead’s lovely countertenor is a repeated highlight, be it slotting into Watson’s soprano in the Christe or sustaining a blisterinly poignant Agnus Dei at the end.

Not only are the orchestral and instrumental playing super throughout, but the choral singing is top notch, too. That, however, will come as no surprise to those how know and love the work of Les Arts Florissants, and it’s great to hear them tackling one of the central works of the German repertoire. It’s a Teutonic world that they can’t be too practised in, but they bring something remarkably distinctive to it.

The main reason for the performance’s success, however, is Christie himself. Bringing his lifetime’s experience to the B Minor Mass must, surely, have been a labour of love rather than an expectation, and the results are wonderful. There is majesty aplenty in the Gloria, whose opening casts off the mellifluousness of the preceding Kyrie as though emerging into a new light, producing rumbustious, gloriously winning tone that brought a broad grin to my face, as did the outer bookends of the Credo. The Sanctus is taken at a rapid pace, with brilliantly detailed violin inflections to enliven the texture, and the final Dona nobis pacem is brilliantly paced.

Perhaps the highlight of the work is the Easter sequence, however, and, in particular, the Crucifixus. Here you get the unmistakeable whiff of the Opéra, because Christie slows down the pace and stresses the beat with what comes close to string (and voice) sforzandi in a way that surely mimics the nails being repeatedly battered into Christ’s suffering body. It’s this movement that will tell you whether this performance is for you. Some might find it vulgar or too overtly theatrical. I thought it wonderful, an example of the conductor using his experience in the theatre to enlighten and deepen his vision of Bach.

Choose for yourself, but I thought this the most memorable B Minor Mass to have come my way since the (entirely different) performance from John Butt and the Dunedin Consort. Explore it and be surprised.

– MusicWeb International (Simon Thompson)

Classical Music

Bach's Coffeehouse brings together a selection of Apollo's Fire recordings - old and new alike - featuring repertoire that is believed to have been performed at Cafe Zimmerman in Leipzig, the city where Johann Sebastian Bach served as Cantor. Coffee houses were all the rage at the time, centres for socialising and musical soirees. Bach would have found respite from his formal duties as Cantor, by curating informal concerts at the thriving coffee emporium. Bach's Coffeehouse features new recordings of Brandenburg Concerto No. 4 with virtuoso soloists Alan Choo, the Singaporean violinist and Assistant Artistic Director of Apollo's Fire, and recorder player Daphna Mohr; the Double Concerto for Oboe and Violin with Debra Nagy and violinist Johanna Novom; and "Air on a G String" from Orchestral Suite No. 3. Rounding out the album, Apollo's Fire brings back catalogue favourites by two of Bach's contemporaries: Telemann's swaggering Don Quixote Suite, and Vivaldi's fiery "La folia", featuring Alan Choo and Spanish violinist Francisco Fullana.

For the first time with naïve, the counter-tenor Andreas Scholl joins the Accademia Bizantina and Alessandro Tampieri to present a Neapolitan programme, centred on the Virgin Mary.

Andreas Scholl and the Accademia Bizantina have for several decades enjoyed a successful musical partnership, encompassing the whole Baroque repertoire. As usual, this new album together includes both renowned and less well-known vocal and instrumental pieces. The figure of Mary, which has inspired a huge repertoire, both sacred and profane, runs through this Easter programme of exquisite affliction, virtuosic for both voice and orchestra. “Neapolitan music has a unique melodic vein and a great capacity to communicate emotion profoundly," says Alessandro Tampieri.

Thus, Vivaldi’s iconic Stabat Mater, which the German counter-tenor has enjoyed singing for many years, is placed alongside lesser-known airs from oratorios by Nicola Porpora and Leonardo Vinci, which had the character of the Virgin sung by a castrato. “I endeavour to place humanity before gender," says Andreas Scholl, “and I interpret the role of Mary with the greatest sincerity, without the slightest notion of 'travesty’. Love, despair and pain transcend the notion of gender."

We also find a Salve Regina by Pasquale Anfossi, requiring a particularly participative orchestra, a sonata by Angelo Ragazzi and a violin concerto by Pergolesi, both strongly echoing Pergolesi’s famous Stabat Mater. The solo violin parts are played by Alessandro Tampieri, first violin of the Italian ensemble, who conducts here from his instrument in the purest tradition of the Baroque orchestra.

The three main works on the CD are favourite pieces of mine that I often listened to as a student. One is the Suite No. 1 in E minor, BWV 996, by Johann Sebastian Bach. Another piece that I have always liked immensely, and which I thought that I will one day learn is the "Valses Poeticos" by Enrique Granados, and in the same way, I had started the "Sonatine pour harpe" op. 30 by Marcel Tournier, but never finished it. I then developed a plan to make a CD in order to create an additional project for myself using these three pieces as a basis.

I combined the three great works by Bach, Granados and Tournier so that they became ‘pathfinders’, so to speak, with the Renaissance pieces by Mayone connecting these three longer pieces with one another. This has the effect of creating a larger whole that can be experienced as a single concept. -- Markus Folker Thalheimer

Die Kunst der Fuge (The Art of Fugue) is the fifth album in the Bach series by Jorg Halubek and his ensemble il Gusto Barocco - the think tank for the music baroque master Johann Sebastian Bach. The new recording is led by Jorg Halubek, who plays the historic German Silbermann Organ from 1737. Together with the Early Music ensemble il Gusto Barocco, they present a unique interpretation of the world famous Bach composition "The Art of Fugue".

This 7-SACD collection includes recordings made by Brazilian-born conductor John Neschling of the orchestral works of Ottorino Respighi, alongside Puccini the best-known Italian composer of the first half of the twentieth century. Widely praised by the press, including BBC Music Magazine, which described them as ‘the finest-ever survey of the composer’s orchestral output undertaken by a single conductor’, these recordings reveal Respighi’s extraordinary range.

His transcriptions of works from the baroque period bear witness to his great musical refinement and are an example of the way in which people dared to adapt to current tastes at the beginning of the 20th century. His original compositions, whether symphonic poems, ballets or symphonic works, often call for a large orchestra, sometimes with the addition of numerous percussion instruments, piano, organ and even, in Pines of Rome, a phonograph, present a synthesis of the musical traditions of his native Italy and contemporary romantic, impressionist and neo-classical trends while remaining resolutely closed to modernist developments and atonality. Respighi’s lavish sound palette and the spirit that fills his scores were to find an echo in Hollywood film music, and John Williams considers him to be one of his most important influences.

Past praise of the previously released recordings included in this set:

Respighi: The Birds; Ancient Airs & Dances

These performances are uncommonly airy. Much of this music is suffused with an autumnal melancholy, and Neschling and his orchestra capture that very well.

-- Fanfare

Respighi: Metamorphoseon, etc.

All of the performances here are expert, but conductor John Neschling deserves particular credit for keeping things movement purposefully forward in the first two long, and mostly slowish, movements of the Belkis suite. The same work’s vulgar (let’s not kid ourselves) concluding Danza orgiastica also sounds more musical than usual–less like a back-alley gang bang–but with no loss of energy. The Liège orchestra plays with great bravura, and BIS’s SACD sonics, typically, are just terrific. In short, a very worthy entry in this ongoing series.

-- ClassicsToday.com

Respighi: Roman Trilogy / Neschling, Sao Paulo Symphony

The São Paulo Symphony Orchestra is a superb ensemble by any standards, and displays their virtuosity in the three Respighi symphonic poems.

-- SA-CD.net

The present edition contains the complete productions released by cpo between 1993 and 2018 on the subject of Michael Haydn's symphonies and wind concertos. During the course of a quarter of a century, as might well be imagined, a wealth of material accumulated that could not be put to renewed use without considerable cuts. Nine authors had contributed information about the sources and special qualities of the music to the original releases, which necessarily led to duplications, repetitions, and other redundancies that were to be avoided in the compilation. Moreover, it took some time for the numbering system currently in use for the works to be implemented. The authors initially continued to refer exclusively to the �Thematisches Verzeichnis der Instrumentalwerke von Michael Haydn� (to which we have assigned the letter P) that Lothar Perger had presented in the Denkmaler der Tonkunst in osterreich (DTo). The �enumeration� by the American musicologist Charles H. Sherman (1929-2018) later began to Appear in the booklets. Sherman initially compiled a provisional catalogue and then in 1993 published Johann Michael Haydn: A Chronological Thematic Catalogue of his Works in collaboration with T. Donley Thomas. This chronological listing (MH) and the P numbers, which soon will be 120 years old, are used whenever possible for the identification of the works recorded here. Our wish is that this unique edition may bring you great pleasure.

Masterpieces of Baroque piano literature, in critically acclaimed recordings by pianists with a fine sensibility for the 18th century. Recordings made between 2005 and 2023; new booklet essay; an ideal budget introduction to the world of the Baroque keyboard, full of elegant dances and virtuoso playing. This survey of Baroque composers ranges from the high-point of 18th-century keyboard writing, the Goldberg Variations of Bach, to little known gems such as the sonatas by Espona, Galuppi and Giustini. It places the three great masters of the Baroque - Bach, Handel and Rameau - in the context of their influential predecessor, Sweelinck, and then those composers such as Galuppi and Espona who write in a new, galant style which overlaps with the Classicism of Mozart. Some of the artists on these recordings are still in their 20s, having grown up with a culture of historically informed performance practice which they then bring to their handling of a modern piano. Others, such as Yuan Sheng and Wolfram-Schmitt Leonardy, have been playing these pieces for many decades, and bring to them a career's worth of experience in teasing out the meaning and rhetoric of 18th-century phrasing and harmony on an instrument which none of the composers ever encountered. Handel is represented not by the familiar Eight 'Great' Suites but by an imaginative collection of earlier suites. Scarlatti's fertile invention is generously celebrated with 35 of his sonatas. Bach predominates, naturally, with the Six Partitas and the Italian Concerto as well as the Goldbergs, thus representing the stylistic range of his output. Keyboard styles from all over mainland Europe make an appearance, in the Dutch/Italian nobility of Sweelinck, the Hispanic-Italian flavour of Scarlatti, the French accents of Bach and Handel, and native French of Rameau, and the exuberantly Italian flourishes and proto-operatic gestures of Galuppi and Giustini. There is something here for everyone.

Sir Andrew Davis was a talented keyboard player as a child and teenager, and after study with Peter Hurford, at St Albans, he spent four years at the University of Cambridge as organ scholar at King's College, under Sir David Willcocks. It was this period of his life that sparked his love for and appreciation of the organ works of J.S. Bach, which remained a lifelong passion. Sir Andrew made all the transcriptions on this album for the BBC Philharmonic, and four of them were recorded in November 2023. Sadly, Sir Andrew died before the final recording sessions for the album could take place (September 2024): we are immensely grateful that he completed the arrangements, and very thankful to Martyn Brabbins for completing the recording with the sense of style, love, and affection that Sir Andrew would have admired.

Following up her critically acclaimed recording of Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber's Rosary Sonatas (CCSSA37315), violinist and musical director Rachel Podger leads Brecon Baroque on Just Biber, an album of Sonatas from Biber's 1681 collection Sonatae Violino Solo and his theatrical Sonata Representivo. These works are extremely virtuosic with extensive multiple stopping and dazzling passages of stylus fantasticus. In Biber's time, harmony was something cosmic, vibrating in a God-given resonance between human, instrumental and celestial bodies. Dedicated to Archbishop Maximilian Gandolf, the sonatas were not only designed to delight, but also potentially to balm and heal; Biber described the sonatas as a kind of prayer for the Archbishop's longevity and good health.

This deluxe, 21st anniversary reissue of Lorraine Hunt Lieberson's legendary recording of the character Irene's arias from George Frideric Handel's Theodora - plus the composer's cantata La Lucrezia and the evergreen aria "Ombra Mai Fu" from Serse - evokes vivid memories of the mezzo-soprano's galvanizing musicianship and opens the ears of a new generation of music lovers to appreciate the timelessness of Lorraine's poignant interpretations. Specially remastered for this CD and newly available digitally in Dolby Atmos, the longevity of these performances is a testament to Lorraine's unique voice and soul. Conductor and leading Baroque specialist Harry Bicket recalls the immediate musical connection he and Lorraine shared from the time they first met in 1996 during rehearsals for Theodora at Glyndebourne. When Peter Seller's staging of the cantata was revived in 2003, it seemed obvious to go into the studio to record Lorraine's Theodora arias. A maverick musician and a riveting performer, Lorraine died in 2006 due to complications from cancer at the far-too-young age of 52. This recording, one of her last, preserves her consummate musical persona for posterity. The New Yorker's classical columnist Alex Ross characterised the album as "pull-down-the-blinds, unplug-the-telephone, can't-talk-right-now beautiful. She's singing it again; I have to go."

Led by it's Director Matthew Martin, The Choir of Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge, joins forces with the Academy of Ancient Music in Michael Haydn's rarely heard masterpieces: the Requiem and Missa Sancti Hieronymi. The four soloists are all ex-choral scholars of Caius Choir, showcasing the distinguished musical tradition of this student group. Unjustly neglected, Joseph Haydn's younger brother was a talented composer in his own right. Written after the death of his infant daughter and his patron, the deeply emotional Requiem is a masterpiece that combines complex colourful textures and forms with imaginative orchestration and vocal writing. Mozart was a great admirer and it is thought that Haydn's Requiem formed the prototype for his own better known masterpiece. In contrast, the later Missa Sancti Hieronymi is lighter and more optimistic. Unusually scored for oboes, bassoons, trombones and continuo (with no upper strings), it exudes transparency and joyful energy. This recording will undoubtedly put these neglected works back into mainstream repertoire.

Saxophonist Pat Posey goes to extremes for his solo debut album, they/beast. Introducing the tubax – a German-invented, modified version of the contrabass saxophone – Pat plays deep, dark renditions of J.S. Bach’s Cello Suite No. 3, Melodies for Saxophone by Philip Glass, Bach-inspired Mo’ingus by Brooklyn-based composer-saxophonist Shelley Washington, and Pat’s own Hymn.

REVIEWS:

Pat Posey’s solo album they/beast displays the Tubax›s incredible sound with a wide variety of materials, from Bach cello suites to Philip Glass› Melodies for Saxophone. If listening to Paul Desmond’s alto sax is like sipping a fine white wine, Posey’s Tubax is like drinking a delicious porter. Its lows are glorious and Posey dexterously wrestles it through some very complex material. they/beast is a unique and sonically adventurous treat.

-- The Whole Note

The growling, guttural timbre and harmonic timbre and harmonic overtones are perfectly showcased…Posey displays colossal lung power and technique…fiendishly virtuosic…a dazzling, unsettling spectacle by a musician pushing the creative envelope.

-- BBC Music Magazine

The tubax has an amazing low register, and in the hands of a player like Pat Posey, it can be nimble and produce astonishing multiphonics … Posey’s own Hymn (2022), a real tour-de-force of inspiration, beauty, quirkiness, and earblowing sounds. Fantastic album.

-- American Record Guide

Classical Music

These selections were recorded in November 1995 and June 1996.

Ingrid Matthews plays a baroque violin on this recording.
REVIEWS:
American Record Guide (7-8/00, pp. 83-84 - "...Matthews...has excellent taste, does a wonderful job of characterizing each movement, and is very good at bringing out all the voices in the fugues....This superb recording
is...my top recommendation....A very auspicious debut...a major talent..."

Sony Classical is pleased to announce the second solo album by exceptional young American organist, Cameron Carpenter, All You Need is Bach. Bach’s great keyboard masterpieces provide an ideal platform for Carpenter’s formidable creative gifts and the seemingly limitless possibilities of his dream instrument – his signature International Touring Organ. The album takes is cue from The Beatles’ classic “All You Need is Love”, where Bach’s Invention No. 8 in F major proudly rises out of the coda’s collage-like texture. Works include Contrapunctus IX from The Art of Fugue, Organ Sonatas in D minor and E-flat major, Prelude and Fugue in B minor, Invention No. 8 and, as the centerpiece, the great Passacaglia and Fugue in C minor. The latter holds a special place in Carpenter’s affections. “It is undoubtedly one of the Top 10 masterworks of all music, no matter how you evaluate it.”

A virtuoso composer-performer unique among organists, Cameron Carpenter’s approach is to smash the stereotypes of organists and organ music. Described as “extravagantly talented” (New York Times), and “smasher of cultural and classical music taboos,” (The New Yorker), Cameron is the first organist ever nominated for a Grammy Award® for his debut album, Revolutionary. All You Need is Bach is the second recording made on Cameron’s new International Touring Organ. The organ, designed by Cameron himself, is a mobile digital organ that is artistically and sonically equal to any of the world’s great organs and will challenge the way the world thinks about organs.

Danish Saxophone Quartet who has been widely known for their superb performance of contemporary music embarked on a new field of classical repertoire a few years ago. Their rendition of Bach’s Die Kunst der Fuge received acclaim from critics and audience a like and released on Kontrapunkt 32259. Present CD of Goldberg Variations was recorded live in concert in Rome with the superb arrangement by Italy’s foremost arranger/composer Francesco Frederico Venerucci. repertoire a few years ago. Their rendition of Bach’s Die Kunst der Fuge received acclaim from critics and audience a like and released on Kontrapunkt 32259. Present CD of Goldberg Variations was recorded live in concert in Rome with the superb arrangement by Italy’s foremost arranger/composer Francesco Frederico Venerucci.

With Hail! Bright Cecilia, Henry Purcell, herald of the British Baroque, pays tribute to the patron saint of music through a score widely regarded as one of his masterpieces. Composed in 1692, this ode reflects both the artistic effervescence of 17th-century England and the central role of music in society at the time. Vincent Dumestre and Le Poeme Harmonique reveal the full expressive richness of Purcell's writing in a performance where jubilant brilliance, lyrical delicacy, and dramatic contrasts unfold with infectious vitality. Alternating between recitatives, solo arias, and sumptuous choruses, the score showcases Purcell's mastery of musical dramaturgy, balancing orchestral refinement with controlled theatricality.

What happens when the illustrious brass sections of the Berlin and Vienna Philharmonic come together? The answer: The Philharmonic Brass Making it's debut in Vienna's Musikverein in April 2023 the group will come together for recording, tours and education work. Comprising some of the best-known faces in the brass world from Berlin, Vienna and their friends, the group includes Sarah Willis, horn and Paul Halwax, tuba. Their Debut album 'Overture!' was conducted by Tugan Sokhiev and released through Decca Classics. Now it's time for the following up album through the new label Supreme Classics: Italiana! Conducted by Maestro Riccardo Muti includes virtuoso arrangements of some of the best-known music including Verdi's Sinfonia di Nabucco, Rossini: Guillaume Tell - Overture and many more.

The pieces chosen and performed by the refined violinist Liliana Bernardi for this third CD, created with the auspices and support of the Associazione Nazionale Italia-Austria of Rome, admirably highlight the contribution given in the seventeenth/eighteenth centuries by Italian musicians to compositions for solo violin, according to the new aesthetic canons based on the sounds of nature and the movements of sentiments. (Vittorio Tedeschi - President of the Associazione Nazionale Italia-Austria)

Having completed the entire trilogy of Handel's Concerti grossi, the Akademie Fur Alte Musik Berlin presents a recording of the first six Concerti grossi, Op. 6 by the composer, ensemble leader and violin virtuoso Arcangelo Corelli, who received the almost cult-like reverence during his lifetime. The composer had been experimenting with this one of the most distinctive forms of instrumental music of the Baroque era since the late 1670s, but it was only towards the end of his life that he sought to publish these compositions and selected only twelve exemplary pieces from what was probably a much larger collection. He laid the foundations of this instrumental form for future composers such as the aforementioned Georg Frederic Handel, who paid tribute to the Italian Baroque master with his two opuses. The Akademie Fur Alte Musik Berlin and it's two concertmasters, Mayumi Hirasaki and Georg Kallweit, who demonstrate their extraordinary virtuosity, only prove why they are regarded as one of the most influential period-instrument ensembles of today. The Akademie Fur Alte Musik Berlin has a substantial PENTATONE discography, including the Diapason d'Or awarded CANTATA with Bejun Mehta (2018), Handel's Concerti grossi Op. 3 and 6 (released in 2019 and 2020), Telemann's Miriways (2020), Handel's Messiah (2020), Haydn's L'isola disabitata (2021), La Passione with Christina Landshamer (2022), a recording of Mozart's Paris and Haffner symphonies and the Oboe Concerto with Xenia Loffler (2023), Telemann's Ino (2024), and a recording with Mozart's symphonies Nos. 29 & 33 and the Clarinet Concerto with Ernst Schlader (2024).

Under the motto "Dancing Organ," Czech organist Michael Bartek has compiled a varied program of dance pieces from different eras, including original compositions and some virtuoso transcriptions. In addition to popular works, there are also a few surprises to discover. This is performed on "his" Kuhn organ in the Richterswil Church near Zurich. For this SACD, the sound has been optimally captured in stereo and 5.1 surround sound. Unter dem Motto "Dancing Organ" hat der tchechische Organist Michael Bartek ein vielseitiges Programm von Tanzstucken verschiedener Epochen - Originalkompositionen und teils virtuose Transkriptionen - zusammengestellt. Neben popularen Werken gibt es auch so manche uberraschung zu entdecken. Als Instrument dient ihm "seine" Kuhn-Orgel in der Richterswiler Kirche, nahe Zurich. Fur diese SACD wurde der Klang optimal als Stereo- und auch als 5.1 Surround-Aufnahme eingefangen.

Since 2017, violinist Emmanuelle Dauvin plays whilst accompanying herself on the organ pedalboard - recalling the musical technique of Nicolaus Bruhns at the end of the seventeenth century. This is OVNI Baroque : a spectacular yet forgotten musical practice. Alongside soprano Heather Newhouse, she created Cantata a 2 : a concert programme of arias and instrumental pieces, for soprano, violin and bass, by J.S. Bach, presented here in an innovative arrangement. The arias bring a consolidating balance to the sonata trio in which the text unfolds from the vocal line. From the purity of the trio by two, emerges a bounteous expression.