Honored among the 30 "Unmissable Albums of the Past 30 Years" by BBC Music!

The Cleveland-based baroque orchestra Apollo's Fire, together with founder / conductor Jeannette Sorrell, launched on Avie in July 2010 with a double release featuring discs of Mozart and J.S. Bach. They follow with their tribute to the 400th anniversary year of Monteverdi's seminal Vespers of the Blessed Virgin, released in anticipation of the group's first European tour which takes them to Spain and Holland, and culminates with their Wigmore Hall debut on 30 November. Vespers has been a signature piece for Apollo's Fire for over ten years, and it's fitting for Sorrell and her vibrant band to bring this magnificent masterwork to wider audiences through this recording. critical acclaim for Apollo's Fire "Resplendent . . . with vibrant attention to dramatic detail. Unlike many accounts of the "Vespers," Sorrell's interpretation conveyed the intense drama that pervades this many-splendored puzzle. She must be one of the best conductors around in this repertoire. In her hands, the glory of Monteverdi's accomplishment couldn't have been more radiant or moving. An Apollo's Fire triumph . . . a thriller from first note to last." - The Cleveland Plain Dealer "A stunning achievement" - Fanfare "Sorrell and her fine young choir lavish attention on every phrase and inflexion. The exhilaration and sense of discovery is utterly infectious" - International Record Review

REVIEW

This recording is stunningly different from the norm. [Jeannette Sorrell] constructs a simulacrum of [17th-century Italians'] religious fervour in the explosive presentation of Dixit Dominus, and their sincere reverence in Ave Maris Stella. The real understanding of style is everywhere. No cautious "note counting" in the complex Duo Seraphim, instead the fluttering lines become the beating wings of angels, and in the startling echo duet of the Gloria Patri (from the Magnificat) we feel the ricochet from the very stones of Monteverdi's church.

--BBC Music Magazine (Anthony Pryer)

One of Respighi’s masterpieces, Gli uccelli (The Birds) includes transcriptions of birdsong and music of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in writing of evocative, captivating lyricism. Trittico botticelliano, an illustration of three paintings by Botticelli, employs dance rhythms, modal melodies and a variant of the medieval hymn Veni, Veni Emmanuel in deft, often sublime fashion. The Suite in G major, cast for strings and organ in the form of a Concerto grosso, is heard on this première recording in its original edition.

Volume 7 of Rossini’s complete piano music, Péchés de vieillesse (Sins of Old Age), ranges across six of the fourteen albums to include works for both solo piano and for piano and voices. Two of the pieces – Andantino mosso (track 3), recently discovered in manuscript, and La notte di Santo Natale (track 5) receive their first recording. ‘Alessandro Marangoni sounds completely at home… and he presents the music with style, good humour and no mean virtuosity’ (MusicWeb International on 8.573107 / Volume 6).

Performed for the first time in its original uncut version, this production of Guillaume Tell was the jewel in the crown of the 25-year history of the ‘Rossini in Wildbad’ opera festival. Rossini’s final, great, operatic masterpiece is a story of liberation, the oppressed Swiss attaining their ideal of emancipation by hounding the tyrannical Habsburgs out of their country. Although it was composed for the complex demands of the Paris Opéra, numerous dances, choruses and arias were dropped for reasons of practicality. These are restored in the present recording which also includes the stunning finale of the shorter 1831 version of the opera.

Il Farnace is the most re-written and re-proposed of Vivaldi’s operas. Versions of Farnace, two in 1727 and one each in 1730, 1731 and 1732, were conceived and adapted to the different circumstances for Venice, Prague, Pavia and Mantua, always with a cast to Vivaldi’s satisfaction and with the composer in control of the production. The greatest appreciation of Vivaldi’s operatic music was expressed in a letter by a spectator of the 1727 Carnival season. The abbot Antonio Conti wrote that of all the operas of the Venice season he liked best Farnace because its music was varied, “between the sublime and the tender,” and because Vivaldi’s pupil worked wonders. In 1738, for the Ferrara Carnival season, Vivaldi wrote a new score of the opera. This is the last Farnace, in two acts, as the third was lost.

Austrian Baroque music takes center stage in the repertoire of this unusual Baroque ensemble. The ensemble Ars Antiqua Austria is dedicated to musicological research of Austrian Baroque composers. The abundance of rediscovered works led to several successful premiere recordings, including albums featuring the works of R. Weichlen, H.I.F. Biber, G. Arnold, F. J. Aumann, and more. In the words of conductor Gunar Letzbor: “It is almost impossible nowadays to perform Vivaldi’s music without any preconceptions, even if one engages with it only rarely. Vivaldi’s sound is ubiquitous… There is so much to discover amongst his works, away from mainstream sounds. This recording and its preparation: practicing in peace and quiet, trying out sounds, receiving and discarding ideas, taking in the texts, rediscovering melodies, and if possible, never listening to any Vivaldi recordings.”

Marina Rebeka is one of the most successful sopranos of her generation. To mark the occasion of the upcoming Rossini year of 2018, she and the Munchner Rundfunkorchester, conducted by Marco Armiliato, have recorded an album of highly dramatic opera arias that is now being released by BR-KLASSIK. The album "Amor fatale" offers the opportunity to reacquaint oneself with the great soprano arias from Rossini's less well-known but musically convincing tragic operas, in a fine interpretation.The concept album entitled "Amor fatal" focuses on powerful female roles from the operas Otello, Armida, La donna del lago (The Lady of the Lake), Maometto II, Semiramide (Semiramis), Moïse et Pharaon (Moses and Pharaoh) and Guillaume Tell (William Tell). The women are obliged to choose between love and duty, and frequently have to subordinate their personal fate to that of their family, nation or homeland.The Latvian soprano has quite some experience with roles in Rossini, above all from his great tragic operas: the role of Anna Erisso from Maometto II, which she performed in 2008 at the Rossini Opera Festival in Pesaro, the composer’s birthplace, marked the very start of her career. She went on to attract international attention in 2009 when she debuted at the Salzburg Festival, as Anaï in Moïse et Pharaon. For her album she has worked through Rossini's original handwritten manuscripts and included this in her performance; she also developed her own coloratura, which not only suits her voice both musically and technically, but also best corresponds to the specific stage events and emotions encountered in her respective operatic roles.