Signed copies of our October release COLCD 141. Choral settings of Shakespeare, Wordsworth, James Weldon Johnson, Charles Causley and others, by John Rutter

Featuring 4 works receiving their world premiere recording, Signum Classics are proud to annouce the new album 'Dorothy Howell: Orchestral Works' conducted by Rebecca Miller with the BBC Concert Orchestra. Until now these works have rarely been performed, and the majority of works are unpublished and only exist in manuscript form. "I hope this album can help to revive Dorothy’s music, to help her live on, to finally have the recognition she deserved and never received, and to secure this music’s rightful place in the centre of the classical music repertoire" - Rebecca Miller

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

Terra Infirma was directly inspired by the experiences of it's creative team. Reena Esmail, who resides in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Altadena, was forced to evacuate her home during the catastrophic fires of January 2025. Kondonassis, a committed advocate for the environment, is founder and director of the non-profit organization Earth at Heart; her initiatives include the widely-praised commissioning project FIVE MINUTES for Earth. Terra Infirma reflects not only the environmental passion and advocacy of both artists, but also their inspiration to innovate and expand the concerto form. In this bold new work, with a title taken from a poem by Robert Walters, the harp symbolizes the protagonist Earth, both fragile and powerful. The towering instrument is moved choreographically by Kondonassis across the stage as she journeys through various arrays of suspended percussion. In the composer's words, the work is "part virtuoso concerto, part performance art, and part theater." Esmail, who is Indian-American, has drawn on her extensive studies of Hindustani music in composing Terra Infirma. Her compositional voice is at once arresting, lyrical, haunting, and fierce. The work, which includes a defining movement titled "Immolation," incorporates elements of Raag Deepak, an ancient collection of pitches believed to invoke fire. Kondonassis, known for "a range of colour that's breathtaking," (Gramophone), brings the work to life with colorful authenticity. Says Esmail, "Terra Infirma sits somewhere between a harp/percussion concerto and a monodrama - Yolanda leads us through the trajectory of a wildfire, starting with the eerie moments before the first spark, and ending with the hope of new growth. The work explores our human relationship to fire - a force that can be at once devastating and illuminating. It has been a dream to work so closely with Yolanda, who has reinvented the role of the harp over and over again throughout her career. We have built the DNA of this piece together over so many years - experimenting in percussion studios, mapping stage plots, pushing our imaginations to the limit. I am so excited to share this work with the world." States Kondonassis, "The personal and musical resonance that I feel with Reena has resulted in a work that's deeply personal, uniquely colorful, and ground-breaking in so many ways. The harp is a highly visual instrument, and Terra Infirma utilizes that element to the fullest. In this work, the harp is actually a character in the musical drama onstage, and that gives me the chance to portray an enormous range of artistic emotion." The new concerto forms the heart of The Terra Infirma Project, a multi-year initiative of the Interlochen Center for the Arts, which boasts Kondonassis as an alumna (class of '82). The Interlochen Orchestra is featured along with Kondonassis and conductor Andrew Grams on the world-premiere recording, released in April 2026 on the Grammy-winning Azica label. The entire process, from initial workshops to the world-premiere and recording, has been captured by the award-winning film crew, Fulvew Productions, for an upcoming documentary to be released for airing on PBS Television in August 2026. The Terra Infirma Project is generously supported by the Allen B. Cutting Foundation.

Jodie Devos is sorely missed. Aged just thirty-five, she died on 16 June 2024. Wishing to perpetuate her memory and her art, we have decided to publish this boxed set containing all of the recordings she made for Alpha Classics over a period of ten years: six albums that bear witness to the exacting standards, sensitivity, eclecticism and curiosity of this unusual soprano who was loved by all. Also included is a concert she gave at the Gaume Festival in August 2017; this deeply moving programme reveals another side of Jodie, notably her love of American music and song, from Gershwin to Michel Legrand. All profits from the sale of this boxed set, which includes all the texts from the original albums, will be donated to the Jodie Devos Fund, created in 2025 to perpetuate the transmission and promotion of the operatic art that she held so dear.

FLORENCE B. PRICE. A composer advocates for the exchange of different traditions and cultures. Florence B. Price's works combine a fascinating spectrum of intense emotion, buoyant lightness, and playful charm, which captivated me from the very first moment. In particular, her songs, which bear witness to great sensitivity and melodic ingenuity, have made a lasting impression on me in terms of their expressiveness and complexity. However, it is not only her music that touches me; I also feel profoundly moved by her life story. Florence B. Price was a single mother of two children after separating from her husband. Tragically, she had to cope with the loss of one of her children at an early age-a fate that is sure to have shaped her life profoundly. As an African-American artist, she also had to assert herself in an era characterised by deep-seated racism, and in a world where women in classical music rarely found recognition. Astonishingly, her works have not yet been fully published or featured in the standard repertoire. Her music, culturally rich, full of history, and brimming with emotion, deserves to be elevated to it's rightful rank due to it's artistic quality. The apparent lack of widespread recognition of Price's oeuvre cannot be explained by a lack of compositional quality, but rather by socio-historical circumstances that marginalised artists like her. It is very surprising that her works have not yet been published in their entirety...(Excerpt from the liner notes by Sascha EL Mouissi)

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.

Over the course of more than half a century, Wolfgang Rübsam has consistently brought new insights to bear on the keyboard music of Bach, firstly in sets of the canonic organ music for Philips, then the same for Naxos. In the last few years, his musicianship and understanding of Bach enriched by those decades of experience, he has turned to the harpsichord/piano repertoire for Brilliant Classics. A series of critically acclaimed albums has shed new light on The Well-Tempered Clavier, the Goldberg Variations, the Partitas and Toccatas with Rübsam’s performance of them on a lautenwerk – a ‘lute-harpsichord’ with a distinctive chime and colour which Bach himself would have been familiar with. Rübsam now returns to the organ, with new transcriptions and recordings of two Orchestral Suites and Chaconne from the D minor Partita for solo violin. While the Chaconne has attracted transcribers and arrangers ever since the 19th century, drawn magnetically to its evolving variations on a ground bass which accumulate an emotional power unusual even for Bach, the Orchestral Suites are much less often encountered outside their original garb. Yet we can be sure that Bach himself would have embraced Rübsam’s idea with enthusiasm. The Suites themselves are compilations of dances, probably not all originally designed for their eventual destination as high-class entertainment music for the concert series at Café Zimmermann in Leipzig, and Bach repurposed some of their movements as sinfonias and even choruses for his church cantatas. As in his fairly free transcription of the Chaconne, Rübsam has made full use of the instrument at his disposal, a magnificent Casavant instrument (1998) at the Church of St. Louis, in St. Paul, Minnesota. The booklet includes a full disposition for the organ as well as an essay introducing both the works and Rübsam’s uniquely imaginative approach to them. ‘If the sound of the lute-harpsichord highlights Bach’s debt to French lute music, especially in the First Prelude, the instrument clarifies that homage while Rübsam’s interpretation transcends it.’ (Fanfare, November 2018, The Well-Tempered Clavier, 96750)

JoAnn Falletta conducts the National Orchestral Institute Philharmonic in works by four extraordinary mid-20th-century American composers who helped shape the country’s musical destiny: Aaron Copland, Walter Piston, Paul Creston and Ulysses Kay. Includes two world premiere recordings – Paul Creston's Saxophone Concerto and Ulysses Kay’s poignant and elegiac Pietà.

Johann Kuhnau-Bach's immediate predecessor as Thomaskantor-in an 8-CD box that offers more than a mere collection of works: the individually issued recordings from 2013 to 2022 by Opella Musica, Camerata Lipsiensis, and Gregor Meyer are brought together as a complete sacred corpus with editorial coherence, making audible how Leipzig's church music takes shape at the threshold of the eighteenth century and beyond. From intimate, chamber-scaled pieces to representative festive compositions, one can trace how compositional technique, the relationship between voices and instruments, and the overall sonic architecture gain definition in the early decades of the eighteenth century-a sounding point of reference for what Bach would later adopt and develop in Leipzig.

CORO Welcomes The Choir of Magdalen College, Oxford, to the label.

In their first recording for CORO, The Choir of Magdalen College, Oxford, under the direction of Mark Williams, explore the repertoire that has provided the bedrock of the college’s musical life for the last 500 years, all of which was written for the end of the day.

Much music associated with evening time is naturally calm and soothing, satisfying those seeking transcendental beauty in the form of unchallenging ‘sound baths’. However, this collection also seeks to challenge, contrasting contemporary settings with music from the 16th century. We hope, through this range of works, to capture something of that liminal space between day and night characterized by Evensong and to lead the listener into that ‘peace that passes all understanding’.

The album showcases works by composers from John Sheppard to Joanna Marsh and features much-loved pieces such as Hubert Parry’s Lord, let me know mine end and John Tavener’s The Lord’s Prayer, as well as new additions to the Evensong repertoire such as Grayston Ives’ In pace and Piers Connor Kennedy’s O nata lux.

Following their critically acclaimed albums of Schubert (BIS-2597), Mozart and Birchall (BIS-2647), works for clarinet trio (BIS-2535) and, more recently, Beethoven and Berwald (BIS-2707), the Wigmore Soloists now turn their attention to twentieth-century English chamber works which, while eschewing some of the continent’s modernist tendencies, are both deeply personal and supremely written, highlighting the specific colors of each of the instruments.

Howard Ferguson’s Octet, a direct and engaging work, was the first of his works to attract attention. Ferguson’s skill is brilliantly demonstrated in this tonally ambiguous work, which takes its instrumentation from Schubert’s famous Octet.

The main characteristic of Sir Arthur Bliss’s Clarinet Quintet, like those of Mozart and Brahms with the same instrumental line-up, is its intense, overtly emotional lyricism, but the sunny, extrovert aspects of Bliss’s character ultimately prevail in the brilliantly energetic finale.

Robin Holloway’s Serenade in C for octet is the most recent work on this disc, and also features the instrumentation of Schubert’s Octet, which the composer acknowledges as a model. Few contemporary composers display as keen a sense of humor as Holloway who wished here to give “an affectionate twist to tonal common practice and light-music clichés all the way from Biedermeier Vienna to Southend Pier”.

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.

What would it mean to 'compose like a woman'? The present collection answers the question, in a literal sense, while undoing the premise on which the question was asked in the first place. In social and historical terms, it means enjoying privileges of upbringing, education, and/or wealth that were historically denied to the vast majority of women. It means, on the part of the women represented here, a single-minded determination in pursuit of their vocation, helping them to overcome prejudice and sexism in a cultural, social and political milieu that has consistently denied women the opportunity to find and express their own voice in music. Only with movements of emancipation in the last century, and much more rapidly in the last 50 years, has this situation begun to be addressed and corrected. What composing like a woman does not mean - as the music in this collection makes clear - is a definable set of qualities or characteristics to the music itself which would distinguish the work of female composers from the music composed by men.

This remarkable set gathers many individual recordings of music by women composers, which Brilliant Classics has quietly yet actively championed in their catalogue for decades, uniting it with exciting new outings, so that a comprehensive historical picture of the highly varied struggles and successes of women composers through the ages to our present time are chronicled and celebrated.

Other information:

- Recordings date from 1994-2024

- Booklet in English contains liner notes by Peter Quantrill

- The revival of interest in female classical composers reflects a growing recognition of their overlooked contributions to music history.

For centuries, women composers were marginalized, their works overshadowed by their male counterparts. However, recent efforts by musicians, scholars, and institutions have brought these composers into the spotlight, highlighting the richness and diversity of their compositions.

- This renewed focus stems from a broader movement toward inclusivity in the arts, challenging traditional narratives that have historically excluded women. The rise of feminist musicology has also played a key role, offering fresh perspectives on these composers' lives and works.

- This comprehensive box set offers a wide spectrum of works by female composers, from the Medieval mystic Hildegard Von Bingen (1098-1179), through the Renaissance Isabella Leonarda (baptized 1620-1704), Francesca Caccini (1587-1640) und Barbara Strozzi (baptized 1619-1677), traversing the Baroque and Classical eras, and arriving in the contemporary field, with composers such as Galina Ustvolskaya (1919-2006) and Grazyna Bacewicz (1909-1969).

- A long due homage to the art and voice of female composers, spanning nearly a thousand years!

Antonio Salieri was influential as an opera composer and later in life as a teacher to the likes of Beethoven, Schubert and Liszt - quite unlike the sinister and entirely fictional portrayal he received in the film Amadeus. Both of his keyboard concertos were composed during his early years in Vienna and reflect influences from Haydn and the galant style of Johann Christian Bach. The Harpsichord Concerto in B flat major is broader and more elaborate but lighter in mood when compared with the stormy first movement of the Harpsichord Concerto in C major. Heard here in it's world premiere recording, the Keyboard Sonata in C major presents as a suite of short independent pieces, while the short March in D major has only recently been discovered in a Berlin archive.

Anna Clyne, described as a 'composer of uncommon gifts and unusual methods' by The New York Times, is one of the most in-demand composers today, working with orchestras, choreographers, filmmakers and visual artists around the world. Clyne's unique voice combines tradition with postmodern techniques, giving her listeners a sense of musical adventure that is grounded in the past. From the beautiful elegy Within Her Arms to the defiant power of Restless Oceans, Anna Clyne's music strikes a positive and resilient tone.

Wonderland is full of magic and myth. Containing exclusively works commissioned by The King’s Singers across their 55 years, the album celebrates their trademark musical storytelling, with no shortage of comedy. György Ligeti’s six Nonsense Madrigals, each setting playful children’s poetry or extracts from Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, provide a musical spine to the album, commemorating 100 years since the composer’s birth in 1923. From just over 50 years ago, the fairytale The Musicians of Bremen (1972) – set to music by the Australian composer and Master of the Queen’s Music Malcolm Williamson – sits alongside Time Piece (1972) by Paul Patterson, which tells an eccentric alternative creation story. These myth-based works have recent companions such as Judith Bingham’s extended work Tricksters (2019), which unearths what could happen if miscreants from different world mythologies could come together for the first time, and Ola Gjeilo’s A Dream within a Dream which questions the very nature of perception and reality. The album also features the legendary Japanese film and game composer Joe Hisaishi’s first ever choral work, I was there (2022), focussing on the cultural memory of tragic events such as 9/11 and the 2011 Japan Earthquake. Themes of hope and positivity, centred on the natural world, emerge in Makiko Kinoshita’s Ashita no uta (Song for tomorrow) (2020) and Francesca Amewudah-Rivers’ Alive (2022).

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)

Delos is thrilled to embark on a new journey with the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and it's Music Director Stephane Deneve. What better statement of intent for their first album on the label than releasing the world premiere recording of three works by native St. Louisan and Pulitzer Prize- and Grammy®-winning composer Kevin Puts? Dedicated to the SLSO and Stephane, Concerto for Orchestra was written in response to the horrific school shooting that occurred in Uvalde in 2022. Silent Night Elegy is drawn from Kevin's acclaimed opera, which adapts Joyeux Noel, the award-winning film that tells the story of the spontaneous ceasefires along the Western Front on the first Christmas Eve of World War I. Inspired by Guillaume de Machaut, Virelai was commissioned for the opening concert of Stephane's tenure as Music Director of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra. This album celebrates the SLSO's dynamic partnership with Stephane and demonstrates the orchestra's commitment to artistic excellence and inclusive musical experiences.

This 19th volume of Haydn's complete symphonies coincides with the 40th anniversary of Il Giardino Armonico, the ensemble created and conducted by Giovanni Antonini, artistic director of the Haydn 2032 series. Il Giardino has made it's mark on the baroque world with it's revolutionary approach to Vivaldi, but Haydn has long been part of the Italian group's history, and Symphony No. 44, featured in this volume, was the first work by Haydn performed by the ensemble and Antonini. The title of this symphony, known as the "Funeral Symphony", inspired the inclusion in this programme of Scheidt's Paduana Dolorosa, published in 1621 at the beginning of the bloody Thirty Years' War, and Arvo Part's Da pacem Domine, dedicated to the memory of the victims of the 2004 Madrid train bombings: 'It's contemplative fixity and the sad Paduana dolorosa take on an almost cathartic function which, in my opinion, shows a perfect integration between music that is so stylistically and chronologically distant,' says Antonini, who also conducts Symphonies Nos. 108 (1762) and 52 (1771).

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)

Having worked extensively with period instrument ensembles throughout my career, I was intrigued and fascinated about the possibility on this album of a delicious colliding of the two worlds. Alison Balsom. On this new recording Alison Balsom and her long term friend and conductor Trevor Pinnock bring alive works from Telemann, Handel, Vivaldi, Albinoni and Marcello. A baroque album, confronting the period instruments of the Pinnock Players and Alison's use of a modern instrument: a rotary valve piccolo trumpet. Alison comments: "The piccolo trumpet is a modern invention - something that Bach and his contemporaries could not have known was to come - it's power, it's gleaming bright tone and it's 20th century engineering technology. And this instrument is a world away from the subtle multifaceted sounds of the natural trumpet of the Baroque era. That said, the opportunity to perform much more chromatic and virtuosic music such as that originally written for solo violin or oboe, has seduced me and my trumpet colleagues since the days of the great Maurice Andre. He showed the world how intensely sweet the piccolo trumpet could be in it's upper register".

Classical Music

Those who lament the austere, dispassionate, "scholarly" approach that more often than not informs today's original-instrument performances of Bach cantatas will find much to rejoice in Masaaki Suzuki's grand and heartfelt, if not overly devotional conceptions. For instance, as you listen to the opening Sinfonia of Christ lag in Todesbanden you're immediately struck by the emotive delicacy of the string playing and how perfectly it introduces the subject's necessary resolve and sadness. Moments later when the chorus enters and the momentum shifts, the urgency of the ensemble likewise changes to deftly communicate just the right measure of boldness and hope. Throughout the piece Suzuki's uncanny ability to extract every nuance from Bach's sublime score recalls the efforts of Karl Richter, Günther Ramin, Fritz Werner, Karl Ristenpart, and Helmut Winschermann--bygone patricians of this repertoire who were equally considerate of the music's every emotion, from deepest angst to overwhelming joy. Though BWV 4 is one of Bach's most famous and oft-recorded cantatas, Suzuki's rendering of it ranks with the very best.

The two other cantatas offered--Nacht dir, Herr, verlanget mich BWV 150 and Der Herr denket an uns BWV 196--also receive outstanding performances. In BWV 150, soprano Yumiko Kurisu's seamless and spirited rendering of the aria "Doch bin und bleibe ich vergnügt" is a marvel, as is the fifth-movement trio "Zedern müssen von den Winden", expertly performed by countertenor Akira Tachikawa, tenor Koki Katano, and veteran Dutch bass Peter Kooy. Also noteworthy is Suzuki's brilliant negotiation of the complex rhythms of the chorale "Meine Augen sehen stets zu dem herren", imparting a rarely heard uplifting quality to the setting. BWV 196 is highlighted by the final chorale "Ihr seid die Gesegneten", where Suzuki's sensibly dignified conclusion impresses more favorably than the overly exuberant let's-get-it-over-with treatment Konrad Junghänel and the Cantus Cölln offer in their fairly recent Harmonia Mundi recording (type Q1384 in Search Reviews).

BIS's sound is of audiophile quality, with an expansive yet detailed sound stage that spectacularly complements Suzuki's grand realization. As Volume 1 in a complete traversal of Bach's sacred and secular cantatas, this auspicious entry offers the promise of an extraordinary and very important cycle that shouldn't be missed by anyone who loves these works. This is the kind of Bach rarely heard anymore--performances that make you want to devote time to them, to listen at lifelike levels and follow the text religiously.
-- ClassicsToday.com

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.

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".

Florence Price had an abiding love of literature, setting poets affiliated with the Harlem Renaissance as well as Byron and Robert Frost, among others. Her largest choral work is Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight, which sets a poem published in 1914 imagining Lincoln surveying the modern world with dismay. It's chorale-like passages and fugal finale, allied to her use of spirituals, gives the cantata a thoughtful, sometimes introspective grandeur. Song of Hope, which uses Price's own text, is an emotionally intense supplication that also draws on spirituals. Charming smaller settings devoted to the natural world, and two sacred numbers, complete the album.