Heinrich Finck was born in Bamberg and quite probably spent his formative years at the court chapel in Cracow or Warsaw in Poland. In any case, this is what can be gathered from comments by his grandnephew, Hermannn Finck, in his Practica Musica of 1556. Here we also read that his granduncle was famed as a master already in the 1480's. After a short period of study in Leipzig he then was active as the church music director at the Polish court in Cracow for a number of years. He interrupted his activity there in 1490 in order to accept a position at the Hungarian royal court, but this arrangement was not permanent. When the ducal ensemble was disbanded in 1514, Finck probably became a member of the imperial court chapel. He later served the Salzburg Cathedral chapter, then at the Scottish Abbey in Vienna, where he contributed to the development of the choral and instrumental ensemble, and finally as the chapel master of Emperor Ferdinand I's court ensemble.

Mezzo-soprano Jamie Barton burst upon the global opera and concert scene in recent years after having won many of the world’s most prestigious prizes for vocal excellence and accomplishments. Delos has scored a major coup in releasing her debut album. Jamie’s well-chosen program of late-Romantic repertoire begins with eight of Gustav Mahler’s finest lieder- including his wonderful Five Ruckert Songs- before treating us to the rare delights of Antonin Dvorak’s song cycle Gypsy Songs. Her album concludes with even more seldom-heard selections from the many lovely Swedish-language songs of Finnish master Jean Sibelius. This sublime release- further graced by pianist Brian Zeger’s peerless collaboration- will take your breath away, and leave you hungry for more from Jamie Barton, considered by many of the world’s top vocal and operatic experts to be the rising mezzo of our time.

For the 500th anniversary of the Reformation a collection of all 35 hymns by Luther is being released on a double CD for the first time. The Lutheran hymns in choral settings and chorale cantatas from the 16th century to the present day (including works by Praetorius, Scheidt, Bach, Mendelssohn, Jennefelt, and Schwemmer) are performed by the Kammerchor Stuttgart under the direction of Frieder Bernius and the Athesinus Consort Berlin conducted by Klaus-Martin Bresgott. These choral settings are complemented by chorale arrangements for organ. Margot Kassmann, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Markus Meckel, Judith Zander, and others have offered extensive liner notes with meditations on the selected hymns, and Johann Hinrich Claussen, Cultural Officer of the Council of the Evangelical Church in Germany, has provided a knowledgeable forward.

American composer Marty Regan specializes in composing music for traditional Japanese instruments, a fascination he has developed since 2000. Regan describes his Japanese-style compositions as "hybrid musical soundscapes that reflect the age in which we live, an era based not necessarily on globalization, but of partnership based on global cultural interaction." In contrast, Splash of Indigo features a complementary side of Regan's output, containing only works for Western orchestral instruments and voice. Despite the album's instrumentation, Regan's connection to Japan remains strong in Splash of Indigo. Splash of Indigo proves Regan is more than capable of inventing and developing charming and complex networks of musical ideas. In it's varied collection of chamber and large ensemble works, Splash of Indigo shows Marty Regan is a composer of considerable breadth and skill beyond his dedicated efforts to build a bridge between American and Japanese musical culture.

Baritone Andre Schuen and pianist Daniel Heide were brought together through serendipity. They both took part in the 2008 Salzburg Mozarteum Summer Academy and performed during the prizewinners’ recital When Daniel heard Andre’s voice for the first time, he immediately knew he wanted to collaborate with the spectacular musician. This is the duo’s debut release, and the purpose is to present the entire scope of their repertoire. Andre Schuen has been exploring different facets of his voice. “The three personalities we encounter on this CD represent three different generations. In Robert Schumann we meet the enraptured youthful lover; in Frank Martin we meet a man caught in the midst of life but pushed to the brink of despair by fear of death. And Hugo Wolf draws our gaze to Mignon’s father, the old harpist, full of melancholy, approaching the end of his life.”

For almost two thousand years people around the world have been gathering to celebrate the Christmas season. These celebrations are as varied as their countries of origin but share at least two common threads, the birth of Jesus and the desire to celebrate this event in music. Carols such as Silent Night, O Holy Night or Ave Maria are sung throughout the world and need little introduction. Many of the tracks on this disc are less known but great Christmas carols.

This new release is a bouquet of traditional hymns taken from 18th and 19th century hymnals. These beloved works have been passed down from generation to generation, and remain some of the most sung hymns in churches across the globe. The Mellstock Band & Choir perform music from the Hardy family and Puddletown Church manuscripts using authentic instruments as they would have been performed by a village band in Hardy’s Wessex. Maddy Prior and The Carnival Band were formed in 1984 for a BBC Radio 2 broadcast of Christmas carols. The broadcast became an album, which was enthusiastically received by the public. Each member of the ensemble enjoys their own career, but the group is always happy to come together for a project like this, with opportunities to combine styles and talents.

At the height of the Renaissance, the music of Orlande de Lassus frequently combines the emotion of secular music with sacred compositions. With their erotic connotations, the texts of The Song of Songs are an ideal source for bringing together sacred and profane feelings. Based on his most famous song, Lassus wrote one of his unitary masses: Suzanne un jour. Along with the Magnificat that he composed on De Rore's madrigal Ancor che col partire, here are two religious compositions of which the themes are borrowed from evocations of amorous turmoil.

This album is divided into three parts, the Annunciation, the Nativity and the Feast. The program begins and ends with two songs of oral tradition played on bagpipes and with Ciaramelli, instruments which have become synonymous with Christmas. All of the pieces from this album came from books and ancient manuscripts.

This outstanding new live recording brings together groundbreaking works by Arnold Schoenberg and Dmitri Shostakovich, two of the twentieth century’s most monumental composers. Arnold Schoenberg’s Kol Nidre is set to the Jewish prayer which is said on the eve of Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. The work premiered in Los Angeles in 1938, four years after Schoenberg fled Europe, and one month before the anti-Jewish Kristallnacht took place across Nazi-occupied Germany. Philip Huscher described the work as a “stark, strong modernist statement.” Shostakovich’s Suite on Versees of Michelangelo Buona explores themes just as weighty, including love, morality, death, and the resilience of the human spirit, all shown through the poetry of Renaissance great, Michelangelo. The work was originally conceived to honor Michelangelo’s 500th birthday. The Chicago Tribune commented on these performances, “Such was his textual penetration that [Abdrazakov] was able to extract the full emotional weight of the words and music, abetted by Muti’s finely detailed exposition of the spare orchestral fabric.”

On this remarkable recording, Out of the Shadows: Rediscovered American Art Songs, a century’s worth of treasures emerge from the shadows of both memory and history. The discovery of these songs began years ago, when soprano Lisa Delan was a student at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. Her teachers, some of whom were contemporaries of the composers, recognized the artistic value of several of these works. Knowing that Ms. Delan would imbue them with special interpretive qualities, they presented her with copies of some of the music now on this disc. She decided to go further, to discover additional Americana—a kind of musical excavation that would bring to light and to life a body of art songs that deserved to be better known. Mined from extensive research, the gems on this CD are priceless additions to the art song genre. They form a compelling body of literature that, until now, has been underrepresented or completely unrepresented on recordings. These songs honor the universality of the human experience—love, loss, faith, joy, sadness, nostalgia—in uniquely American settings. The spirit, pragmatism and romanticism of a country born in revolution and maturing in reason and hopefulness is evident in these works. It’s all here, in 31 songs by ten composers. The tonal palette of each of these composers reveals a singular style, in hues rich, varied and distinctively American.

This is the seventh disc in the Bach Collegium Japan and Masaaki Suzuki’s series of secular cantatas by J. S. Bach. The best known of these cantatas is featured on this installment, the ever popular “Peasant Cantata.” The piece was written in broad dialect, and set to music which was based around folk songs, making it accessible to the greater population rather than the educated elite. The soprano cantata BWV 209 was composed as a musical farewell to one of Bach’s pupils upon his departure from Leipzig. Finally, Amore traitor for bass solo follows the story of a lover who accuses Amor of betrayal and deception. The closing aria is distinct, utilizing both the voice and the harpsichord in virtuosic passages.