The small string ensemble of Oxford Baroque plays the Praeludium with a juxtaposition of sensuousness and decorum…The choir's interjections are fantastically articulate - with gentle use of inégales, gorgeously shaped ornamental cadences and sincere delivery of the texts.

This recording of duets by the great composers of the Restoration is one of the gems of Hyperion’s catalogue. It features the celebrated countertenors James Bowman and Michael Chance at the peak of their powers, and the combination of their two voices with the sympathetic accompaniment of The King’s Consort creates something uniquely glorious. Purcell was a countertenor himself and in his writing for the voice produced some of his most felicitous music. John Blow, Purcell’s predecessor and successor as organist of Westminster Abbey, reached his compositional zenith with the extended duet (almost a small cantata) on the subjects of Purcell’s tragic early death and inextinguishable influence.

The most comprehensive edition devoted to Gioachino Rossini marking his 150th anniversary. Born in 1792, Rossini was the most popular opera composer of his time. Although he retired from the Opera scene in 1829, he continued to compose in other genres, including sacred music, piano and chamber works. He did gather his late works under the ironic title Péchés de vieillesse (Sins of Old Age), which veils a true collection of masterworks.

The Epic of Gilgamesh, the oldest written literary text in Middle Eastern/Western cultural history, predates the Hebrew Bible. The epic relates the story of King Gilgamesh, partly divine, partly human, who may have existed historically circa 2800 BC. From immature youth and a belief in his immortality, he eventually comes to accept the power and reality of Death. The Resurrection of the Soldiers for string orchestra was commissioned by George Vass, to whom it is dedicated, and the English Symphony Orchestra.

As far as discs of the piano sonatas of Prokofiev go, this one with Sviatoslav Richter playing the Second and Sixth in Prague in 1965 and the Ninth in 1956 is about as close to definitive as anything can ever get in this world. Richter's strength and control, his passionate intensity, and his complete command of every aspect of technique and interpretation is brought to bear on Prokofiev's music, music closely identified with Richter and in one case composed by Prokofiev for Richter. Although Richter grew up playing Prokofiev's Second and Sixth sonatas, Prokofiev dedicated his Ninth and final sonata to Richter and Richter's interpretation is the aural incarnation of the music.

Nielsen's 4 quartets all come from fairly early in his career (the last is from around the time of his 3rd Symphony), so they don't provide a creative overview of his entire adult life the way Bartok's quartets do. But, they do offer the picture of a young composer spreading his creative wings–and frankly, are full of terrific music. This is the best set available with robust playing and the usual high-quality sound offered by BIS.

Star countertenor Philippe Jaroussky continues his exploration of operatic settings of the Orpheus myth with the most famous of the many operas inspired by the story of the Greek poet who searches for his dead wife in the Underworld: Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice. It contains one of the world's best-loved operatic arias, Orfeo's restrained, but moving lament, 'Che farò senza Euridice'.

"Clavier-Übung (keyboard exercise) consisting of an Aria with diverse variations for 2-manual harpsichord, dedicated to music-lovers to gladden their hearts, by J. S. Bach, composer to the Elector of Saxony and King of Poland, Kapellmeister and Civic Director of Music for Leipzig. Edited by Balthasar Schmid at Nuremberg.” So runs the very modest title for a piece of harpsichord literature that can be described only as a work of towering complexity and of the most profound expressive grandeur. Its richness derives on the one hand from its great number of rhythmic figures (only, perhaps with Stravinsky does such profusion again occur), and on the other hand from a composing style that makes use of almost all the possible canonic intervals and inversions.

An important composer during the late Renaissance and early Baroque eras, Adriano Banchieri is most noted for his founding of the Accademia dei Floridi in Bologna. Banchieri was one of the first composers to convert the madrigal into use for dramatic purposes. He developed a form called “madrigal comedy,” which was an unstaged, but still dramatic, collection of madrigals which told a story when sung together. These works are performed by the Delitiae Musicae, conducted by Marco Longhini.

Płyta "Gusto Non Barbaro" poświęcona jest niemieckiej muzyce kameralnej XVIII wieku. Zostały na niej zarejestrowane utwory czterech kompozytorów, wśród których postacią centralną jest Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach. Tytuł płyty odnosi się do zaczerpniętego z traktatu Quantza cytatu, wymownie charakteryzującego przemiany, jakie zachodziły w stylu muzyki niemieckiej na tle oraz pod wpływem twórczości dwóch wiodących ośrodków: Francji i Włoch. Nowoczesny sposób komponowania, otwarty na asymilowanie godnych uznania zdobyczy estetycznych sztuki innych nacji stał się w Niemczech w XVIII wieku do tego stopnia dominujący, że właśnie owa synteza stylistyczna uznana została za cechę swoiście niemiecką.

George Frideric Handel’s early Italian cantatas were a laboratory for his vocal writing, daring experiments in melody and harmony upon which Handel drew for the rest of his composing life. In Handel Uncaged, the internationally renowned countertenor Lawrence Zazzo has ‘uncaged’ a selection of these cantatas for the alto voice, presenting them in new ways, crowned by the world premiere recording of unpublished music from Handel's astonishing and amusing 10-aria cantata cycle, Amore Uccellatore. Zazzo is joined by a stellar continuo team of Jonathan Manson (cello and viola da gamba), Andrew Maginley (theorbo & guitar) and Guillermo Brachetta (harpsichord).

The music of Spain has exercised an exotic fascination, but often in forms adapted by foreign composers. Manuel de Falla is representative of a group of Spanish composers who won international recognition. He was born in 1876 in Cádiz, where he first studied, moving later to Madrid and then to Paris, returning to Madrid when war broke out in 1914. Strongly influenced by the traditional Andalusian cante jondo, he settled in Granada, where his friends included the poet Federico García Lorca.

On this new recording, Coro Victoria offers a portrait of Alonso Lobo (1555-1617) through a cross-section of his sacred output (his works in Spanish are all lost). The group also illustrates the variety of interpretative practices of the period. The concluding O quam suavis est Domine is sung by a single soprano while the vihuela accompaniment supplies the remaining five parts. Church choirs sang this music in the liturgy, but minstrels also played it during processions, and there was free traffic between sacred and secular contexts.

Little is known about one of the most productive of Italian musicians, Adriano Banchieri. Relegated to a marginal sector of Renaissance history, still defined by madrigals, Banchieri lived in the most extraordinary innovative period of Italian 'harmonic' music: we find clear signs of a new 17th-Century sensibility in adaptation, or rather in making the word serve representational needs, in the use of the basso concertante and in the extensive use of continuo. The two works presented on this CD represent the chronological heart of Banchieri’s most typical production and may be appreciated in modern recordings for the first time: this is an ambitious project to shed light on Italian 'minor' musical history of the end of the 16th century.

The publication of the Partitas led to some ferment among music lovers in Germany. Some praised the works, others criticised them, but always in terms which suggest that they represented a turning point in harpsichord composition. Following the lead of the theoretician Johann Mattheson, the critics' principal complaint was the extreme technical demands, and the complexity of writing. In his biography of Bach, Johann Nikolaus Forkel writes of the Partitas: »One has hitherto seldom seen or heard harpsichord compositions of such excellence. He who learned to play some of these pieces well, was able to do well with them in the world; and even in our time a young artist can gain honour with them - brilliant, pleasing, expressive, and constantly fresh as they are.«