Giovanni Antonini has been recording the complete symphonies of Joseph Haydn with the Alpha label for more than five years. Now the series is enriched by another monument by the Austrian composer: Die Schöpfung (The Creation), recorded in 2019 with the Bavarian Radio Chorus and his own orchestra, Il Giardino Armonico. This great oratorio was inspired by those of Handel, which Haydn heard performed by very large forces during his visits to England. The Creation, composed between September 1796 and April 1798, demanded such a colossal effort of him that he even fell ill just after its first performance; but the work enjoyed immense success.

Academy of Ancient Music, Cambridge Handel Opera Company, Cambridge Early Music and Julian Perkins are proud to present the first professional recording of John Eccless Semele (c.1707), a notable early setting of the great English libretto by William Congreve better known in a version by GF Handel from 1744. Academy of Ancient Musics mission is to explore, reveal and preserve the great treasure house of baroque and classical music, and a spirit of newfound discovery runs through all our work.

The Sistine Chapel Choir were quite late to the recording scene, but they are making up for lost time under director Massimo Palombella. The strengths of the choir's performances on this holiday release are threefold. First of all is the sound environment of the chapel itself, resonant and big, yet hospitable to dense polyphony since Josquin was a choirboy there. Josquin appears on the program here, but the motet Missus est Gabriel is not a common work, and that points to the choir's second strength: they work from a manuscript tradition, that of the Vatican, that is different from the set of scholarly publications that have long shaped the Renaissance performing repertory, and several pieces here are world premieres, or otherwise seldom heard.