World premiere recording of these titles by Johan Helmich Roman Swedish Baroque composer. A specialist in baroque music, violinist Sue-Ying Koang has notably played with Les Arts Florissants and the Pygmalion ensemble.

This recording offers us a close look into Michael Haydn's musical activities for the church, the court and its surroundings. The Missa is perfectly in accord with the then current ideals for reform in the Catholic Church: functional, short, simple, modest and linked to the Gregorian tradition. It is amazing how Haydn was able to compose such varied, lively and attractive music within these strict guidelines.

The artistic director of the ‘Concert Spirituel’ from 1752 to 1762, Mondonville was one of the most fashionable composers in Paris due to his ‘grands motets’. However, it was in the field of chamber music that he was a real innovator. In creating the sonata for harpsichord with violin accompaniment, he paved the way for a form soon to be raised to sublime heights by Mozart and Beethoven. By giving the harpsichord accompaniment to the human voice Mondonville carried the experiments to its utmost limits.

Praised for his “smooth, rich and sweet sound and impeccable virtuosity”, guitarist Thibaut Garcia releases his second album on Erato, a recital of works composed and inspired by Johann Sebastian S Bach.
“Bach has been part of my life as a musician since the very start,” he says. Taking Bach’s mighty Chaconne as his centrepiece, he ranges wide: from Gounod’s much-loved ‘Ave Maria’ and Villa-Lobos’s Bachianas Brasileiras No 5 to music by Agustín Barrios Mangoré, Alexandre Tansman and the contemporary Serbian-American composer Dušan Bogdanović.

La liberazione di Ruggiero dall'isola d'Alcina (En. "The Liberation of Ruggiero from the island of Alcina") is a comic opera in four scenes by Francesca Caccini, first performed 3 February 1625 at the Villa di Poggio Imperiale in Florence, with a libretto by Ferdinando Saracinelli based on Ludovico Ariosto's Orlando Furioso. It is the first opera written by a woman and was long considered to be the first Italian opera to be performed outside of Italy.[a] It was performed to celebrate the visit of Prince Władysław of Poland during Carnival 1625, and it was revived in Warsaw in 1628. The work was commissioned by her employer Regent Archduchess Maria Maddalena of Austria, wife of Cosimo II de' Medici.

Fabio Bonizzoni returns with his long-awaited new recording of Handel’s 'Aci, Galatea e Polifemo'. Who better to team up with Bonizzoni, performing the role of the luckless shepherd Aci, than scintillating soprano Roberta Invernizzi. Her captivating contributions to Glossa's Handel series with La Risonanza as well as her 'I Viaggi di Faustina' have drawn powerful critical plaudits, including more than one disc of the Month.

Cavalli composed more than 40 operas. Less than a dozen have been recorded. L'Orione an opera in three acts and a prologue is about No. 27 and was first heard in Milan in 1653 to celebrate the election of Ferdinand IV as King of the Romans. This September 27, 1998 performance (in a new critical edition by Andrea Marcon derived from the manuscript in the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, Venice) in Venice is the first in the modem era. The plot is derived from the ancient Greek legend of the giant Orion told in Ovid's Fasti, rewritten in Natale Conte's Mythologiae, and finally dramatized in Francesco Meloslo's libretto for Cavalli. The libretto takes the opportunity for humor, using the plight of the blind Orion to make fun of the gods, as was common in so many Venetian librettos of the time.

The personal story of the cello played braced against the shoulder (violoncello da spalla) began when Sergey Malov first listened to a vinyl recording of Bach's cello suites played by the legendary Pablo Casals from his father's collection. Later on, when listening to the recordings he could not get rid of the feeling that this light and dancing music does not fit that well with such a heavy big instrument as a cello. Although perhaps he just wanted to play these amazing pieces himself. Malov was dreaming about playing them authentically. He had no idea though what that authentic way was or how he could place such a huge bass instrument on his shoulder.

Bach's first biographer, Forkel, noted that the violin writing of the Sonatas, BWV1014-19 required a master to play it. Bach, he said, knew all the possibilities of the instrument sparing it as little as he spared the harpsichord. Tie significant departure from baroque custom in these six sonatas is Bach's treatment of the harpsichord as an obbligato instrument, thereby making both players responsible for the thematic development. John Holloway and Davitt Moroney have set up a musically rewarding partnership in these brilliantly inventive works, furthermore adding to their programme the two lovely sonatas for violin and continuo long attributed to Bach, and justly so. In both of them they are joined by Susan Sheppard (continuo cello).

Orchestre baroque français, dirigé par le flûtiste, hautboïste et chef d’orchestre Hugo Reyne, La Simphonie du Marais défend depuis plus de 30 ans le répertoire musical des XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles, en tissant des liens uniques et particuliers entre le public, l’histoire, la musique et les autres arts.

After having enchanted us with Porpora's Notturni, the Dolce & Tempesta Ensemble now reveals new hidden treasures of the Neapolitan School. A rival of Domenico de Matteis, the irascible violinist Nicola Fiorenza (ca. 1700 - 1764) used to strike his pupils with his sword at the conservatory Santa Maria di Loreto in Naples while writing delightful works, full of inventiveness, charm and fancy. His concerti grossi are played with the brilliance and tastefulness which characterise the extraordinary Italian virtuoso ensemble founded by harpsichordist Stefano Demicheli. A programme never before recorded and the discovery of a forgotten and most endearing character!

Joseph Boismortier was a French Baroque composer who had to live by his wits, having no patrons or prestigious positions. The notes for this CD quote Jean-Benjamin’s assessment in 1780: “Happy is he, Boismortier, whose fertile quill each month, without pain, conceives new airs at will.” Boismortier, for lack of a better answer to his critics, would always answer: “I am earning money.” His four Ballets de Village are rustic suites that make extensive use of the musette and hurdy-gurdy, instruments considered country cousins, not to be used in “serious” music. Boismortier writes for them with great skill; the droning din they set up is most appealing.

Handel’s Messiah is already very well represented on the market with dozens of existing recordings and new productions appearing at regular intervals. Yet this is a very special version, carefully crafted by the Prague-based Collegium Vocale and Collegium 1704 under the baton of Vaclav Luks, founder of the ensemble and one of the most exciting conductors of the Baroque and Classical repertoire. The fine young singers Giulia Semenzato, Benno Schachtner, Krystian Adam, and Krešimir Stražanac joined the ensembles for two moving live performances in Prague’s Rudolfinum in March 2018, and those performances are now presented here.

Beethoven's second set of quartets, Opus 59, inhabit a very different universe from that of his first set, Opus 18. Although only six years had passed since the publication of the Opus 18 quartets, Beethoven's style changed immensely. The Opus 59 quartets were composed in the wake of the "Eroica" Symphony, and the vastness of the individual movements; the symphonic, orchestral character of the string writing; and the stretched formal boundaries led some critics to dub the first of the set an "Eroica" for string quartet.

Brahms’ string concertos are indissolubly linked with the musicians for whom the works were written. He wrote his Violin Concerto for Joseph Joachim, and in it he combined what a contemporary critic termed ‘the great and serious’ with songful lyricism, melodic beauty, and a fiery Hungarian finale. To mend a breach with the violinist, Brahms later composed a concerto with the unusual combination of violin and cello, the latter played at the premiere by Joachim’s colleague Robert Hausmann. Neither instrument predominates in a work of reconciliation that embodies both drama and reflection.