One of Handel’s more epic Italianate psalm-cantatas, Dixit Dominus (1707) was composed for the name day of the Spanish King Felipe V, and it has a strongly Venetian character in its dispersion of voices and instrumental effects. Highly chromatic and vocally acrobatic, the writing for high sopranos is in bravura style, especially in the wild opening to Dominus a dextris tuis, in which singers extol The Lord for the ubiquity of His wrath.

Most of the Handel pieces on this release are "hidden" in that if you go to the editions of the operas from which they are taken, you won't find them. Many of them were "insertion arias," written for revivals of Handel operas where the new singers wanted something tailor made. Two were written for insertion into the opera of someone else, namely Alessandro Scarlatti, and there are several miscellaneous rarities and rather odd instrumental pieces for interludes. It might sound like an excursion into the dustier corners of the Handel repertory on the part of the historical-instrument group Il Complesso Barocco and their conductor Alan Curtis, who has been at this kind of thing since most of the current crop of Baroque opera conductors were toddlers and who presumably has earned the right to do what he wants.

Laurence Cummings leads the FestspielOrchester Gottingen and a cast of superb soloists in a performance of Handel's opera Faramondo. The work was first performed in London in 1738. There were only eight performances and it was never revived during the composer's lifetime. The first modern production was in Halle in 1976, and several recordings have been made. Its convoluted plot is a story of revenge, intrigues, love and jealousy, backed by some of Handel's most sublime music.

Sir András Schiff is world-renowned as a pianist, conductor, pedagogue and lecturer. He brings masterful and intellectual insights to his performances, which have inspired audiences and critics alike. Born in Budapest, Hungary, in 1953, Sir András studied piano at the Liszt Ferenc Academy with Pal Kadosa, György Kurtág, and Ferenc Rados; and in London with George Malcom.

The first ATMA recording by l’Orchestre symphonique de Québec (Quebec City Symphony Orchestra) of transcriptions of music by Debussy was a huge success and now ATMA present transcriptions of music by J S Bach. Conductor Yoav Talmi has not necessarily chosen the transcriptions you might expect. Of course we have Stokowski’s Toccata & Fugue in D minor but there are also transcriptions by William Walton, Edward Elgar, Gustav Holst, and even Anton Webern and Ottorino Respighi.

Es ist schwer auszumachen, wer bei dieser Aufnahme mehr aufhorchen läßt, der Komponist oder sein Interpret.​ Mit einer verblüffenden Virtuosität, die weit mehr umfaßt als nur Klangbrillanz und wieselflinke Geläufigkeit, führt Dan Laurin einen Vivaldi vor, in dessen Ideenreichtum sich ungeahnte Tiefen auftun.​ Wie selten zuvor entfaltet sich hier das expressive Potential scheinbar harmloser Harmonien, und die Gestaltung der auf den ersten Blick einfachen Melodien wird zum leidenschaftlichen Wettstreit der vier Temperamente.​ Dabei schöpft der russisch-schwedische Blockflötist aus einem schier unendlichen Vorrat an Artikulationsnuancen, der es ihm ermöglicht, auf seinem Instrument so ziemlich alles darzustellen.​

The story of the liberation of the Israelites from their enslavement in Egypt, as told in the Book of Exodus, has often been set to music. The works by Telemann and Rolle recorded here are based on this subject and partly even on the same libretto. And yet these two composers, separated by only one generation, handle this topic in remarkably different ways.

Carlo Gesualdo, Prince of Venosa, murderer in 1590 of his guilty wife and her lover, later took a wife from the d’Este family, rulers of Ferrara, whose musical interests coincided with his own. He wrote a quantity of sacred and secular vocal music and a relatively small number of instrumental pieces. In style his music is unusual in its sudden changes of tonality, its harmony and its intensity of feeling, qualities that have found particular favour among some modern theorists.

If the keyboard music of Domenico Zipoli (1688-1726) is now played or remembered, it is through the gentle swing of his C major Pastorale with its chirpy central section, popular as communion music with organists. Few of them will know that the Pastorale forms part of a larger collection of Sonata dintavolatura, which were published as Book 1, with a second book which worked in the same genre but for harpsichord.

When François Couperin published his Mass for the Convents in 1690, he had just turned 20, yet he had created the most exceptional collection of organ music to be written during the reign of Louis XIV. On the magnificent and historic Great Organ of the Royal Chapel of Versailles, over which Couperin presided from 1693 to 1730, the celebrated organist of Notre-Dame de Paris, Olivier Latry, performs a sumptuous version of this Organ Mass which, in a world premiere, is interlaced with captivating Chants sur le Livre, those sublime holy improvisations unique to French baroque music… for a moment of eternity.

Handel’s spectacular oratorio Belshazzar was composed in 1744, from a libretto by Charles Jennens that describes the fall of Babylon. Less successful in it’s day than the popular Italian opera, Belshazzar is a work on an imposing scale — dramatic, passionate, full of stirring choruses and solos, and a piece which Handel himself described as ‘very grand and uncommon’. The oratorio is full of invention, energy and drama with the Jewish, Babylonian Persian and Medes masses having their own distinctive musical styles that were juxtaposed to create a tense dramatic conflict. Composed in the same year as the splendid Hercules the two oratorios represent the peak of Handel’s dramatic writing. Belshazzar was a failure at the time of its first performance in 1745—contemporary reports speak of a disastrously bad performance—and the oratorio never gained popularity in Handel’s lifetime.

The composition is a tour de force, written by Handel at the age of 22 to showcase his skill in choral music – which this recording certainly does. Outstanding historically informed performance led by Simon Preston. Of particular note: an inspired rendering of the soprano duet "De Torrente" by Diana Montague and the legendary Arleen Augér.

More than two centuries before John Lennon favorably compared the Beatles' popularity to that of Jesus, Italian violin virtuoso Francesco Maria Veracini confidently remarked that there was only one God, and only one Veracini. He was one of the first stars of the violin, younger than Corelli, roughly contemporary with Vivaldi and Tartini, who is better known only because of the satanic verses he wrote for the instrument.