This is a reissue of Donna Brown’s performances of beautiful songs by Debussy. They are settings of poems by Verlaine, Bourget, Banville, de Musset, Mallarmé and Peter. This soprano is known for the floating angelic quality of her voice and the intelligent musicality of her interpretations.

Leclair's single opera Scylla et Glaucus may lack the sheer audacity of his teacher Rameau, but it's enormously likeable…the performers respond…stylishly to Leclair's charming if slightly predictable sound-world…and the conducting preserves a neat balance between drama and ornament…It is clear that Gardiner favours intervention over chilly authenticity; whether or not you agree with all his decisions, the clarity of the image he presents is often provocative and always bracing.

John Eliot Gardiner conducts his Orchestre Revolutionnaire et Romantique through two concerts of Berlioz compositions. The 'Symphonie Fantastique' is an orchestral tour de force which is central to the repertoire of every major orchestra. It is performed here on original instruments in its original 1830s orchestration in the atmospheric old hall of the Paris Conservatoire where it was first heard. Also included is the first performance of the newly discovered 'Messe Solennelle' with the Monteverdi choir. Written when Berlioz was just 20 years old, it was thought lost until its rediscovery in 1992. The first performance of this large-scale Mass for 150 years was filmed in London's Westminster Cathedral. Gardiner's period-instrument orchestra gives characteristically idiomatic performances of these seminal works (which are also linked thematically, through Berlioz's extensive re-use of material from the Messe).

Agrippina – a portrayal of lust and power set in first century Rome – was first performed in December 1709 at the Teatro San Giovanni Crisostomo, Venice. This "arrangement" by John Eliot Gardiner was recorded in 1991/2 in London and has now been re-released. It was Handel's second and last opera to be composed during his time in Italy, from 1706 to 1710. Written against some resistance (the composer at first saw "no good reason" to write (such) an opera) in three weeks while in Venice, it represented the first such popular acclaim of Handel's career being performed over two dozen times in succession.

Die Kombination hat sich bewährt. Joseph Haydn hat in Sir John Eliot Gardiner einen Interpreten gefunden, der mit dem nötigen Ernst und der fachlichen Kompetenz seinen geistlichen Werken nachzuspüren vermag. “Seine Darbietungen haben eine bewegende Stärke und Energie. Die Solisten sind ausgezeichnet. An keiner Stelle zweifelt man an Haydns wahrer Größe”, urteilte die BBC über Gardiners Messen-Projekt.