Gottfried Stölzel was a highly skilled, sometimes exceptionally inventive composer among whose gifts was the ability to devise extremely economical yet musically involving, textually illustrative, structurally refined, motivically fluent cantatas. It’s nowhere near great music, but much of it is quite good, clearly written for singers of some accomplishment, with leanly-scored yet often imaginatively colored orchestral accompaniments. Here are six cantatas from cycles written in 1735/36 and 1736/37, first performed together in pairs for Pentecost services in 1737. Added to the end of the program is another, earlier work that shows a marked stylistic contrast to the later pieces. Most of these cantatas begin with a short chorus, sometimes containing what sounds like a full-fledged fugue that dissolves as quickly as it begins, and then proceed through a couple of arias and recitatives, ending with a chorale.

This new album by the award-winning Latvian Radio Choir conducted by Sigvards Kļava – recently hailed by the New York Times as ‘astonishing’, ‘superlative’ by the BBC Music Magazine, and ‘perhaps the finest chorus singing today’ by NPR – is focused on the sacred choral works by one of the greatest composers of the Romantic era, Felix Mendelssohn (1809–1847).

Written for The Tallis Scholars, Ikon of Light is scored for double choir and string trio, heard from a distance. The sonorous choral textures have a strongly mystical spirit which radiantly expresses the Greek concept of light.

Viennese church music of the generations before Haydn and Mozart is regrettably unfamiliar, and this attractive CD fills in something of the background and helps tell us where Haydn and Mozart were coming from. Antonio Caldara, Venetian by birth, spent several years in Rome, moved to Vienna in 1716 (he was in his mid-forties) as vice-Kapellmeister to Fux and (with regular trips to Salzburg to write operas) stayed 20 years, until his death. He wrote a large quantity of church music, including some 30 festal masses from his Viennese years, of which the main work here seems to me an excellent example. Caldara's rich textures and often very expressive and chromatic harmony, his fluent Italian melodic writing and his resourceful counterpoint, suffuse a work with many striking qualities.

Georg Joseph Vogler, called Abbé Vogler, was born in Würzburg in 1749. He became famous as an expert in music theory, conductor and composer. In 1772, he accepted a position at the court of Prince Elector Karl Theodor in Mannheim and later followed his employer to Munich. From 1786 onwards, he worked at the court of the kings of Sweden as a conductor.

A la suite des précédents albums consacrés aux Grands offertoires grégoriens I et II, Damien Poisblaud et Les Chantres du Thoronet nous emmenent cette fois dans le temps liturgique du Carême, préfiguration de la Passion du Christ. Ces grands offertoires grégoriens du Carême nous emportent au-delà des mots. Les mélodies nous prennent par la main et nous conduisent, comme à notre insu, en des contrées où l’humain devient poreux au divin. Ces chants nous mettent le Ciel à l’âme comme la vue d’un fruit nous met l’eau à la bouche.

Sir John Eliot Gardiner’s Complete Beethoven Recordings made for Archiv Produktion have been brought together for the first time to mark Beethoven’s 250th birthday in 2020. This 15-CD set features the Orchestre Revolutionnaire et Romantique and the Monteverdi Choir under the leadership of John Eliot Gardiner with soloists Robert Levin and Viktoria Mullova in the Piano and Violin Concertos. The Complete Beethoven Recordings include a bonus disc, never before commercially released, featuring an interview with Gardiner discussing the symphonies, and new liner notes written by Thomas Otto.

An outstanding Italian musican, Stefano Demicheli has been René Jacobs' closest assistant for many years and with him has performed on Europe's main opera stages. A distinguished harpsichordist, who studied with Ottavio Dantone, he is now the leader of the Dolce & Tempesta ensemble, consisting of the best soloists from the European period instrument ensembles.This new recording on Fuga Libera gives us the world première of the three Notturni composed c.1740 by Porpora, Handel's strongest rival in London, for the All Souls Day in Naples. Carried by one of the most powerfully expressive texts in the Christian canon, this is an opportunity to hear two stunning soloists: Monica Piccinini and Romina Basso and also the Stagione Armonica of Padova.

"I chose to celebrate our 40th anniversary with Taverner’s Missa Gloria tibi Trinitas because I believe it to be one of the greatest compositions ever to have been written in England—a perfect ambassador for the repertoire we have made our own. It is also spectacularly difficult to sing, requiring a very high degree of expertise from its performers. I felt there was no better piece to show-case what The Tallis Scholars have achieved in their 40 years of dedication to polyphony: a summation of Taverner’s art as well as our own." (Peter Phillips)

Wolfgang Katschner and the Lute Compagney provide the oratorios 'Jonas' and 'Judicium extremum' with a Dixit Dominus and a Magnificat, which in their expressiveness are in no way inferior to the more popular oratorios.

Die sogenannte ,,Alte Musik-Szene" ist in einer noch vor ein paar Jahren für undenkbar gehaltenen Expansion begriffen. Fast jeden Tag werden neue Ensembles gegründet und neue ,,alte" Werke zum ersten Mal der stummen Vergangenheit entrissen. Wir leben - wie wohl nie zuvor - auf Du und Du mit unserer jahrhundertealten Musikgeschichte.

The fifth release in the Rediscoveries series from Virgin Classics is the celebrated 1990 recording A Venetian Coronation 1595 by Paul McCreesh and his Gabrieli Consort & Players. The album presents a musical reconstruction of the coronation mass for Venetian Doge Marino Grimani. Gramophone wrote of the recording: "Without doubt, this is one of the finest records of Italian Renaissance polyphony to appear for a long time; imaginative in conception, varied in content, and both exciting and thought-provoking in execution."

The importance of the musician Bernardo Pasquini is well known to all those who dedicate themselves to the study of the harpsichord or organ. They frequently encounter his compositions, which are of such fundamental importance for the development of late-baroque Italian music for keyboard instruments. His vocal music, on the other hand, consisting primarily of cantatas, operas and oratorios, is far less known. But it includes true gems of vocal art from the late Roman Seicento.