Peter Phillips has here deliberately paired two sharply contrasted parody Masses … the former … is marvellously bright and open and is given a correspondingly outgoing performance, while the latter, inflected with chromaticism and melodic intervals that constantly fall back on themselves, is darker-hued and more plaintive, a mood well captured here in the intensity of the singing. The recording, made in the Church of St Peter and St Paul, Salle, Norfolk is well handled and adds powerfully to these flexible, expressive and beautiful readings.

Nirgendwo könne ein Komponist seinen Stil besser entwickeln als in der Kirche, wo die Übel des Kunstbetriebes, Applaus und Erfolgsdenken, keinen Platz besäßen, bekannte Camille Saint-Saëns einmal, und er wußte, wovon er sprach: Er selbst war zwanzig Jahre lang als Organist an der Pariser Madeleine tätig gewesen. Die Werke dieser CD belegen Saint-Saëns' These. Sowohl das Requiem als auch die Psalmvertonung verblüffen durch einen ganz eigenen Tonfall, der eine eingängige Melodik, raffiniert chromatische Harmonik und klangsinnliche Instrumentation verbindet.

Jan Ladislav Dussek was perhaps Europe's greatest pianist until Beethoven came along, and much of his music involves the piano. He wrote works in many genres, however, including some substantial choral music at the end of his life that, in places, looked forward to Schubert. Consider this Messe Solemnelle in G major, an hourlong work that receives not only its world premiere recording but possibly its first performance in any form; it was discovered by Academy of Ancient Music director Richard Egarr in a Florence library. Physical CD buyers will get a weighty scholarly apparatus, but even online listeners will find an enjoyable work that could easily find its way into the choral repertory.

Seux génies du baroque italien à la filiation évidente et dont la musique emplit églises, palais et théâtres du Royaume napolitain au début du XVIIIè siècle sont ici réunis : Alessandro Scarlatti (1660–1725) et Giovanni Battista Pergolesi (1710–1736).

Giovanni Paisiello was one of the most admired composers of opera in the second half of the 18th century. His reputation was mainly based on his comic operas which he composed while working in Naples. Although not born in Naples, he considered himself a Neapolitan, having studied at the Conservatorio di S Onofri. Paisiello's career can be divided into three stages. In the first he concentrated on composing comic operas, mainly for Naples.

With her almost supernaturally clear and agile soprano, Emma Kirkby has enchanted audiences ever since she first appeared on the Early Music scene in the 1970s. And as the art of historically informed performance has become more and more widely appreciated, so has her style of singing, to the extent that she in 2007 was included in a listing of ‘the 20 greatest sopranos ever’ made by the BBC Music Magazine. Throughout her career, Emma Kirkby has made a large number of recordings of a wide range of music. Released on the occasion of her 60th birthday, the present collection celebrates her collaboration with BIS, which has resulted in ten discs to date.

Among Handel's vocal works - from the early, operatic solo cantatas to the full-blown operas and the oratorios of his London years - the Nine German Arias hold a special place. Possibly composed around the time that the composer made a final journey to Germany to take leave of his ailing mother, they were Handel's last settings of texts in his native language. It seems likely that these circumstances contributed to the intimate character of these highly personal works, in combination with the texts themselves. Barthold Heinrich Brockes' poems point ahead towards the Enlightenment, establishing as their setting a harmonically organised world, in which benevolent Nature is the prime example of God's bounty.

Costanzo Porta (1528 or 1529 – 19 May 1601) was an Italian composer Renaissance, and a representative of what is known today as the Venetian School. He was highly praised throughout his life both as a composer and a teacher, and had a reputation especially as an expert contrapuntist.

Roberto Tigani directs Orchestra dell'Accademia Romana "Arcangelo Corelli" and soprano Claudia Toti in a performance of three rarely recorded Italian sacred works.
The manuscript for the mass by Scarlatti was discovered in the 1950s in the archives of the Roman basilica of Santa Maria in Trastevere. It brings to eleven his surviving masses. It is the only know copy and lacks both the Benedictus and the Angus Dei.

Thirteenth-century troubador Gautier de Coincy's blend of mystical religious poetry and the popular tunes to which he set his poems proves irresistible, especially in the Harp Consort's lively renditions. Given the nature of the material, the sheer variety of rhythms, sounds, and colors on this disc is astounding; the vocal soloists are all excellent, the small chorus adept, captivating when it sings in the gutsy peasant style at appropriate moments. Eight purely instrumental numbers are sprinkled throughout the 20 tracks, each a gem, full of colorful effects from the rich-sounding shawm and other period instruments like bagpipe, vielle, and a variety of percussion instruments that thump and shimmer in ways that make you want to dance.

Cherubini's C minor Requiem, full of drama and austere beauty, is a masterpiece of 19th-century choral and church music. Although famous for his operas, Cherubini did not include vocal solos in the work (nor in the D minor Requiem for male chorus composed in his later years). The opening Kyrie is swathed in soft mystery, the Domine Jesu and the Offertory's final Amen have sturdy rhythmic underpinnings, and the Requiem's finale features a closing diminuendo as powerful as it is surprising. Cherubini opens the Dies Irae with a stupendous tam-tam crash, shocking to its first audiences and still packing a wallop, especially as captured by Telarc's engineers.

As a special project to commemorate the 30th anniversary of Eugene Ormandy's death, we will release 10 stereo recordings that represent the essence of Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra from the vast amount of recordings he left behind for Sony Classical and RCA. The rich orchestral sound, with its thick string parts as the foundation, its unparalleled woodwinds, and its beautiful brass, is beautifully imprinted with the spirited 1950s and 1960s, and the 1970s, when Ormandy's voice grew more mature and profound, as he reached the pinnacle of 20th century orchestral art.

Philippe Rogier was a Fleming who was brought to Spain in 1572, when he was about 11, to sing in the chapel choir of King Philip II. He died young, at age 35, and many of his works were lost in the Lisbon earthquake of 1755. For these reasons his work remained obscure in the general 20th century rediscovery of Renaissance music, but more than 200 of his works survived, some of them in manuscripts from as far away as Mexico. The British group Magnificat and conductor Philip Cave undertake an admirable effort to explore the music of this composer, whose style included elements of both Venetian polychoral music and classic Franco-Flemish polyphony.

Rossini's Stabat Mater was performed publicly in its final form in Paris on January 7, 1842. The first six sections of this ten-movement work had been composed earlier, on commission from Don Francesco de Varela, for an 1833 Good Friday performance in Madrid (with the last four movements written by Giuseppe Tadolini). The work was received enthusiastically in both of its incarnations and has remained a core piece of the choral repertory ever since.