Vincent Lübeck (1654-1740) was a well-known teacher and trusted advisor on organ design in the generation of organists in North Germany before J. S. Bach. By 1675 he had become organist of St Cosmae et Damiani in Stade, near Hamburg, where there was an organ by Arp Schnitger. In 1702, Lübeck moved into Hamburg and became organist at St Nikolai, where there was a four-manual Schnitger organ of 67 stops.
Here comes from a guy nickname as "The Handel of Sweden". Johan Helmich Roman is Baroque composer born in Stockholm. He was a violinist and oboist. He was leading figure in Swedish Royal Orchestra back then in 1720s. His most famous work happened to be a wedding compilation called "Drottningholmsmusique" a large orchestral suite for the wedding of the Crown Prince Adolf Frederick of Sweden and Louisa Ulrika of Prussia. In this CD we found 12 flute sonatas for Basso Continuo, which replaced by harpsichord and cello. The form was most famous back then for flute enthusiast as they are simple. The pieces are somehow Handellian in spirit. This CD will enrich our experience and knowledge in Baroque flute repertoire. The whole CD is given performance by flutist Jed Wentz, who happened to be American flutist born in New Brighton PA. He is expert in Baroque repertoire.
Richard Wagner's reputation rests on his tetralogy, Der Ring des Nibelungen, and the other music dramas he created, including Lohengrin, Tannhäuser, Tristan und Isolde, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, and Parsifal, which revolutionized all aspects of late Romantic music and left their mark on modern music as well. Yet there is a small body of non-operatic works that shows a more relaxed Wagner working on a much smaller scale: his Siegfried Idyll for chamber orchestra, a group of songs, and a collection of pieces for piano. This double CD by Pier Paolo Vincenzi presents Wagner's complete piano music with three sonatas, a large-scale fantasia, and eleven short pieces that show the composer's attempts at finding a more personal and intimate voice.
Johann Ludwig Krebs (Buttelstedt, 12 October 1713 – Altenburg, 1 January 1780) was a favourite pupil of the great J.S. Bach (who regarded him particularly highly, punning on their two surnames declaring Krebs ‘was the only crayfish in his stream’) and a supremely talented inheritor of the composer–organist tradition of the Northern European Baroque. As a member of the last generation of these musicians, he lived in a time of marked shifts in taste, during the rise of the empfindsamer (sensitive) style, with its preference for balance and grace over the high baroque’s interwoven contrapuntal lines and chromatic harmony.
Thinking of Baroque music our minds turn nearly automatically to the German giants Bach, Handel, Telemann and the like, or to sunnier parts in Italy where Vivaldi, Corelli and Albinoni wrote their concertos: but one nearly forgets that also in France great music was composed in the Baroque! One of the most important composers was Francois Couperin (1668-1733), imperial court composer of the most charming, graceful music: look at the French pictures of that time and you can imagine what kind of music.
Another long-forgotten name takes his place in the huge library of Baroque composers published by Brilliant Classics thanks to spirited advocacy from a lively young Roman early-music group. The Milanese composer, impresario and singer Carlo Ambrogio Lonati (c.1645 – c.1712) made his name farther south, in Naples, as a singer and instrumentalist at the Royal Chapel. Some impression of his appearance may be inferred from the nickname widely bestowed upon him as ‘Il gobbo della regina’ (‘the queen’s hunchback’) during his period of service in the city to the expatriate Queen Christina of Sweden. Working in Rome and Genoa in close partnership with his fellow composer Alessandro Stradella, Lonati left Genoa in a hurry after the unexplained fatal stabbing of his friend in February 1682.
Robert Schumann is probably best known for his copious amount of piano works and lieder – music that, fuelled by vivid imaginings and unfettered emotions, represents one of the highest expressions of the Romantic spirit. It shouldn’t be forgotten, however, that the composer also wrote masterly works for the organ, an instrument which interested him only occasionally but which he praised in his Rules for House and Life (1850): ‘If you pass near a church and you hear the organ playing, go inside and listen… Never waste an opportunity to practise the organ: there is no other instrument able so swiftly to dispense with all that is impure and imprecise, both in the music itself and in the manner of playing it.’
This 8CD set contains the complete harpsichord works by Handel! Handel was, like his contemporaries J.S. Bach and Scarlatti, a formidable keyboard player, a virtuoso displaying “an uncommon brilliancy and command of finger” (Handel’s first biographer John Mainwaring). Although Handel’s focus was on opera and oratorio (much more commercial…) his output for the harpsichord is of high quality, great variety and instrumental originality.